Efforts to rein in artificial intelligence, especially rogue content such as deepfake video and audio, are accelerating, both from the government and AI companies themselves. No surprise there, given that one guy got fooled into paying scammers who deepfaked his company’s executives $25 million. Yikes.

On a more positive note, somewhat, enterprise tech companies such as Arm, Confluent, Cloudflare and a raft of cybersecurity companies turned in pretty good to great earnings. But given cautious outlooks issued by some, investors are getting choosier.

And no wonder. Weaveworks, a once promising cloud-native software container management startup, actually closed down after failed acquisition attempts. You have to wonder if more aren’t coming. Meanwhile, layoffs continued from the likes of Pure Storage, DocuSign and Snap.

This and other news will be discussed in John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, available now on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly Breaking Analysis, out this weekend, a deep look at Intel’s chip foundry strategy.

Here’s a sampling of this week’s news:

The race to identify AI-generated content

Oversight Board calls for changes to Meta’s manipulated content policy

Meta will label AI-generated images across Facebook, Instagram and Threads

OpenAI will now add labels to AI-generated images following Meta

Google joins C2PA’s steering committee to boost transparency of AI-generated content

Major tech companies join US AI safety consortium to set standards for future development

FCC votes to ban AI-generated voices on robocalls

And why it’s critical:

Scammers used deepfake CFO on video call to trick company employee into sending them $25M

New Hampshire AG says Texas firm was behind AI-generated Joe Biden robocall

Special report: AI’s Next Frontier: Data

Making smart use of the vast amount of data needed for successful artificial intelligence is an enormous undertaking that requires new software, architectures and hardware, which we’re exploring in our latest special report, AI’s Next Frontier: Data. Stories in coming weeks will dig into the opportunities and challenges of the AI onslaught, with a special lens on the paramount role of data in business transformation.

This will also be the focus of Supercloud 6, an editorial event coming soon from SiliconANGLE, theCUBE and theCUBE Research. We’ll gather a community of artificial intelligence and data executives, experts, technologists, investors and thought leaders to explore how data will drive the continued advance of AI into the enterprise and everyday life. Check back soon for the date.

First up this week: Paul Gillin’s deep dive into a key obstacle for the proliferation of AI: AI hallucinations: The 3% problem no one can fix slows the AI juggernaut

And a guest column from Gartner’s Ramke Ramakrishnan: Advancing data architecture for generative AI

In other AI news

Seriously, trillions? Grady Booch notes that “if you need $7 trillion to build the chips and the energy demand equivalent of the consumption of the United Kingdom, then – with a high level of confidence – I can assure you that you have the wrong architecture”: Report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seeking up to $7T for chip venture

Report: Nvidia building unit to design custom AI chips for cloud customers

Look out UiPath? The Information says OpenAI is beginning to build “agent” software to automate complex work tasks by taking over devices.

Apple, UC Santa Barbara researchers detail new MGIE image editing AI

Microsoft upgrades Copilot with enhanced image editing features, new AI model

MIT researchers use neural networks to design more durable and flexible composite materials

AI helps scholars decipher ancient scroll buried by Vesuvius eruption

Synthetaic raises $15M for advanced AI image classification and detection

ScreenMeet gives remote support agents an AI boost

Acceldata copilot aids in data observability

Nylas boosts performance and folds generative AI into its API platform

Colossyan raises $22M to grow its AI-powered corporate training video production platform

AI customization startup Cimba launches with $1.25M in funding

Equinix and Nvidia partner to simplify the deployment of AI infrastructure

Daedalus nabs $21M for its AI-powered precision manufacturing facility

New danger alert: You’ve heard of shadow IT, the unsanctioned use of applications by departments? How about shadow AI? New ‘AI Governance’ solution from Securiti aims to streamline AI model compliance

Earnings upside (mostly) for enterprise tech companies

Earnings: Lots of enterprise tech companies beat forecasts but some remain cautious, and so do investors for the most part (unless there’s AI magic dust):

NXP barely maintains growth as it beats the Street’s forecasts on earnings and revenue

Palantir shares surge on revenue beat, revised outlook driven by AI growth

Cybersecurity firms Check Point, Fortinet and Tenable impress investors with strong results

Freshworks beats expectations again as generative AI fuels large customer acquisition

Kyndryl rolls as cloud and consulting business drive earnings beat

Uber’s earnings results top analyst expectations across the board

Rapid7 shares fall on weak 2024 guidance

Wow. But should Arm really have a higher multiple than Nvidia? Arm’s stock gains more than 25% on strong earnings beat and bullish guidance

Wow II: Confluent’s stock jumps more than 21% after it beats forecasts and provides upbeat outlook

Mixed fortunes in cyber: Cloudflare soars, Dynatrace dips and CyberArk rises in latest earnings

In other enterprise and cloud news

This one could be the canary in the enterprise software coal mine, to paraphrase Runtime’s Tom Krazit:  Kubernetes automation startup Weaveworks shuts down

Cohesity and Veritas’ data protection business to merge into $7B company And Zeus Kerravala’s analysis, noting significant challenges: Looking at both sides of Cohesity’s acquisition of Veritas’ data protection unit

Zeus Kerravala says data processing units are critical for the AI era: Stop using servers to do things they’re not good at: How DPUs can change the data game

NinjaOne raises $231M at nearly $2B valuation for its IT management platform

A CUBE exclusive: In a new era of space exploration and computing, HPE launches third Spaceborne Computer to the ISS

Strong team led by Pivotal Labs founder Rob Mee: Mechanical Orchard raises $24M to help companies ditch their mainframes for the cloud

Alibaba Cloud posts modest growth, mostly thanks to other Alibaba business units (from The Register)

SaaS visibility startup dataroomHQ launches with $3.5M in funding

Construction insurance tech startup Shepherd nabs $13.5M Series A funding round

Supply chain management startup Sensos raises $22M in funding

Google donates $1M to Rust Foundation for C++/Rust interoperability efforts

Nord Quantique’s latest research paper promises scalable quantum computing

Cyber beat

Business is looking up — mostly: Cybersecurity firms Check Point, Fortinet and Tenable impress investors with strong results

Rapid7 shares fall on weak 2024 guidance

Mixed fortunes in cyber: Cloudflare soars, Dynatrace dips and CyberArk rises in latest earnings

Cisco unveils ‘Identity Intelligence’ to enhance cloud security with AI and networking integration And Zeus Kerravala’s analysis: Analyzing all the security and AI news from Cisco Live EMEA 2024

AWS, Cisco, Nvidia and IBM join with Linux Foundation in post-quantum cryptography initiative

Google report warns of risk posed by commercial surveillance industry

Ransomware payments reach record $1.1B in 2023

Entrust reportedly agrees to buy identity verification startup Onfido for up to $650M

Israeli startup IONIX raises $42M to enhance attack surface management

F5 debuts new API security and AI features

Metomic launches new browser plugin for enhanced ChatGPT data security

LimaCharlie secures $10.2M for expansion of SecOps Cloud Platform

Elsewhere around tech

Layoff watch

Snap lets go 10% of workforce following return to revenue growth And no wonder — the quarter’s results and outlook were awful, a stark contrast to Facebook results last week: Snap shares plunge over 30% on revenue miss and weak guidance

Pure Storage reportedly lays off 4% of its workforce

DocuSign cuts 400 jobs in third round of layoffs since 2022

Grammarly laid off 230 people, close to a quarter of its staff, in a restructuring.

In other tech news

Report: Apple is trying to meet the challenge of developing two foldable iPhones

Ethereum Name Service partners with GoDaddy to link domain names and blockchain addresses

Crypto payments mobile app Oobit raises $25M led by Tether

Meta and TikTok cry foul over EU’s DSA enforcement fees

Ouch, Molly White really doesn’t think much of Chris Dixon’s book on blockchain, Read Write Own.

Comings and goings

Gil Schwed is exiting as CEO of Check Point Software to become executive chairman. No word on a replacement yet.

Cloud security firm Wiz hired former Zscaler Chief Operating Officer Dali Rajic as president and COO.

Cloudflare named former Alteryx CEO Mark Anderson president of revenue.

Danny Allan, former Veeam chief technology officer, joined code security firm Snyk in the same job.

Mitchell Baker is moving from CEO of Mozilla Corp. back to executive chairwoman and board member Laura Chambers becomes CEO for the rest of this year.

Fintech Plaid hired Jen Taylor, most recently as Cloudflare’s chief product officer, as its first president.

Freshworks names former Zoom exec Abe Smith as chief of global field operations

Autodesk co-founder John Walker died Feb. 2.

What’s next

More earnings next week:

Monday, Feb. 12: Teradata, Qualys, Arista Networks

Tuesday, Feb. 13: GlobalFoundries, Datadog, Pegasystems, Akamai, Robinhood, Lyft

Wednesday, Feb. 14: Cisco, JFrog, Informatica, Twilio

Thursday, Feb. 15: Appian, Applied Materials, Dropbox

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