What's up: Google rolls out new AI search feature; AI's geopolitical superstar; OpenAI's big new data center.

Good morning, CIOs. Improvements in the technology behind voice-based AI bots are making them more prolific and humanlike in phone calls.

The WSJ's Belle Lin has the story on how the rapid tech advance of voice-based AI bots is surprising even some of the early adopters.

“Suddenly, we noticed these agents become very humanlike,” said Ketan Babaria, chief digital officer at eHealth. “It’s getting to a point where our customers are not able to differentiate between the two.”

The insurance marketplace uses AI voice agents to handle its initial screening for potential customers when its human staff can’t keep up with call volume, as well as after hours.

Technological progress, combined with more venture-capital dollars for startups building voice AI tech, is leading to faster adoption. Gartner predicts that generative AI capabilities, from voice to chat, will be present in 75% of new contact centers by 2028.

The next step is AI voice agents that can use the phone to independently perform tasks. Read the story and listen to a couple voice AI agents in action.

Google said it will add an “AI Mode” to search which will answer search queries in a chatbot-style conversation, the latest without the standard list of blue links. It will run on Gemini, WSJ reports. Following on last year’s introduction of “AI Overviews,” which uses generative AI to summarize traditional search results, “AI Mode” marks Google’s latest attempt to embrace a technology that poses an existential threat to its search business.

• Google Still Needs to Convince Investors It Has Got the Hang of AI

Google Tuesday also unveiled a new AI tool that lets developers quickly spin up user interface designs from text prompts, the Verge reports.

A Texas data center that startup Crusoe is building for OpenAI has secured $11.6 billion in new funding commitments, the WSJ reports. The data center, which is slated for completion next year, is expected to be the largest used by the ChatGPT maker. Each of the eight buildings will run up to 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips.

MIT Technology Review in a deep dive into AI’s energy footprint finds that AI companies and data center operators “are largely quiet” when it comes to detailing the energy demands associated with their models. It cites one projection, by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that sees AI by 2028 consuming as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.

The next big OpenAI new hire couldn't come at a better time, WSJ reports. Fidji Simo, who is currently Instacart’s CEO, plans to join OpenAI as CEO of applications where she will oversee all of the company’s major business functions.

Both at Instacart and earlier at Facebook where she helped build its mobile advertising business, Simo has earned a reputation as a detail-oriented manager capable of running large teams, people familiar with her work tell the Journal.

👉 CEO Sam Altman has told associates that each of the three areas of the company—Simo’s applications business, infrastructure and research—will one day become multitrillion-dollar businesses.

Everyone wants a piece of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his coveted chips. But international fame carries risks too,  WSJ reports, with Huang navigating a geopolitical minefield in the pursuit of deals.

Huang on Wednesday said U.S. export controls limiting the sale of advanced chips to China have been a failure, and commended President Trump for reversing a core part of the Biden administration’s policy. 

Apple is working to allow third parties to build apps with the AI models used for Apple Intelligence. The company is expected to announce the plan at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9, Bloomberg reports.

Elon Musk, who spent a considerable fortune helping to elect President Trump, says he plans to cut back on political spending, WSJ reports. 

Google’s years-long quest for a face computer has entered a new chapter. WSJ reports that Warby Parker has partnered with Google to develop AI-powered glasses. .

The European Union and U.K. are finalizing a deal that will let both regions’ competition watchdogs work together more closely, WSJ reports. 

A writer has admitted to using AI to partially write a summer book list that ran in some newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR reports. The list contained books from well-known-authors including Maggie O’Farrell  and Isabel Allende that do not exist. The confabulations are pretty awful. 

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President Trump’s multitrillion-dollar economic agenda hinges on fractious GOP lawmakers who are at odds over the details of a tax package that could determine their fate in next year’s midterm elections. (WSJ)

A federal judge told the Trump administration to be prepared to return migrants who lawyers believe were deported to South Sudan and signaled concern the administration had violated a prior court order. (WSJ)

Under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s direction, polygraph tests are being increasingly used on employees to search for leaks of information that Noem and her top deputies consider disloyal or embarrassing. (WSJ)

Former President Joe Biden’s last known prostate-cancer blood screening test was performed in 2014, according to his spokesman, indicating that he wasn’t screened for the cancer during his four years as president. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.