FTC drops administrative challenge against Microsoft-Activision deal

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has dropped its administrative challenge that aimed to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The FTC tried to stop the USD 68.7 billion deal in two ways: by filing this case last December before its own administrative judge, who was supposed to hear it on August 2, and by seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction from a US federal court. However, a US federal judge denied the injunction request earlier this month, while an appeals court also refused its request to put an emergency hold on the acquisition. The FTC is still appealing the preliminary injunction denial.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have not finalized the deal yet. They have extended their deadline until October 18. The FTC could still re-file its administrative case, while Microsoft continues to face scrutiny from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. However, Xbox head Phil Spencer supposedly told employees he is optimistic that the deal will go through soon.

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Microsoft introduces Bing Chat Enterprise, a secure AI chatbot for work

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Microsoft has launched Bing Chat Enterprise, a secure AI chatbot for work. Unlike other chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Bard, this version of Bing Chat does not save or use your chat data to train its models. This prevents the leakage of trade secrets or sensitive information, which has happened to some Samsung workers who used ChatGPT. Bing Chat Enterprise promises a safe and powerful tool that can help you with various tasks, such as summarizing text, generating code, and brainstorming ideas. 

The company also announced the pricing for Copilot, its AI-powered assistant that works across its Office apps and Teams. Copilot can help you with creating presentations, summarizing meetings, managing your inbox, and more. We've written about that here.

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Instagram adds new features to Reels templates for more customization and discovery

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Instagram is rolling out new features for Reels. Meta is rolling out templates, allowing users to create their own videos based on others' formats. The Reels templates allow users to fill in a predefined formats with their photos and videos. For instance, a template could consist of five clips, each 0.7 seconds long, with a specific song playing in the background. 

This makes it easy for users to join viral trends without spending much time editing. But it also means more content will look quite similar, with only minor variations.

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Microsoft and Activision Blizzard extend deadline for mega video-game deal

Activision Blizzard and Microsoft extended their deadline for the largest video-game deal ever, as they face regulatory challenges in the UK and the US. The USD 69 billion deal would unite the Xbox maker with the Call of Duty publisher, creating a dominant force in the market. Microsoft also agreed to pay more to Activision if the deal falls through after certain dates (from USD 3 billion to USD 3.5 billion after August 29 and USD 4.5 billion after September 15). The companies are confident about completing the deal and expanding their gaming offerings.

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