Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has notified Chinese chip design companies that it will suspend production of their most advanced artificial intelligence chips, as Washington continues to impede Beijing’s AI ambitions.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers or smaller as of this coming Monday, three people familiar with the matter said.

Two of the people said any future supplies of such semiconductors by TSMC to Chinese customers would be subject to an approval process likely to involve Washington.

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Alphabet’s profit jumped 34 percent in the third quarter as the parent company of search giant Google reported strong growth in its cloud business amid robust demand for computing and data services used to train and run generative artificial intelligence models.

The solid results released on Tuesday helped alleviate investors’ fears about the financial returns on the vast sums being spent on AI by Alphabet and other Big Tech peers as they seek to dominate the nascent sector. The standout unit was Google Cloud, where revenue increased 35 percent to $11.4 billion and operating profit increased sevenfold to $1.9 billion from $266 million in the same period last year.

Net income was $26.3 billion compared with $19.7 billion in the same period a year earlier, exceeding analysts’ expectations for $22.8 billion. Revenue rose 15 percent to $88.3 billion in the three months through to the end of September, beating the average estimate for $86.3 billion.

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A man who used artificial intelligence technology to create child sexual abuse imagery was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday, in a landmark prosecution over deepfakes in the UK.

Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, pleaded guilty to a total of 16 child sexual abuse offenses, including transforming everyday photographs of real children into sexual abuse material using AI tools from US software provider Daz 3D. He also admitted encouraging others to commit sexual offenses on children.

At Bolton Crown Court, Judge Martin Walsh imposed an extended sentence on Nelson, saying he posed a “significant risk” of causing harm to the public. That means Nelson will not be eligible for parole until he has completed two-thirds of his sentence.

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As Boeing’s latest chief executive, Kelly Ortberg’s job was never going to be easy. On Wednesday, it got harder still.

That morning, Ortberg had faced investors for the first time, telling them that ending a debilitating strike by Boeing’s largest union was the first step to stabilizing the plane maker’s business.

But as the day wore on, it became clear that nearly two-thirds of the union members who voted on the company’s latest contract offer had rejected it. The six-week strike goes on, costing Boeing an estimated $50 million a day, pushing back the day it can resume production of most aircraft and further stressing its supply chain.

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