Apple is reportedly shopping for AI chip companies, you can now grant Claude access to your 1Password credentials, and the Oversight Board said leading AI models may be restricting free expression

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
Apple is reportedly shopping for AI chip companies.
You can now grant Claude access to your 1Password credentials.
And the Oversight Board said leading AI models may be restricting free expression. It's Thursday, July 16th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.
Apple does not tend to spend a ton of money on buying companies, but that might change as it looks to shore up its AI processing power. The company is said to have been in talks with semiconductor makers and bankers about possible acquisitions in order to bolster its servers. According to the information, which first reported the news, Apple has faced performance issues with servers that run on its M2 Ultra chips. Those are used for some AI tasks, though the heavy lifting, such as the Gemini model that's behind Siri AI, is seemingly handled by Nvidia chips on Google Cloud. Apple is said to have tried using its own servers for that purpose, but its infrastructure is evidently insufficient.
Bloomberg reported this week that a server chip based on the M7 Ultra will not be ready until 2029, but noted that Apple will soon upgrade its infrastructure with M5 Ultra chips. Apple reportedly planned to debut a next-gen server chip codenamed Baltra this year, but that timeline appears to have slipped. Last week, Apple struck a deal with Broadcom to buy $30 billion worth of chips that Broadcom makes here in the US. Apple's chip design expertise is primarily in the realm of consumer devices, and so it makes sense that the company would look to bring in more support on the server side. It got into making its own chips in the first place after buying PA Semi for $278 million back in 2008, but Apple does not typically splash much cash on acquisitions. It bought AI startup QAI for almost $2 billion this year. That was its second-largest acquisition after the $3 billion it paid for Beats over a decade ago. Given the importance of chips to AI companies, Apple might have to pay a premium for any acquisitions in that domain in the near future. It has plenty of flexibility if it decides to go down that route, though. As of the end of March, it had $45.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
If you like putting Claude's AI agents to work on personal chores but are concerned about giving them access to your credentials, there's a new solution available. 1Password just announced 1Password for Claude, a new feature on its browser extension that lets Claude use your credentials but blocks your private info from reaching the model, its memory, or Anthropic's systems. Security has emerged as a big issue when using agents to complete tasks on your behalf. Sharing credentials directly with an agent exposes them to the model, its memory, and the systems behind it, which can pose a risk if the model gets hacked. To solve that problem, 1Password built a zero exposure security framework that allows agents to use stored credentials from your 1Password vault without them reaching the model. Access is granted per session, limited to specific approved items and not carried over. Since passwords and one-time MFA codes are injected through a secure channel managed by 1Password, they stay outside the model. At the same time, 1Password allows authenticated multi-site sessions to complete multi-step workflows without prompting the user for credentials at each step. For extra security, 1Password locks down when an AI agent takes control of your browser, limiting access to only the credentials explicitly granted for the current task. Finally, 1Password also scans pages after every autofill to ensure no secrets remain exposed. Along with the Claude integration, 1Password introduced a new agentic mode for all 1Password users that will safeguard credentials against active agents. When it detects one, 1Password locks down, so the agent can only find passwords explicitly granted for the current task. Users will also see that this security feature is active directly in the 1Password browser extension. This will only work with Claude at first, but will expand to other agents as the ecosystem grows. 1Password for Claude is now available to 1Password users on Mac for business, family and individual plans. Getting started requires the 1Password desktop app and browser extensions, plus the Claude desktop app and browser extensions.