TechCrunch Top 3

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🚪 Backdoor access: The U.K. government has allegedly asked Apple to build a backdoor that would allow British security officials to access encrypted iCloud storage data from any Apple customer. Apple may stop offering iCloud encryption for U.K. users in response, which could have global repercussions. Read more

⌚️ iAnkle monitor: A new trend has influencers and healthcare workers wearing their Apple Watches on their ankles. Some users are doing it because their wrists are too small to get proper results while others do so because their jobs prevent them from wearing anything on their wrists. Read more

🧠 No ad needed: AI startup Perplexity decided to forgo a Super Bowl ad this year and instead opted for a Super Bowl contest that required people to download the company's app. While this didn't shoot Perplexity's app to the No. 1 spot in the App Store, it increased app downloads by 50%. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

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🕳️ Patching a hole: Apple released updates today for iOS and iPadOS that fixes a flaw that may have been exploited in an "extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals." Ominous! Read more

☝️ Keep it simple: At the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris today, 60 European companies ranging from AI startups to legacy companies signed an initiative calling on the European Union to implement less restrictive guidelines around AI and data regulation. Read more

🇫🇷 Mistral is having a moment: French AI startup Mistral seems to be experiencing some positive tailwinds. While Mistral has fallen behind its peers in the global AI race, Romain Dillet thinks the company is now getting down to business. Read more

🚐 A van for all: EV company Rivian is opening up its commercial vans to any U.S. business that wants one. This comes a year after Rivian ended its exclusive deal with Amazon. Amazon currently has 20,000 of Rivian's vans. Read more

🤨 Pot, meet kettle: OpenAI confirmed today that it's been in contact with U.S. government officials regarding their probe into Chinese AI rival DeepSeek. OpenAI said it has evidence that DeepSeek improperly harvested data through its API. Read more

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Around the web

👍 New nonprofit: Google, OpenAI, Roblox, and Discord have launched a new nonprofit, called Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST), to make free, open source AI tools available to help companies identify, review, and report child abuse material. Read more

👀 Speaking of France: While France works to shed a positive light on Europe's AI ecosystem this week, France's antitrust authority is probing Microsoft over whether the company degrades the search quality when smaller rivals use Bing in their own search engines. Read more