Friday, May 30, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we dive into the rumors of the upcoming X DM feature called XChat; we learn of an investigation at the White House; and we find that the Department of Energy is pulling money from clean energy projects. Have a great weekend!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: TechCrunch

💬 New DM just dropped: X has started beta-testing XChat, the social media company's new version of direct messaging on the platform. Some rumored features for the new XChat include end-to-end encryption, vanishing messages, file sharing, and more.

🙈 A hack! The White House is investigating the hack of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' phone. Earlier this week, someone gained access to her phone and reached out to her contacts while impersonating her voice using AI.

📨 Please, just fix Search: Yesterday Google announced that its AI assistant Gemini will automatically summarize long emails for Gmail users. U.S. users are opted in to this new feature by default but can shut it off. People love getting AI forced on them!

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Afternoon must-reads

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🛠️ More AI tools: AI search engine Perplexity released Perplexity Labs, a toolkit for subscribers to Perplexity's Pro plan that can craft spreadsheets, reports, dashboards, and more. Sounds like Perplexity isn't just going after Google for its search engine users.

😝 Just kidding! WordPress.com owner Automattic is changing course again. The company announced it will unpause its contributions to the WordPress project. Last month the company released WordPress 6.8 and said it would be the last major release in 2025. That might not be true anymore.

🤕 A headache for Uber: Is ride-sharing patented? It may be. Carma Technology filed a lawsuit that alleges Uber is infringing on five of the company's patents. These patents are related to matching riders with drivers, which sure does sound a lot like ride-sharing.

♻️ Clean energy clawback: The Department of Energy announced that it will be clawing back $3.7 billion of money awarded during the Biden administration for clean energy and manufacturing. The DOE didn't specify why this money was pulled.

🎙️ Dumping DOGE: This episode of Equity dives into Elon Musk's recent announcement that he's stepping away from DOGE — and why. They also dive into why GameStop bought $500 million of Bitcoin, Neuralink's raise, and more.

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Around the web

🥧 Dollars for data: Last month, Brazil rolled out a pilot program that would allow citizens to sell their digital data. While not the first time this idea has been proposed, Brazil could be the first public-private partnership that lets people, not companies, get a slice of the data market.

👀 Surveillance state: A Texas cop searched more than 83,000 Flock safety cameras to track down a woman who had an abortion — including cameras in states where having an abortion is legal. This seems like a great way to override people executing their legal rights.