By Katie Paul

MENLO PARK, California (Reuters) – Meta Platforms used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train its new Meta AI virtual assistant, but excluded private posts shared only with family and friends in an effort to respect consumers’ privacy, the company’s top policy executive told Reuters in an interview.

Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to filter private details from public datasets used for training, said Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, speaking on the sidelines of the company’s annual Connect conference this week.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, adding that the “vast majority” of the data used by Meta for training was publicly available.

He cited LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content Meta deliberately chose not to use because of privacy concerns.

Clegg’s comments come as tech companies including Meta, OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google have been criticized for using information scraped from the internet without permission to train their AI models, which ingest massive amounts of data in order to summarize information and generate imagery.

The companies are weighing how to handle the private or copyrighted materials vacuumed up in that process that their AI systems may reproduce, while facing lawsuits from authors accusing them of infringing copyrights.

Meta AI was the most significant product among the company’s first consumer-facing AI tools unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday at Meta’s annual products conference, Connect. This year’s event was dominated by talk of artificial intelligence, unlike past conferences which focused on augmented and virtual reality.

Meta made the assistant using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model that the company released for public commercial use in July, the company said.

It will be able to generate text, audio and imagery and will have access to real-time information via a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The public Facebook and Instagram posts that were used to train Meta AI included both text and photos, Clegg said.

He said Meta also imposed safety restrictions on what content the tool could generate, like a ban on the creation of photo-realistic images of public figures.

On copyrighted materials, Clegg said he was expecting a “fair amount of litigation” over the matter of “whether creative content is covered or not by existing fair use doctrine,” which permits the limited use of protected works for purposes such as commentary, research and parody.

“We think it is, but I strongly suspect that’s going to play out in litigation,” Clegg said.

Some companies with image-generation tools facilitate the reproduction of iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, while others have paid for the materials or deliberately avoided including them in training data.

OpenAI, for instance, signed a six-year deal with content provider Shutterstock this summer to use the company’s image, video and music libraries for training.

Asked whether Meta had taken any such steps to avoid the reproduction of copyrighted imagery, a Meta spokesperson pointed to new terms of service barring users from generating content that violates privacy and intellectual property rights.

(Reporting by Katie Paul in Menlo Park, California; Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis)

(Reuters) -Baltimore police have arrested a suspect in the killing of Pava LaPere, a 26-year-old tech executive, ending a two-day manhunt after investigators tracked him down using evidence from a previous crime, authorities said.

Jason Billingsley, 32, of Baltimore, was taken into custody at a train station in Bowie, Maryland, about 30 miles (48 km) south of downtown Baltimore, late on Wednesday, Baltimore acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said at a news conference on Thursday.

“We were able to capture this violent criminal without incident,” Worley said.

Local and federal authorities began searching for a suspect early on Monday when LaPere was found dead of blunt force trauma in an apartment complex in Baltimore. On Tuesday, police issued an arrest warrant for Billingsley.

“We do know that there was no forced entry into her apartment building,” Worley said. “We don’t know if there are any connections previously to LaPere or Billingsley.”

Investigators identified Billingsley as a suspect by using evidence from a previous attempted murder, arson and rape incident on Sept. 19. Billingsley was a suspect in that incident after he was identified by witnesses and video surveillance, Worley said.

Investigators were able to track Billingsley’s whereabouts and home in on him by using his cell phone and financial records, Worley said.

The arrest came hours after EcoMap Technologies, the company that LaPere cofounded, held a vigil in her honor at Baltimore’s Washington Monument.

“Pava’s visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to fostering inclusivity, amplifying ecosystems, and fortifying Baltimore’s tech community set her apart as an exceptional leader,” EcoMap said in a statement.

LaPere was celebrated on social media and in local news reports for her entrepreneurial success, which landed her a spot on the 2023 Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, and for promoting racial diversity and an inclusive workplace culture at EcoMap Technologies, where she served as CEO.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler)

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors on Thursday announced criminal insider trading charges against a former Goldman Sachs and Blackstone analyst and two friends over an alleged scheme to trade on nonpublic information about planned mergers and strategic partnerships.

Authorities said former analyst Anthony Viggiano, 26, of Baldwin, New York, passed tips on at least eight transactions between 2021 and 2023 to Christopher Salamone, 35, a construction sales representative he has known for two decades and who grew up on the same block.

Viggiano also allegedly tipped his college friend Stephen Forlano, 27, who tipped others including his college friend Nathan Bleckley, 26, a U.S. Army captain.

Subsequent trades generated more than $580,000 of illegal profit, including $322,000 for Salamone, according to court papers.

The Department of Justice said that Salamone, of Long Beach, New York, pleaded guilty to three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy, and is cooperating with its probe.

Viggiano faces nine securities fraud and conspiracy charges, while Forlano, of Tampa, Florida, faces four.

All four men also face related civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bleckley lives in Altus, Oklahoma.

The eight transactions included American International Group’s sale of part of its life and retirement unit to Blackstone, and private equity firm Advent International’s agreement to buy satellite operator Maxar Technologies for about $6.4 billion including debt. Goldman advised Advent.

According to the SEC, Viggiano and Salamone invested in four other defense companies as a “smokescreen” when they bought Maxar securities, so they could say they were buying defense stocks “in anticipation of a possible World War III.”

Viggiano “betrayed the trust of his employers,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan said in a statement.

Steven Brill, a lawyer for Viggiano, declined to comment.

Forlano’s lawyer Michael Bachner said his client denied wrongdoing and would contest the charges vigorously.

Bleckley’s lawyer Todd Spodek said his client, “a dedicated member of the armed forces, places a high priority on doing what’s right. We eagerly anticipate closing this chapter of his life.”

Salamone’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

Viggiano worked at Blackstone for about seven months, and at Goldman for more than a year before terminating him.

In separate statements, Blackstone and Goldman said they were cooperating with authorities and had “zero tolerance” for the alleged misconduct, saying it violated their business standards. Blackstone added that Viggiano had a “non-investment” role at the firm.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Rami Ayyub and Leslie Adler)

LONDON (Reuters) -British-Irish actor Michael Gambon, best known to global audiences for playing the wise professor Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” movie franchise and whose career was launched by his mentor Laurence Olivier, died aged 82 on Thursday.

He died peacefully in hospital, PA Media reported citing a family statement.

Gambon began his acting on the stage in the early 1960s and later moved into TV and film. Notable film roles include a psychotic mob leader in Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” in 1989 and the elderly King George V in Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” in 2010.

But his best-known role was as Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” franchise, a role he took over from the third instalment in the eight-movie series after he replaced the late Richard Harris in 2004. Gambon played down the praise for his performance and said he simply played himself “with a stuck-on beard and a long robe”.

Michael John Gambon was born on Oct. 19, 1940, in Dublin to a seamstress mother and an engineer father. The family moved to Camden Town in London when Gambon was six as his father sought work in the city’s post-war rebuilding.

Gambon left school aged 15 to begin an engineering apprenticeship and by 21 he was fully qualified. However, he was also a member of an amateur theatre group and always knew he would act, he told The Herald newspaper in 2004. He was inspired by American actors Marlon Brando and James Dean, who he believed reflected the angst of teenage boys.

In 1962 he auditioned for the great Shakespearean actor Olivier who made him one of the founding members of the National Theatre at the Old Vic, alongside other young emerging greats that included Derek Jacobi and Maggie Smith.

Gambon built his reputation on the stage over the following years, making his name in particular with his 1980 portrayal of Galileo in John Dexter’s “Life of Galileo”.

The 1980s brought wider attention with the lead role in 1986 TV show “The Singing Detective”, in which he played a writer suffering from a debilitating skin condition whose imagination provided the only escape from his pain. The performance won him one of his four BAFTAs.

He also won three Olivier Awards and two ensemble cast Screen Actors Guild Awards – for 2001’s “Gosford Park” and “The King’s Speech”.

Gambon was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1992 and knighted for services to drama in 1998, something he called “a nice little present”, although he did not use the title.

A mischievous personality, he often made up stories. For years he showed fellow actors a signed photograph of Robert De Niro which he had in fact inscribed himself before ever meeting the American actor.

He revealed in an episode of “The Late Late Show” in Ireland that he convinced his mother he was friends with the pope. 

Gambon retired from the stage in 2015 after suffering long-term memory problems but continued to act onscreen until 2019. He told an interviewer in 2002 that his work made him feel “the luckiest man in the world”.

Gambon married Anne Miller in 1962, and the couple had a son. While they never divorced, in later years he also had another partner, set designer Philippa Hart, 25 years his junior, with whom he had two children.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by William Schomberg and Rosalba O’Brien)

By Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) -Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura on Thursday defended the utility’s decision not to de-energize power lines before high winds precipitated a deadly wildfire that killed at least 115 people and razed the historic town of Lahaina.

Kimura said before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee that a pre-emptive shutdown of power lines was not part of the utility’s protocol, even as Hawaiian Electric was bracing for high winds of more than 60 miles (96.56 km) per hour.

Along with Kimura, the committee also summoned officials of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission and Hawaii State Energy Office to testify at a hearing investigating the causes of the wildfire.

“Tell us and the American people, why you didn’t de-energize?” asked U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Virginia Republican who chairs the subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

“We had other protocols in place,” Kimura responded.

She explained that the long-held protocol relied on the closure of problem electrical circuits and not re-energizing them. The utility studied pre-emptive shutdowns of power, but Kimura said such a protocol “was not an appropriate fit for Hawaii.”

An early morning fire started on Aug. 8 when power lines fell to the ground from high winds. The fire was contained and then extinguished several hours later, Kimura said.

Power lines were de-energized after the morning fire, but a second fire later in the day, whose cause has not been determined, swept through the historic town of Lahaina.

Hawaiian Electric is facing lawsuits and proposed class actions filed by Maui residents and the county, and has been sued by its investors, all largely claiming that the utility was responsible as a result of negligent mismanagement of its electrical equipment.

The stock of the utility’s parent company, Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc, has dropped nearly 70% since the deadly fire.

(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Richard Chang)

By David Morgan and Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Democratic-led U.S. Senate forged ahead on Thursday with a bipartisan stopgap funding bill aimed at averting a fourth partial government shutdown in a decade, while the House prepared to vote on partisan Republican spending bills with no chance of becoming law.

The divergent paths of the two chambers appeared to increase the odds that federal agencies will run out of money on Sunday, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and halting a wide range of services from economic data releases to nutrition benefits.

The Senate voted 76-22 to open debate on a stopgap bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, which would extend federal spending until Nov. 17, and authorize roughly $6 billion each for domestic disaster response funding and aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.

The Senate measure has already been rejected by Republicans who control the House of Representatives.

The House planned late-night votes on four partisan appropriations bills that would not alone prevent a shutdown, even if they could overcome strong opposition from Democrats and become law.

House Republicans, led by a small faction of hardline conservatives in the chamber they control by a 221-212 margin, have rejected spending levels for fiscal year 2024 set in a deal Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with Biden in May.

The agreement included $1.59 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2024. House Republicans are demanding another $120 billion in cuts, plus tougher legislation that would stop the flow of immigrants at the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

The funding fight focuses on a relatively small slice of the $6.4 trillion U.S. budget for this fiscal year. Lawmakers are not considering cuts to popular benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

McCarthy is facing intense pressure from his caucus to achieve their goals. Several hardliners have threatened to oust him from his leadership role if he passes a spending bill that requires any Democratic votes to pass.

Former President Donald Trump has taken to social media to push his congressional allies toward a shutdown.

McCarthy, for his part, suggested on Thursday that a shutdown could be avoided if Senate Democrats agreed to address border issues in their stopgap measure.

“I talked this morning to some Democratic senators over there that are more aligned with what we want to do. They want to do something about the border,” McCarthy told reporters in the U.S. Capitol.

“We’re trying to work to see, could we put some border provisions in that current Senate bill that would actually make things a lot better,” he said.

‘ONE OPTION TO AVOID A SHUTDOWN’

The Senate measure has passed two procedural hurdles this week with strong bipartisan support.

“Congress has only one option – one option – to avoid a shutdown: bipartisanship,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday. “With bipartisanship, we can responsibly fund the government and avoid the sharp and unnecessary pain for the American people and the economy that a shutdown will bring.”

Without a bipartisan agreement between senators to expedite its parliamentary process, the Senate is unlikely to act on its stopgap measure until after the government shuts down.

Credit agencies have warned that brinkmanship and political polarization are harming the U.S. financial outlook. Moody’s, the last major ratings agency to rate the U.S. government “Aaa” with a stable outlook, said on Monday that a shutdown would harm the country’s credit rating.

Fitch, another major ratings agency, already downgraded the U.S. government to “AA+” after Congress flirted with defaulting on the nation’s debt earlier this year.

Most of Congress – including many Senate Republicans – has largely rejected House Republicans’ attempts to make the situation at the border with Mexico the focus of the shutdown.

“We can take the standard approach and fund the government for six weeks at the current rate of operations, or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday.

The House is expected to vote on Friday on its own short-term funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR. Its success could depend on whether House Republicans can pass fiscal 2024 spending bills for homeland security, defense, agriculture, and State Department and foreign operations in a voting session expected to end after midnight on Thursday.

Three of the bills – defense, foreign operations and agriculture – are opposed by some Republicans, lawmakers said.

The House CR is expected to include conservative Republican border restrictions that will not pass the Senate, meaning the risk of a shutdown remains high.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton and David Morgan, additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Jeff Mason; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)

(Corrects paragraph 10 to say front month Brent futures were trading at a $2.28 premium over the second month, not 42.28)

By Arathy Somasekhar

HOUSTON (Reuters) -Oil prices surged 3% on Wednesday to the highest settlement in 2023, after a steep drop in U.S. crude stocks compounded worries of tight global supplies.

Brent crude futures closed up $2.59, or 2.8%, at $96.55. It breached $97 a barrel during the session.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) climbed $3.29, or 3.6%, to $93.68. The session high was over $94.

U.S. crude stocks fell by 2.2 million barrels last week to 416.3 million barrels, government data showed, far exceeding the 320,000-barrel drop analysts expected in a Reuters poll.

Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub, delivery point for U.S. crude futures, fell by 943,000 barrels in the week to just under 22 million barrels, the lowest since July 2022, data showed.

“The market is being led up by storage numbers as we are getting to the minimum operational inventories at Cushing,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

Stockpiles at Cushing have been falling closer to historic low levels due to strong refining and export demand, prompting concerns about quality of the remaining oil at the hub and whether it will fall below minimum operating levels.

Prices fell last week but were rallying again as markets worried about tight supplies heading into winter, following production cuts of 1.3 million barrels a day to the end of the year by Saudi Arabia and Russia of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies known as OPEC+.

“Until a decision to raise production is made, the global energy market will remain tight,” Ole Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy at Saxo Bank, said.

The tight supply was reflected in time spreads with front month Brent futures trading at a $2.28 premium over the second month, its highest since October, while on WTI futures, the front month traded at a $2.43 premium to the second month, the highest since July 2022.

WTI’s discount to Brent also hit its narrowest since late April.

“The market is overbought and a correction is definitely needed,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.

Potentially adding to supply tightness, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to ensure retail fuel prices stabilise after a jump caused by an increase in exports.

In response, his deputy prime minister cited proposals to restrict exports of oil products purchased for domestic use.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released a survey showing oil and gas activity in three key energy producing U.S. states has been rising with the latest jump in energy prices.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten in London, Arathy Somasekhar in Houston and Emily Chow in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Barbara Lewis and David Gregorio)

(Reuters) -U.S. government services would be disrupted and hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be furloughed without pay if Congress fails to provide funding for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. Workers deemed essential would remain on the job, but without pay.

Many government agencies have not updated shutdown plans they have prepared in the past. Here is a guide to what would stay open and what would shut down:

MILITARY

The 2 million U.S. military personnel would remain at their posts, but roughly half of the Pentagon’s 800,000 civilian employees would be furloughed.

Contracts awarded before the shutdown would continue, and the Pentagon could place new orders for supplies or services needed to protect national security. Other new contracts, including renewals or extensions, would not be awarded. Payments to defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, could be delayed.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration would continue maintaining nuclear weapons.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Agents at the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other federal law enforcement agencies would remain on the job, and prison staffers would continue to work.

Criminal prosecutions, including the two federal cases against former President Donald Trump, would continue. Most civil litigation would be postponed. It is unclear whether the government’s landmark Google antitrust lawsuit would be disrupted, though other antitrust cases have continued through past shutdowns.

Most Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents would continue to work, as would most customs officers. The Secret Service and the Coast Guard would also continue operations, and most employees would continue to work.

Most of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer-protection workers would be furloughed, as would half of its antitrust employees.

FEDERAL COURTS

Federal courts have enough money to stay open until at least Oct. 13. Activities might be scaled back after that point. The Supreme Court would stay open as well.

CONGRESS

Lawmakers continue to collect paychecks, even as other federal workers do not. Staffers do not get paid, though those deemed essential would be required to work.

TRANSPORTATION

Airport security screeners and air-traffic control workers would be required to work, according to recent contingency plans, though absenteeism could be a problem. Some airports had to suspend operations during a shutdown in 2019 when traffic controllers called in sick.

Training for new air-traffic controllers would stop, which Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has warned could worsen a shortage of qualified workers.

Some major infrastructure projects could face delays as environmental reviews and permitting would be disrupted, according to the White House.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

U.S. embassies and consulates would remain open. Passport and visa processing would continue as long as there were sufficient fees to cover operations. Nonessential official travel, speeches and other events would be curtailed.

Some foreign aid programs could run out of money as well.

NATIONAL PARKS AND NATURAL RESOURCES

It’s not clear how national parks, national monuments and other sites would be affected. Many remained open during a 2018-2019 shutdown, through restrooms and information desks were closed and waste disposal was halted. They were closed during a 2013 shutdown.

Wildfire fighting efforts would continue, according to the Agriculture Department’s 2020 contingency plan, though timber sales on national forest lands would be curtailed and fewer recreation permits would be issued.

MUSEUMS

The Smithsonian museums that line the National Mall would close, as would the National Zoo. That would bring a premature end to the Zoo’s farewell celebration for its three giant pandas, which are due to return to China.

SCIENCE

Scientific research would be disrupted as agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would furlough most of their workers, according to recent contingency plans.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would continue to support the International Space Station and track satellites, but 17,000 of its 18,300 employees would be furloughed.

Weather forecasts and fisheries regulation would continue, as would patent and trademark reviews. Tests of new drugs and medical devices would continue.

HEALTH

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, though other public health activities could suffer as more than half of the agency’s workers would be furloughed.

The National Institutes of Health would furlough most of its staff and delay new clinical trials for medical treatments.

Healthcare services for military veterans and Native Americans would continue.

Most inspections of hazardous waste sites and drinking water and chemical facilities would stop.

Food-safety inspections by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be delayed.

FINANCIAL REGULATION

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would furlough roughly 90% of its 4,600 employees and suspend most activities, leaving only a skeleton staff to respond to emergencies.

Likewise, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would furlough almost all of its employees and cease oversight, enforcement and regulation, according to its 2021 plan.

The Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency would continue as normal, as they are funded by industry fees rather than congressional appropriations.

ECONOMIC DATA

The publication of major U.S. economic data, including employment and inflation reports of critical importance to policymakers and investors, would be suspended, according to the Biden administration.

SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE AND OTHER BENEFITS

The Social Security Administration would continue to issue retirement and disability benefits, and payments would continue under the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs.

Military veterans’ benefits would also continue, according to a 2021 contingency plan.

Nutrition benefits provided to 7 million mothers through the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program would be cut within days, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would go out as normal for October, but could be affected after that, he said.

TAX COLLECTION

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would operate as normal, and all 83,000 employees would continue to be paid because the agency’s funding would not expire.

DISASTER RESPONSE

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would be at risk of running out of funds for disaster relief and long-term recovery projects.

EDUCATION

Pell Grants and student loans would continue to be paid, but could be disrupted as most Education Department employees would be furloughed, according to the agency’s 2021 plan.

A protracted shutdown could “severely curtail” aid to schools, universities and other educational institutions, the department says. It also could delay funds that are due to be awarded later in the year.

WATERWAYS

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would continue to operate locks, dams and flood control facilities. Most employees would not be furloughed.

CHILD CARE

According to the White House, 10,000 children from low-income families would lose access to the Head Start preschool program.

SMALL BUSINESS SUPPORT

The Small Business Administration would not be able to issue any new loans, though loans for businesses hurt by natural disasters would continue.

AGRICULTURE

Meat and egg inspections would continue, but some lab services would be disrupted, making it harder to fight animal diseases. Crop insurance would not be affected, but some loan programs would be. Research, conservation and rural development programs would be shut down.

LABOR

Workplace safety inspections would be limited, and investigations into unfair pay practices would be suspended, according to the White House.

The ability of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to mediate labor disputes would be curtailed because almost all of its 1,200 employees would be furloughed, according to a 2022 plan.

HOUSING

Monthly subsidies for public housing and low-income housing aid would be at risk. The Federal Housing Administration would continue to back insured mortgages, and Ginnie Mae would continue to back the secondary mortgage market. New homebuyers in rural areas would not be able to get loans from the Agriculture Department.

WHITE HOUSE

In the 2018-2019 shutdown, the White House furloughed 1,100 of 1,800 staff in the Executive Office of the President. Some offices, such as the National Security Council, continued at full strength, while others like the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were scaled back sharply.

White House furloughs could make it harder to comply with the impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, by Republicans in the House of Representatives.

The U.S. Constitution specifies that the president continues to get paid.

MAIL DELIVERY

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) would be unaffected, as it does not depend on Congress for funding.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan, Pete Schroeder, Howard Schneider, Moira Warburton, Nate Raymond, Makini Brice, Steve Holland, Julia Harte, Diane Bartz, Andrew Chung and Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis)

By Katie Paul and Anna Tong

MENLO PARK, California (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday rolled out new AI products for consumers, including bots that create photo-realistic images and smart glasses that answer questions, as well as an updated virtual-reality headset.

Zuckerberg described the products as bringing together virtual and real worlds, and underscored that part of what Meta offered was low cost or free AI that could integrate into daily routine. Meta’s Quest is the bestseller in the nascent VR space and the company’s executives described it as the best value in the industry, a nod to the impending release of a much more expensive headset from Apple.

Speaking from a central courtyard on Meta’s sprawling Silicon Valley campus, Zuckerberg said a new generation of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses would start shipping on Oct. 17, priced at $299. The device will incorporate a new Meta AI assistant and be capable of livestreaming broadcasts of what a user is seeing directly to Facebook and Instagram, an advancement over the previous generation’s ability to snap photos.

Zuckerberg spoke at the Meta Connect conference, the social media company’s biggest event of the year as well as its first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic.

He also said the latest Quest mixed-reality headset would start shipping on Oct. 10 and introduced the company’s first consumer-facing generative AI products. The latter includes a chatbot called Meta AI that can generate both text responses and photo-realistic images.

“Sometimes we innovate by releasing something that’s never been seen before,” Zuckerberg said. “But sometimes we innovate by taking something that is awesome, but super expensive, and making it so it can be affordable for everyone or even free.”

Meta AI will be built in to the smart glasses as an assistant, starting with a beta rollout in the United States. A software update planned for next year will give the assistant the ability to identify places and objects that people are seeing, as well as to perform language translation.

Meta made Meta AI using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model that the company released for public commercial use in July. The chatbot will have access to real-time information via a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Zuckerberg said.

In an interview with Reuters, Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg said the company had taken steps to filter private details from the data used to train the model and also imposed restrictions on what the tool could generate, like a ban on the creation of realistic images of public figures.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, citing LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content was deliberately not used.

CUSTOM AI BOTS

Meta also announced that it was building a platform that developers and ordinary people alike may use to create custom AI bots of their own, which will have profiles on Instagram and Facebook and eventually appear as avatars in the metaverse.

To demonstrate the tool’s capabilities, Meta created a set of 28 chatbots with different personalities styled in the voices of celebrities like Charli D’Amelio, Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady, according to a company blog post.

The features appeared to be aimed at sprucing up existing apps and devices rather than developing new ad surfaces or other sources of revenue.

“I don’t see monetization of AI products happening for Meta for quite some time and I think it will end up being more indirect. They seem much more interested in helping develop a platform that other developers will use,” said Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.

Zuckerberg also said on Wednesday that Xbox cloud gaming is coming to Quest in December.

Meta first announced the Quest 3 headset over the summer, around the time Apple debuted its Vision Pro headset, a high-end product with a price of $3,500.

Starting at $500, the Quest 3 boasts the same mixed-reality technology that premiered in Meta’s more expensive Quest Pro device launched last year, which shows wearers a video feed of the real world around them.

The day’s announcements reflect how Zuckerberg plans to navigate the shift this year of investor fervor to artificial intelligence from augmented and virtual reality technologies.

Stakes for the event were high as investors last year slammed the parent company of Facebook and Instagram for spending extensively on the metaverse, prompting Zuckerberg to lay off tens of thousands of staff to continue funding his vision.

Developers were watching to assess what apps they might create for Meta’s latest hardware devices. Investors, meanwhile, looked for signs of whether a gamble that has lost the company more than $40 billion since 2021 may pay off.

(Reporting by Katie Paul and Anna Tong in Menlo Park, California; Additional reporting by Yuvraj Malik, Pushkala Aripaka and Shashwat Awashti in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Li, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)

By Douglas Gillison

(Reuters) -A looming government shutdown would reduce U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staffing to “skeletal” levels, stopping it from approving companies’ Wall Street debuts and hindering its ability to respond to any market turmoil, its chair told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed and a wide range of services will be suspended if Congress fails to pass funding legislation that Democratic President Joe Biden can sign into law by midnight on Saturday (0400 GMT Sunday).

When questioning SEC Chair Gary Gensler during an oversight hearing on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers on the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, who are in the minority, sought to highlight the dysfunction they said would follow a shutdown.

Gensler said the agency would lose more than 90% of its workforce to unpaid furloughs, leaving a “skeletal” staff to perform essential functions, which include monitoring U.S. markets, according to the agency’s contingency plan.

Other everyday functions, such as writing rules or approving companies’ initial public offerings (IPOs), would be frozen.

“If a company were deciding to go public or raise offerings, they’d want to go effective before Friday if they’re ready to,” Gensler said. “If not, they might be in a sort of subliminal state where they can’t access the markets because we can’t effectively review those.”

A recent batch of high profile IPOs, including chip-designer ARM, grocery delivery company Instacart and marketing automation firm Klaviyo, had raised hopes of an IPO resurgence after a two-year lull due to market volatility and rising Federal Reserve interest rates. But the lackluster performance of those offerings has since raised doubts over whether that revival would materialize.

Notable IPOs in the pipeline include healthcare payments tech firm Waystar, KKR-backed BrightSpring Health Services. German premium footwear maker Birkenstock Holding will proceed with plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), believing it can obtain approval even if a shutdown occurs, sources told Reuters.

Spokespeople for Birkenstock, NYSE and Nasdaq, the country’s other listing venue, declined to comment. Spokespeople for Waystar and BrightSpring did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to the SEC’S contingency plan, only about 440 of its 4,600 employees would remain on hand to perform essential functions, but investigations and responses to whistleblower complaints would mostly grind to a halt.

Legally permitted functions include actions to protect life or property, such as certain law enforcement measures and litigation, including temporary restraining orders and maintaining a portal for whistleblower complaints.

The agency will also monitor market technology operations, keep an eye on broker-dealers that may fall into distress, and perform money market fund surveillance and monitoring.

But Gensler acknowledged that should a major disruption occur on Wall Street, “senior leadership would be there but again we’d be down to a skeletal staff.”

Separately, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an industry-financed brokerage oversight body, said Wednesday it would continue to operate in the event of a shutdown, including market surveillance and enforcement functions.

Major Wall Street indexes were mixed toward the close after paring earlier losses driven by investor concerns about the path of interest rates, with shutdown fears also weighing on earlier trading.

Top Democrat on the House committee Maxine Waters warned on Wednesday that a shutdown threatened U.S. investors, small businesses, and working families.

“(A) shutdown would cripple the SEC’s ability to stop fraud, help businesses raise money, or finalize rules that are critical to investors,” she said.

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington and Lance Tupper and Lewis Krauskopf in New York; additional reporting by Laura Matthews, Anirban Sen and Echo Wang; Editing by Michelle Price, Paul Simao, David Holmes and Alistair Bell and Aurora Ellis)