Plus, Apple defends Siri after a privacy lawsuit. And, cybersecurity startup Wiz names a new CFO as it prepares for an IPO. James Rundle hosts.
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[00:00:01] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Thursday, January 9th. I'm James Rundle for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:00:07] Elon Musk's generative artificial intelligence company, XAI, has launched a standalone app for its language model known as Grok. Previously, users could only access the chatbot through X, Musk's social media platform.
[00:00:20] Musk launched XAI in 2023 to compete with OpenAI, which he co-founded but later left.
[00:00:26] Apple is seeking to ease privacy concerns about its Siri voice assistant technology, saying it has never sold data collected by the feature or used it for advertising purposes.
[00:00:37] The defense comes days after Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit.
[00:00:43] The suit alleged that the tech giant obtained private conversations through accidental Siri activations and shared them to third parties without consent.
[00:00:51] Apple has denied wrongdoing in the case.
[00:00:53] Apple said it uses on-device processing where possible, and that it doesn't retain audio recordings of interactions with Siri unless users opt in to improve the feature.
[00:01:03] Even then, it said the recordings are only used for that purpose.
[00:01:07] And cybersecurity company, Wiz has named its new finance chief, Fazal Merchant, a former senior executive at DreamWorks who has come out of retirement for the role.
[00:01:17] Wiz, which develops products for cloud security, came close to a deal to sell itself to Alphabet in July for $23 billion.
[00:01:25] The deal fell apart, leading Wiz to plan for an initial public offering.
[00:01:29] Wiz said Merchant will be responsible for preparing the company for its listing.
[00:01:33] His most recent executive role was a short stint as the CEO of cybersecurity company Tanium, which he left in 2020.
[00:01:41] Since then, he has been advising and serving on company boards.
[00:01:44] For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Friday's Tech News Briefing podcast.
[00:01:49] TNH
[00:01:49] I'll see you next time.