Anthropic is back in talks with the DoD, tech companies agree to not ruin your electric bill, and Apple Music can now flag AI content, but only if distributors elect to label it

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Anthropic is reportedly back in talks with the Defense Department.

Big Tech companies agree to not ruin your electric bill with AI data centers.

And Apple Music can now flag AI content, but only if distributors elect to label it.

It's Thursday, March 5th, and here's a quick look at Tech News this morning from Engaget.

Anthropic is reportedly trying to reach a new deal with the US Defense Department, which

could prevent the government from labeling it a supply chain risk.

According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadeh, has resumed

talks with the agency over the use of its AI models.

In particular, the publications say that Amadeh is having discussions with email Michael,

the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

The two of them were trying to work out the contract over the use of Anthropics models

before negotiations broke down, and the government soured on the company.

Now the Times reported that they could not agree on language that the AI company wanted

to see to ensure that its technology will not be used for mass surveillance.

In a memo sent to Anthropic staff, Amadeh reportedly said that the Department offered to accept

the company's terms if it deleted a specific phrase about analysis of both acquired data.

He continued that it was the single line in the contract that exactly matched the scenario

it was most worried about.

Anthropic, which first signed a $200 million deal with the Department back in 2025, refused

to comply with the Pentagon's demands.

The agency then threatened to cancel its existing contract and to label it a supply chain

risk, a designation typically reserved for Chinese companies.

The Trump-ordered government agencies to stop using Anthropics technology afterward,

but there's a six-month phase out period that reportedly allowed the government to use

Anthropics AI tools to stage an air attack on Iran.

Now Amadeh also said in the memo that the messaging that OpenAI has been trying to convey

is just straight up lies.

He hinted as well that one of the reasons his company is now on the outs with the government

is because he has not given dictator-style praise to Trump, like OpenAI's Sam Altman has.

OpenAI announced that it reached an agreement shortly after it came out that Anthropic

was having issues with the agency.

Its CEO, Sam Altman, said on Twitter that he told the government Anthropic should not

be designated as a supply chain risk.

He said during an Ask Me Anything on the social media website that he did not know the details

of Anthropics contract, but if it had been the same one with the one OpenAI had signed,

he thought Anthropics should have agreed to it.

Altman later posted that OpenAI will amend its deal with language that explicitly prohibits

the use of its AI system on mass surveillance against Americans.

And when it comes to the military use of its technology, though, CNBC says that Altman

told staffers that the company does not get to make operational decisions in an all-hands

meeting, Altman reportedly told his employees, so maybe you think the Iran strike was good,

and the Venezuela invasion was bad.

You don't get to weigh in on that.

The White House announced that several major players in tech and AI have agreed to steps

that will keep electricity costs from rising due to data centers.

Under this rate-payer protection pledge, companies are agreeing to practices that are

intended to protect residents from seeing higher electricity costs as more and more businesses

create power-hungry data centers.

Amazon Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and XAI have all apparently signed on.

A few of the participants, Amazon Google and Meta, had conveniently timed press releases,

patting themselves on the back for their participation, and touting whatever other policies they have

for mitigating the negative impacts of data center construction.

The main provisions of the federal pledge have tech companies agreeing to build, bring

or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their new energy demands,

paying the full cost of those resources.

It also claims they will pay for any needed power infrastructure upgrades and operate

under separate rate structures for power that will see payments made whether or not

the business uses that electricity.

The pledge does not appear to be any form of binding agreement, and there is no discussion

of enforcement or a penalty for companies that do not honor the stipulated provisions.

It also doesn't address any of the other impacts, data centers, and AI development might

be having, either on local communities, on other utilities and resources, or on access

to critical computing elements like RAM.

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While music streaming apps like Bandcamp, Spotify, and Deezer have taken steps to inform

its users about AI-generated content, we have not heard much out of Apple music in that

regard.

However, Apple music has now introduced transparency tags designed to show listeners if any elements

were generated in whole or part by artificial intelligence.

The catch is that Apple is leaving it up to labels and distributors to create those

tags.

That's according to an Apple newsletter to industry partners seen by music business

worldwide.

Streaming platforms already use metadata tags for things like song and album titles,

genre and the name of the artist.

The new tags will now identify any artwork, tracks, compositions, and music videos, create

it in whole or in part by AI.

However, Apple's new system requires labels and distributors to opt in and manually flag

their use of AI, a system that is similar to what Spotify is doing.

On top of that, Apple has no apparent enforcement mechanism for AI content.

Now by contrast, other music platforms including Deezer and Bandcamp are using in-house AI detection

tools to flag content whether the distributor opts in or not.

Now, here's an interesting thing.

Deezer disclosed in January that it receives over 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks every

day.

That is double the number it saw just four months earlier.

Deezer said that synthetic content, also called AI Slop, has accounted for 13.4 million

tracks on its platform.

Thanks for listening, there's more tech news at Engaget.com, this episode featured journalism

from Mary Elamune, Anna Waschenko, and Steve Deat.

Enjoy your day, I'll be back tomorrow with more tech news from Engaget.

Thanks for listening, I'll be back tomorrow with more tech news, I'll be back tomorrow with more tech news from Engaget.com.