Another year, another flagship Qualcomm mobile chip. But things are reportedly a bit different with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the company’s newest offering headed to premium smartphones. For one, it’s using the Oryon CPU that debuted in X Elite chips for laptops last year, according to a leaked slide from Videocardz. It’s also using a new 3nm process node, instead of last year’s 4nm node. That helps the Snapdragon 8 Elite deliver 45 percent faster single and multi-core performance while using 27 percent less power than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

While we’re still waiting for more details on the Snapdragon 8 Elite at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit later today, there’s still a lot we can learn from that single leaked slide. As expected, the company is doubling down on its generative AI capabilities, with a 45 percent faster NPU (neural processing unit) than before, and gaming performance will also see a 40 percent boost. The 8 Elite will reach a maximum speed of 4.32 GHz across two cores, according to Videocardz, and it’ll hit up to 3.53 GHz in six smaller cores.

Given how impressed we were by the Snapdragon X Elite in the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Copilot+ PCs, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see the Oryon CPU working out well on smartphones. According to Smartprix and Onleaks, early benchmarks of the Snapdragon 8 Elite show it scoring 3,025,991 in Antutu, compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s best of around 2.1 million.

Developing…

Microsoft just announced a suite of autonomous AI agents for its Dynamics 365 platform, intensifying the competition with Salesforce in the enterprise AI market. The tech giant will release ten new autonomous agents designed to augment sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams.

Available in public preview starting next month, these AI agents aim to automate complex tasks and orchestrate business processes across organizations. They surpass traditional chatbots and Microsoft’s earlier AI offerings by reasoning over intent and context, making judgments based on a broader set of data.

“We think of these agents as really the apps of the AI era,” said Bryan Goode, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Every line of business system that exists today is going to get reimagined as an agent that sits on top of a copilot.”

AI titans clash: Microsoft’s counterpunch to Salesforce’s Agentforce

The move comes just weeks after Salesforce unveiled its Agentforce platform, which CEO Marc Benioff has been aggressively promoting while criticizing Microsoft’s Copilot. Benioff recently called Microsoft Copilot “more like Clippy 2.0,” referring to Microsoft’s much-maligned Office assistant from the 1990s.

Microsoft’s new offering appears to be a direct challenge to Salesforce’s Agentforce. While Salesforce’s platform relies on its Atlas reasoning engine, Microsoft’s agents are powered by advanced language models and the company’s vast troves of enterprise data.

Goode emphasized that these agents are not meant to replace human workers but to enhance their capabilities. “In many cases, these agents can actually enable people to add capabilities that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do,” he explained.

Battle for AI dominance: Microsoft and Salesforce lead the charge

The tech industry is witnessing a paradigm shift as AI agents move from experimental technology to core business tools. Microsoft and Salesforce are at the forefront, each leveraging their unique strengths to shape the future of enterprise software.

Microsoft’s strategy hinges on its ubiquitous presence in office productivity and cloud computing. By integrating AI agents with familiar tools like Microsoft 365 and Azure, the company aims to make AI adoption seamless for its vast user base. Salesforce, on the other hand, is banking on its CRM expertise and the power of its recently developed Data Cloud to create AI agents that understand and optimize customer relationships.

The success of these platforms could redefine the future of work and enterprise software. As AI agents become more sophisticated, they may blur the lines between human and machine tasks, potentially reshaping organizational structures and job roles.

However, challenges remain. Data privacy concerns, the need for transparent AI decision-making, and the potential for job displacement are issues both companies must navigate carefully. Their ability to address these concerns while delivering tangible business value will likely determine the pace and extent of AI agent adoption.

As this AI revolution unfolds, one thing is clear: the enterprise software landscape is on the cusp of a major transformation. Whether it’s Microsoft’s vision of “agents plus copilot plus humans” or Salesforce’s “human at the helm” approach, the future of work is being rewritten — one AI agent at a time.

With the current unemployment crisis in Hollywood, many TV and film crew members are concerned about finding their next job. This is particularly the case for freelancers, who often face unstable work and irregular pay.

ShoBizzy is the latest professional networking app for the entertainment industry that aims to address this challenge. And, as more workers could be at risk of being out of a job, ShoBizzy recently expanded its offering to allow users to pursue opportunities in additional areas like live events and content creation. 

Launched in January, the app sets itself apart from traditional job-post boards such as Backstage and StaffMeUp because it doesn’t require users to fill out applications. Instead, it provides a social platform for freelancers to create public profiles showcasing their skills and expertise, as well as form long-lasting connections with people in the business who can serve as valuable references for future job opportunities.

“Freelancers live a very non-traditional career path, in terms of the fact that we never have a permanent employer, and it ends up being that your network is the most valuable piece to your career because of the fact that it’s such a who-you-know business,” co-founder Doug Weitzbuch told TechCrunch. Weitzbuch is a freelance TV producer with 20 years of industry experience and has worked on shows like “Duck Dynasty,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” and “Lip Sync Battle.”

It’s a smart move to allow freelancers to broaden their horizons beyond TV and film, as there has been a lot of interest in the creator economy, which is estimated to be a $250 billion business. There has also been a surge in live events this past year. PwC predicts that live event revenue in the U.S. is set to reach $68.7 billion in 2024.

“The television industry has been in the downturn this past year, and a lot of people are struggling to find work,” co-founder Kevin Eberly said, who previously founded PayYourRent, the online rent payment software company. “As we’re building [ShoBizzy], we had a lot of interest from two tangential verticals. One is live event production, so things like concerts, tours, and festivals. And the other is digital content, you know, YouTube creators and stuff like that…We’re able to offer opportunities to freelance crew that they potentially never would have thought of on their own.”

Eberly added that the company currently has “strong relationships with multiple companies in the live event vertical, including Red Light Management, that are eager to bring the platform to their productions and clients.”

The new partnership with Red Light Management is significant because the company represents many well-known artists, such as Luke Bryan, Sabrina Carpenter, The Black Keys, The Fray, The Strokes, and Tom Petty. This potentially gives freelancers the chance to work on major projects that could help advance their careers. 

Alongside the expansion, ShoBizzy added new functionality to help live event companies manage hires more easily. The app’s production workflow is now tailored to concert tours, allowing companies to add multiple dates and locations in a single production. It also lets companies match with any vendors they may need, such as camera rental vendors. 

Overall, ShoBizzy’s suite of tools for production companies aims to streamline the hiring process. Using an AI-powered algorithm, the app suggests the best-fitting individuals for each role, considering factors such as the production’s location, current availability, and relevant IMDb credits. It then tracks the progress of hires in real time as the crew is assembled. Companies can also message crew members in the app.

Since its launch, ShoBizzy has grabbed the attention of 6,500 signups and around 650 companies, including A&E, Amazon, Disney+, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Netflix, Nike, and the WNBA, among others. 

The company is currently raising a $2 million seed funding round. 

News Corp, the parent company of media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, is suing the AI search engine Perplexity for infringing copyrighted content. In a lawsuit filed on Monday, News Corp alleges Perplexity copies news articles, analyses, and opinions “on a massive scale.”

Perplexity is an AI startup that trains its AI search models using content from around the web, allowing it to respond to user queries with a summary of its sources. As outlined in the lawsuit, Perplexity bills itself as a platform that lets users “skip the links” to online articles, which News Corp alleges drives “customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.”

In addition to accusing Perplexity of reproducing some content “verbatim,” News Corp also claims Perplexity can falsely attribute facts and analysis to the company’s outlets, “sometimes citing an incorrect source, and other times simply inventing and attributing to Plaintiffs fabricated news stories.” The lawsuit claims News Corp sent a letter to Perplexity about its “unauthorized” use of its content in July, but Perplexity “did not bother to respond.”

News Corp is asking the court to force Perpelxity to stop using its content without permission and to destroy any database containing its works. The Verge reached out to Perplexity with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

“Perplexity perpetrates an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers and News Corp,” Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, said in a statement. “The perplexing Perplexity has willfully copied copious amounts of copyrighted material without compensation, and shamelessly presents repurposed material as a direct substitute for the original source.”

Intel recently launched its 128-core “Granite Rapids” Xeon 6900P processor family, finally offering some true competition to AMD’s EPYC 9004 Genoa/Bergamo server line.

The first reviews praised Intel’s new chips, with the overall consensus being that the 6900P range successfully heralded Intel’s long-awaited resurgence in the server CPU arena.

While Intel must have been pleased with the reception to its new processors, there was an elephant in the room. The Xeon 6900P processors were pitted up against aging rivals – Genoa is almost two years old now – and AMD had its 5th Gen EPYC “Turin” CPUs in the starting blocks.

Not plain sailing

The iPhone 16 is barely out but we’ve already heard quite a few rumors about the iPhone 17. For one, we know it’s going to lack an iconic model. It’s highly likely Apple is discontinuing the Plus series, instead opting for a base iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. There’s also a new, debut phone in the works that’s been called the iPhone 17 Air or the Slim — you get no prizes for guessing what its selling point will be.

There’s potentially a bigger upgrade coming, though. The iPhone 17 is rumored to have a much higher-resolution front camera than the iPhone 16 does. Currently, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max both have a 12-megapixel front camera, but the iPhone 17 Pro might potentially double that with a 24MP front camera, according to tipster Jeff Pu and GSMArena.

In addition, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max will receive a 48MP telephoto lens, giving them the ability to zoom in dramatically farther than the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max’s 12MP telephoto lens. The higher-tier models will also run on the A19 Pro chip, have 12GB of RAM, and a faster refresh rate for its display.

The estimated release date for the iPhone 17 is around September of next year, but this is based on the limited information we have and Apple’s history of launches. The phone isn’t “confirmed,” but we all know it’s coming. That said, this early in the development process, things could change significantly before release.

The iPhone 16 is a powerhouse of a device, especially with Apple Intelligence on the way. The iPhone 17 is likely to be even better as the team refines how to integrate Intelligence into your day-to-day phone use.