xAI Launches Grok 3 API

📱CONSUMER TECH UPDATES

• The White House is insisting iPhones can be made in America despite Apple execs and analysts arguing the specialised workforce simply doesn't exist, with Tim Cook previously noting China's deep tooling expertise that "could fill multiple football fields" compared to America's limited talent pool.

• While Trump slaps 125% tariffs on Chinese imports with one hand, he's apparently giving Nvidia a backdoor pass with the other—all for the low price of some promised US datacenter investments and a million-dollar dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

• Samsung's adorable rolling robot companion Ballie is finally hitting US and South Korean stores this summer, now powered by Google Cloud's Gemini AI for multimodal capabilities. The long-awaited bot (first unveiled in 2020) will manage smart home devices and offer personalised recommendations, though pricing remains unannounced amid tariff uncertainties.

🤖 AI UPDATES

• Despite facing a countersuit from OpenAI, Elon Musk's xAI just dropped API access to Grok 3, offering both standard and Mini versions with "reasoning" capabilities at pricing that matches Claude 3.7 Sonnet but exceeds Gemini 2.5 Pro (which outperforms it on benchmarks).

• Apple Intelligence might soon expand beyond ChatGPT integration with Google Gemini joining as a partner, potentially announced at WWDC25 next month. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, while the deal isn't finalised yet, additional AI partners like Anthropic's Claude or Perplexity could also be in consideration.

• Country legend Randy Travis joined forces with tech giants YouTube, OpenAI, and Adobe to champion the reintroduced NO FAKES Act, which would create federal protections against unauthorised AI deepfakes of artists' voices and likenesses.

• The AI boom is set to devour as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan by 2030, with only half coming from renewables, while US data centres will soon outpace all energy-intensive manufacturing combined.

And that’s all the time we have for today! See you tomorrow.

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