Facebook Plans to Increase Transparency in its Role in Political Ads

The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo February 1, 2017. (Reuters)
The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo February 1, 2017. (Reuters)
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Facebook Plans to Increase Transparency in its Role in Political Ads

The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo February 1, 2017. (Reuters)
The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo February 1, 2017. (Reuters)

Facebook announced on Friday that it will exert greater efforts to uncover supporters of political advertisements in an attempt to improve transparency amid criticism of its role in the 2016 US election and Russia’s alleged meddling.

Facebook will begin testing and refining political ad transgressions tools next month.

The testing will take place in Canada and the social media network plans on having the platform in place in the US before next year’s elections.

Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman said in a blog post: "Transparency helps everyone, especially political watchdog groups and reporters, keep advertisers accountable for who they say they are and what they say to different groups.”

He explained that people will be able to click "view ads" on a page to determine the source.

"People should be able to tell who the advertiser is and see the ads they’re running, especially for political ads, That level of transparency is good for democracy and it's good for the electoral process."

The archive, beginning with ads carried in 2018, will cover a rolling four-year period, Goldman said.

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg stated in a separate post this is more transparency than required for other media.

"We're making all ads more transparent, not just political ads," he added.

Moreover, he noted that political advertisers "will now have to provide more information to verify their identity."

Facebook in September announced a plan to increase "transparency" regarding political advertising and hire more than 1,000 people to thwart deceptive ads crafted to knock elections off course including "dark" messages crafted for specific demographic groups but invisible to others.

Facebook has turned over to Congress some 3,000 Russia-linked ads that appeared to use hot-button issues to turn people against one another ahead of last year's US election.

Congress is scheduled to meet next week to address the issue.

Facebook's second-ranking executive, Sheryl Sandberg, has acknowledged that "things happened on our platform in this election that should not have happened, especially foreign interference."

According to Facebook, some 10 million people may have viewed the ads placed by a Russian entity that appeared aimed at sowing division and mistrust.

Some 470 accounts spent a total of approximately $100,000 between June 2015 to May 2017 on ads that touted fake or misleading news, according to Facebook.

Twitter this week unveiled similar steps that will disclose the sources of political ads. The messaging platform separately said it would ban ads from Russia-based RT and Sputnik, accused of spreading disinformation during the 2016 campaign.

Internet political ads have boomed in recent years as US politicians looked for different ways to reach potential supporters, and as companies including Facebook have created tools to allow targeted marketing.

Online ads, though, are generally viewable only to the intended audience, raising concerns among transparency advocates, researchers and lawmakers about how to hold politicians accountable for what they say.

In June, Facebook told Reuters that it would go on treating political ads like all others and that creating an online repository would violate the confidentiality of those advertisers.

Since then, Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google have all said that Russia-based operatives bought ads and used fake names on their services to spread politically divisive messages in the months before and after the 2016 US election.

Moscow has denied interfering in the election.

Next week, general counsels for Facebook, Google and Twitter will testify before public hearings of three US congressional committees about the alleged interference and proposed legislation to require them to disclose election-related ads.

Facebook said its archive will eventually expand beyond the United States and show ads from elections in other countries and jurisdictions.



Meta Introduces Broadcast Tool Channels on WhatsApp

Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
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Meta Introduces Broadcast Tool Channels on WhatsApp

Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)

Meta Platforms on Thursday introduced WhatsApp Channels, a feature that the social media giant said would help make the app a "private broadcast messaging product."

Users in Colombia and Singapore will be the first to receive access to Channels. Over the coming months, Meta will expand the availability of the tool for users in more countries, it said.

The company said users will be able to follow content on their hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials and others. Reuters reported.

Profile photos and contact information of the channel admin would not be visible to followers. Similarly, followers will not have their phone numbers revealed.

Global launch partners for the feature will include the World Health Organization, FC Barcelona and Manchester City.


Saudi Arabia Participates in Global Forum on Technology in Paris

The Kingdom’s participation at the forum aimed at exchanging expertise and views on the developments in the IT sector.
The Kingdom’s participation at the forum aimed at exchanging expertise and views on the developments in the IT sector.
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Saudi Arabia Participates in Global Forum on Technology in Paris

The Kingdom’s participation at the forum aimed at exchanging expertise and views on the developments in the IT sector.
The Kingdom’s participation at the forum aimed at exchanging expertise and views on the developments in the IT sector.

Saudi Arabia has participated in the Global Forum on Technology held by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

The Kingdom’s participation at the forum, represented by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), aimed at exchanging expertise and views on the developments in the IT sector at the national and global levels.

Participating in a panel session titled “digital technology gap,” Daniah Orkoubi, the Undersecretary of MCIT for Technological Foresight & Digital Economy, reviewed the procedures the Kingdom has taken to lay the foundations of an efficient digital infrastructure under the targets of the Saudi Vision 2030.

She also reviewed the Kingdom's programs to empower Saudi women and support digital talents.

Orkoub pointed out that the Kingdom also has the largest number of digital talents in the region, with 340,000 male and female workers in the communications and IT sector.

She highlighted the Kingdom’s efforts to bridge the digital gap through several initiatives, chiefly the Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) Program, in a way that contributes to achieving inclusiveness and prosperity of human communities.


Meta Plans New Overview for Facebook, Instagram Users, German Regulator Says 

Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
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Meta Plans New Overview for Facebook, Instagram Users, German Regulator Says 

Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)
Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Oct. 28, 2021. (AP)

Germany's cartel office said Meta plans to introduce a new overview for users of its platforms Facebook and Instagram, in a step towards allaying anti-trust concerns following years of discussions with the regulator.

Meta's accounts center will allow users to make "a largely free and informed decision" about whether they want to use accounts such as Instagram and Facebook in combination or separately, the office said.

"We have updated the Meta account overview to show more transparently how our services work together and give people more control over these features," a Meta spokesperson said.

The company will continue to work constructively with the authority, the spokesperson added.

In 2019, the cartel office sought to ban Meta - then Facebook - from combining user data from several sources without users' consent.

This prompted years of legal wrangling. The European Union's top court is expected to weigh in on the matter in July.

The new feature offered by Meta to manage accounts revises a previous plan that the cartel office described as "seriously deficient" and which it said did not inform consumers in a neutral or transparent way.

The office said its most recent assessment was based on standards developed in 2019 and that it therefore could not rule out that stricter requirements may be needed to satisfy German competition law.

Germany is keeping close watch over Meta after the regulator deemed it of "paramount significance for competition across markets", a classification which gives the regulator more leeway to curb digital companies' market power.


Gulf Countries Address e-commerce Challenges

The Biban 23 Forum, which was recently held in Riyadh, shed light on e-commerce. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Biban 23 Forum, which was recently held in Riyadh, shed light on e-commerce. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Gulf Countries Address e-commerce Challenges

The Biban 23 Forum, which was recently held in Riyadh, shed light on e-commerce. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Biban 23 Forum, which was recently held in Riyadh, shed light on e-commerce. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is working on limiting the challenges related to e-commerce in member-states, including legal, regulatory or logistical obstacles that prevent optimal use of the advantages of the sector.

It has called on government and private agencies in the Gulf to intensify efforts and collect the information required to give a clear picture to the decision-makers at the council level.

This comes in conjunction with the growth of e-commerce in the GCC countries, as the sector is expected to reach $50 billion by 2025, according to a report by Kearney Middle East.

According to information obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat, the Saudi private sector is currently preparing an integrated file to list the difficulties it faces in e-commerce, before submitting the data to the General Secretariat of the GCC.

These results would contribute to shedding light on the necessary measures to create an appropriate legislative and regulatory climate that keeps pace with developments in the digital world, and within local, regional and international commercial markets.

E-commerce is a major driver of economic growth and helps in expanding the scope of commercial transactions, bringing them to the largest number of companies and consumers, and providing more opportunities and a broader base for transactions.

The Federation of Chambers of the GCC announced its support for the outcome of the consultative meeting of the ministers of trade and industry and representatives of the Gulf private sector, which was held recently in Amman, calling for completing the implementation of the common market paths and addressing the challenges of intra-trade between the council members.

The federation emphasized the need to adopt the necessary steps to support the implementation of the paths of the Gulf common market, in coordination with the GCC General Secretariat, and to present relevant initiatives and studies.

Hassan Al-Huwaizi, President of the Federation of Gulf Chambers, said at the time that they would work to encourage citizens of the GCC countries to interact more with the electronic platform (Takamol), which aims to address inquiries, observations and proposals related to the common market.


OpenAI Chief Executive Does Not Plan to Take Company Public

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP)
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OpenAI Chief Executive Does Not Plan to Take Company Public

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP)

Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has no plans to go public any time soon, Chief Executive Sam Altman said at a conference in Abu Dhabi.

"When we develop super intelligence, we are likely to make some decisions that most investors would look at very strangely," Altman said.

"I don't want to be sued by ... public market, Wall Street etc, so no, not that interested," he replied to a question on whether he will take OpenAI public.

OpenAI has so far raised $10 billion from Microsoft at a valuation of almost $30 billion as it invests more on building computing capacity.

"We have a very strange structure. We have this cap to profit thing," he said.

OpenAI started off as a non-profit organization but later created a hybrid "capped-profit" company, that allowed it to raise external funds with a promise that the original non-profit operation still benefits.


Musk Says China Detailed Plans to Regulate AI 

A handout photo released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China shows Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) shaking hands with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang during a meeting in Beijing, China, 30 May 2023 (issued 31 May 2023). (EPA/China Foreign Ministry handout)
A handout photo released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China shows Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) shaking hands with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang during a meeting in Beijing, China, 30 May 2023 (issued 31 May 2023). (EPA/China Foreign Ministry handout)
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Musk Says China Detailed Plans to Regulate AI 

A handout photo released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China shows Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) shaking hands with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang during a meeting in Beijing, China, 30 May 2023 (issued 31 May 2023). (EPA/China Foreign Ministry handout)
A handout photo released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China shows Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) shaking hands with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang during a meeting in Beijing, China, 30 May 2023 (issued 31 May 2023). (EPA/China Foreign Ministry handout)

Top Chinese officials told Elon Musk about plans to launch new regulations on artificial intelligence on his recent trip to the Asian giant, the tech billionaire said Monday, in his first comments on the two-day visit.

The Twitter owner and Tesla CEO -- one of the world's richest men -- held meetings with senior officials in Beijing and employees in Shanghai last week.

"Something that is worth noting is that on my recent trip to China, with the senior leadership there, we had, I think, some very productive discussions on artificial intelligence risks, and the need for some oversight or regulation," Musk said.

"And my understanding from those conversations is that China will be initiating AI regulation in China."

Musk, whose extensive interests in China have long raised eyebrows in Washington, spoke about the exchange in a livestreamed Twitter discussion with Democratic presidential hopeful and vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr, the nephew of John F. Kennedy.

Musk did not tweet while in China and Tesla has not released readouts of Musk's meeting with officials.

But official Chinese channels said he lavished praise on the country, including for its "vitality and promise," and expressed "full confidence in the China market."

A flurry of Chinese companies have been rushing to develop AI services that can mimic human speech since San Francisco-based OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November.

But rapid advancements have stoked global alarm over the technology's potential for disinformation and misuse.

Musk didn't elaborate on his discussions in China but was likely referring to a sweeping draft law requiring new AI products to undergo a security assessment before release and a process ensuring that they reflect "core socialist values."

The "Administrative Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services" edict bans content promoting "terrorist or extremist propaganda," "ethnic hatred" or "other content that may disrupt economic and social order."

Under Beijing's highly centralized political system, the measures are almost certain to become law.

Musk has caused controversy by suggesting the self-ruled island of Taiwan should become part of China -- a stance that was welcomed by Chinese officials but which deeply angered Taipei.

The 51-year-old South African native described his meetings in China as "very promising."

"I pointed out that if there is a digital super intelligence that is overwhelmingly powerful, developed in China, it is actually a risk to the sovereignty of the Chinese government," he said.

"And I think they took that concern to heart."


Twitter's New CEO Linda Yaccarino Logs 1st Day in Role

FILE PHOTO: A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Twitter's New CEO Linda Yaccarino Logs 1st Day in Role

FILE PHOTO: A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Twitter's new Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino has begun her role at the social media company, she tweeted late on Monday, about a month after Elon Musk named her as the new CEO.

"It happened — first day in the books!," she tweeted, without providing further details.

Yaccarino, the former advertising chief at NBCUniversal, is taking over Twitter at a time when the social media platform has been trying to reverse a plunge in ad revenue.

Musk, who has served as the CEO since his $44 billion buyout of Twitter last October, previously said that Yaccarino would help build an "everything app".

Former NBCUniversal executive Joe Benarroch also joined Twitter on Monday. He oversaw communication strategy for the Comcast-owned company's Advertising and Partnerships division, reporting to Yaccarino, before joining Twitter.


Apple Unveils a $3,500 Headset as it Wades into the World of Virtual Reality 

Members of the media inspect the new Apple Vision Pro headset during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Members of the media inspect the new Apple Vision Pro headset during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Apple Unveils a $3,500 Headset as it Wades into the World of Virtual Reality 

Members of the media inspect the new Apple Vision Pro headset during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Members of the media inspect the new Apple Vision Pro headset during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. (Getty Images/AFP)

Apple on Monday unveiled a long-rumored headset that will place its users between the virtual and real world, while also testing the technology trendsetter's ability to popularize new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public's imagination.

After years of speculation, Apple CEO Tim Cook hailed the arrival of the sleek goggles — dubbed "Vision Pro" — at the company's annual developers conference held on a park-like campus in Cupertino, California, that Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs helped design. The device will be capable of toggling between virtual reality, or VR, and augmented reality, or AR, which projects digital imagery while users still see can see objects in the real world.

“This marks the beginning of a journey that will bring a new dimension to powerful personal technology," Cook told the crowd.

Although Apple executives provided an extensive preview of the headset's capabilities during the final half hour of Monday's event, consumers will have to wait before they can get their hands on the device and prepare to pay a hefty price to boot. Vision Pro will sell for $3,500 once it's released in stores early next year.

“It's an impressive piece of technology, but it was almost like a tease,” said Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen. “It looked like the beginning of a very long journey."

Instead of merely positioning the goggles as another vehicle for exploring virtual worlds or watching more immersive entertainment, Apple framed the Vision Pro as the equivalent of owning a ultrahigh-definition TV, surround-sound system, high-end camera, and state-of-the art camera bundled into a single piece of hardware.

“We believe it is a stretch, even for Apple, to assume consumers would pay a similar amount for an AR/VR headset as they would for a combination of those products,” D.A. Davison Tom Forte wrote in a Monday research note.

Despite such skepticism, the headset could become another milestone in Apple’s lore of releasing game-changing technology, even though the company hasn’t always been the first to try its hand at making a particular device.

Apple's lineage of breakthroughs dates back to a bow-tied Jobs peddling the first Mac in 1984 —a tradition that continued with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2014 and its AirPods in 2016.

The company emphasized that it drew upon its past decades of product design during the years it spent working on the Vision Pro, which Apple said involved more than 5,000 different patents.

The headset will be equipped with 12 cameras, six microphones and a variety of sensors that will allow users to control it and various apps with just their eyes and hand gestures. Apple said the experience won't cause the recurring nausea and headaches that similar devices have in the past. The company also developed a technology to create a three-dimensional digital version of each user to display during video conferencing.

Although Vision Pro won't require physical controllers that can be clunky to use, the goggles will have to either be plugged into a power outlet or a portable battery tethered to the headset — a factor that could make it less attractive for some users.

“They’ve worked hard to make this headset as integrated into the real world as current technology allows, but it’s still a headset,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Yory Wurmser, who nevertheless described the unveiling as a “fairly mind-blowing presentation.”

Even so, analysts are not expecting the Vision Pro to be a big hit right away. That's largely because of the hefty price, but also because most people still can't see a compelling reason to wear something wrapped around their face for an extended period of time.

If the Vision Pro turns out to be a niche product, it would leave Apple in the same bind as other major tech companies and startups that have tried selling headsets or glasses equipped with technology that either thrusts people into artificial worlds or projects digital images onto scenery and things that are actually in front of them — a format known as “augmented reality.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been describing these alternate three-dimensional realities as the “metaverse.” It's a geeky concept that he tried to push into the mainstream by changing the name of his social networking company to Meta Platforms in 2021 and then pouring billions of dollars into improving the virtual technology.

But the metaverse largely remains a digital ghost town, although Meta's virtual reality headset, the Quest, remains the top-selling device in a category that so far has mostly appealed to video game players looking for even more immersive experiences. Cook and other Apple executives avoided referring to the metaverse in their presentations, describing the Vision Pro as the company's first leap into “spatial computing” instead.

The response to virtual, augmented and mixed reality has been decidedly ho-hum so far. Some of the gadgets deploying the technology have even been derisively mocked, with the most notable example being Google's internet-connected glasses released more than a decade ago.

Microsoft also has had limited success with HoloLens, a mixed-reality headset released in 2016, although the software maker earlier this year insisted it remains committed to the technology.

Magic Leap, a startup that stirred excitement with previews of a mixed-reality technology that could conjure the spectacle of a whale breaching through a gymnasium floor, had so much trouble marketing its first headset to consumers in 2018 that it has since shifted its focus to industrial, health care and emergency uses.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives estimated Apple will sell just 150,000 of the headsets during its first year on the market before escalating to 1 million headsets sold during the second year — a volume that would make the goggles a mere speck in the company's portfolio.

By comparison, Apple sells more than 200 million of its marquee iPhones a year. But the iPhone wasn't an immediate sensation, with sales of fewer than 12 million units in its first full year on the market.


Microsoft to Pay $20M to Settle US Charges of Collecting Children's Data

FILE - A man walks past a Microsoft sign set up for the Microsoft BUILD conference, April 28, 2015, at Moscone Center in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - A man walks past a Microsoft sign set up for the Microsoft BUILD conference, April 28, 2015, at Moscone Center in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
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Microsoft to Pay $20M to Settle US Charges of Collecting Children's Data

FILE - A man walks past a Microsoft sign set up for the Microsoft BUILD conference, April 28, 2015, at Moscone Center in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - A man walks past a Microsoft sign set up for the Microsoft BUILD conference, April 28, 2015, at Moscone Center in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console.

The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and that it also illegally held onto the data. Those actions violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the FTC stated.

In a blog post, Microsoft corporate vice president for Xbox Dave McCarthy outlined additional steps the company is now taking to improve its age verification systems and to ensure that parents are involved in the creation of child accounts for the service. These mostly concern efforts to improve age verification technology and to educate children and parents about privacy issues, The Associated Pres reported.

McCarthy also said the company had identified and fixed a technical glitch that failed to delete child accounts in cases where the account creation process never finished. Microsoft policy was to hold that data no longer than 14 days in order to allow players to pick up account creation where they left off if they were interrupted.


Apple Shares Notch All-Time High Ahead of Developer Conference

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken March 1, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken March 1, 2022. (Reuters)
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Apple Shares Notch All-Time High Ahead of Developer Conference

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken March 1, 2022. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken March 1, 2022. (Reuters)

Apple Inc shares hit a record high for the first time in 17 months on Monday, ahead of an annual software developer conference, although the company's market value remained short of an all-time peak of $3 trillion.

Apple is expected to launch a mixed-reality headset at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) later in the day, which would be its first big move into a new product category since the introduction of the Apple Watch nine years ago.

Shares of the world's most valuable listed company were last up 1.8% at $184.15. They have jumped nearly 40% in 2023, compared with an 11.5% rise in the benchmark S&P 500.

Apple became the only company to hit $3 trillion in market capitalization early last year. It was last valued at $2.89 trillion.

While it is still early days, augmented reality/virtual reality could be the next main platform for Apple's growth, Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote in a note.

"The fact that the company is expected to be the market leading vendor in mixed-reality headsets is what could make WWDC a more significant stock catalyst this year," Woodring said.

The iPhone maker's forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio is 28.39, compared with the sector median of 12.79.

Apple is among a handful of megacap firms that have underpinned a rally in stocks this year, as the sudden popularity of AI brings the focus back on technology shares following a rout last year.