The automaker announced its upgraded MBUX Virtual Assistant at CES last year, which can carry conversations with passengers. However, it did not share the LLM partner behind the technology at the time, which we now know is Google Cloud with this new tailor-made vehicular AI Agent running on Vertex AI.
Correction: MBUX Virtual Assistant was announced at CES 2024, not 2025.
Bloomberg reports:
The measure about Apple’s diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts urged the company to consider abolishing the program because it may discriminate against employees and draw lawsuits. The company said the proposal was an inappropriate attempt to restrict Apple’s business operations and that it already assesses legal and regulatory risks.
The New York Times reports that the team had “no more than a dozen close advisers” and that it worked on revising the policies with “Mr. Zuckerberg leading the charge.”
Zuckerberg has also “regularly spoken” to people like Marc Andreessen about “concerns that progressives are policing speech.”
[The New York Times]
After Apple discontinued its short-lived Apple Pay Later service last year, it picked up several third-party BNPL options instead, including Klarna and Affirm. BNPL usage has been on the rise, and surveys have indicated that users have overspent and missed payments. Last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruled to classify BNPL services as credit card providers.
