EP-87 📉 Cisco’s Workforce Trim & Revenue Rally, Meta’s Drug Ad Dilemma 🚫, California’s Digital Id Rollout 📱

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for friday, august 16! dive into today's top tech stories:

• meta under scrutiny: federal lawmakers send a letter to ceo mark zuckerberg over illicit drug ads on facebook and instagram. despite an ongoing federal investigation, reports from the wall street journal and tech transparency project indicate a surge in such ads. meta acknowledges receipt of the letter and plans to respond.
• cisco's surge: cisco shares jump 7% after beating quarterly results expectations and announcing a 7% workforce reduction. despite a third straight quarter of revenue declines, better-than-expected order numbers, particularly in ai-driven data center and campus switching orders, drive optimism.
• california's ai bill weakened: lawmakers amend sb 1047 to reduce the state’s authority to hold ai developers accountable before catastrophic events. however, it still allows the attorney general to seek injunctive relief and holds developers liable for catastrophic consequences. the bill now moves to the california assembly for a final vote.
• digital ids for californians: california residents will soon be able to store their driver's licenses in apple wallet and google wallet apps. this partnership aims to provide convenient, private, and secure ids for residents to use at select tsa checkpoints and businesses.
• google’s imagen 3: google launches the latest version of its ai text-to-image generator in the u.s., featuring improved detail, richer lighting, and fewer distracting artifacts. available through google’s ai test kitchen and vertex ai platform, the tool includes guardrails to prevent generating inappropriate images, though users find ways around them.

stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!