President Biden doesn't speak often with former President Obama. But behind closed doors, he talks about him a lot.

• Why it matters: Biden often measures himself against the man he served as V.P., current and former aides say, Axios' Alex Thompson reports.

"Obama would be jealous," Biden sometimes says when speaking about an accomplishment, according to two Biden aides familiar with such instances.

• The competitive dynamic has informed Biden's approach to several issues — including how he's dealt with Afghanistan, Israel and Congress.

💡 Reality check: On a personal level, the Biden-Obama relationship is respectful and even affectionate.

• Obama often praises Biden publicly, and is set to be a key surrogate on the campaign trail this fall to help Biden get re-elected.
• Biden speaks more often with former President Bill Clinton than Obama, The Washington Post reports.

Biden's range of feelings about Obama is apparent in the recently released transcript of Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's handling of classified documents.

• Unprompted, Biden told Hur about the wounding experience of Obama favoring Hillary Clinton over him to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016.
• Biden recalled that "a lot of people ... were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president .... He just thought that [Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did."
• Biden privately has told aides that he believed he could have beaten Donald Trump if he had run in 2016.

🤔 The intrigue: Many longtime Biden aides have always felt Obama and his team didn't fully appreciate Biden's experience with foreign policy, Congress and grip-and-grin politicking — and were disrespectful.

• One former Biden aide told Axios: "The Obama people thought Biden would suck as president. They didn't think he'd be organized enough to execute."

💼 Case in point: At times, Biden's competitiveness with Obama has affected how he governs. He's tried to correct for what he sees as the former president's mistakes.

• Biden was adamant about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in 2021 — in part because he felt vindicated that Obama should have followed his advice in 2009 to largely withdraw them then.

🏛️ Especially early in his presidency, Biden paid extra attention to cultivating relationships with members of Congress — something he thought Obama should have done more.

• Biden told Hur that as vice president he often had lawmakers over for breakfast just to get their take — and that he'd push Obama to take a similar approach: "With President Obama, I would always say to him, 'Mr. President, all politics is personal.'"

Biden White House officials recall there was a push to "go big" in early 2021 with their first legislative package — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which included COVID aid and expansions of the social safety net.

• That was partly because they believed Obama hadn't gotten enough money approved for the $787 billion Recovery Act during the 2009 financial crisis.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Axios: "President Biden does not make such comments in private. As President Biden has said, President Obama is family to him."

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Apple is in talks to build Google's AI engine, Gemini, into the iPhone, setting the stage for a blockbuster agreement that would be a huge boon for Google and would shake up the AI industry, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman scoops.

• Why it matters: "A deal would give Gemini a key edge with billions of potential users. But it also may be a sign that Apple isn't as far along with its AI efforts as some might have hoped — and threatens to draw further antitrust scrutiny of both companies," Gurman writes.

According to the report, Gemini would power new features coming to the iPhone with iOS 18 operating system later this year. Google has long paid Apple billions of dollars annually to make its search engine the default on the iPhone's Safari browser.

• Apple also recently held talks with OpenAI and has considered using its model, Bloomberg says.

Elon Musk revealed the code behind Grok, the chatbot for xAI, the company he founded last year.

• Why it matters: "By opening the code up for everyone to view and use, Musk waded further into a heated debate over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse," the N.Y. Times' Kate Conger and Cade Metz write.

The AI debate has roiled Silicon Valley, pitting billionaire against billionaire.

• One side argues that the raw code behind powerful generative AI products should be protected from bad actors. The other says those risks are outweighed by the benefits of transparency.

👀 Between the lines: "At least some of the posturing around open sourcing is closely tied to business interests. Because OpenAI is the market leader, offering the most powerful and arguably the most popular chatbot, it has little reason to open source its code," Conger and Metz note.

The fountain on the White House's North Lawn is dyed green for St. Patrick's Day.

The Chicago River has been going green for the holiday for 60+ years.

• How it happens.

Russia says President Vladimir Putin got 87.29% of the vote to win a fifth term, after the harshest crackdown on the opposition and free speech since Soviet times.

• Germany called it a "pseudo-election." The White House said the vote was "obviously not free nor fair."
• In a victory news conference, Putin called the death of Alexei Navalny an "unfortunate incident."

After facing only token challengers and harshly suppressing opposition voices, Putin will extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years, AP reports.

• Even with little ability to protest, Russians crowded outside polling station after an opposition call to express displeasure with Putin.

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An AI-powered system called Freedom Case (above) lets shoppers open an anti-theft case by using their phone number or the store's loyalty app — trading a bit of personal information for the convenience of instant access.

• Why it matters: Stores are trying to strike a "convenience vs. security" balance — thwarting shoplifting without turning off legit customers, Axios' Jennifer A. Kingson writes.

Indyme, which makes Freedom Case, says the technology is in live trials or deployed with 40+ retailers in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, including supermarkets, drugstores and do-it-yourself centers.

Other retail innovations: "Anti-sweeping" shelves use rails, tracks or sensors to keep people from grabbing lots of items at once.

• New AI cameras use "loitering analytics" and face-matching tech to spot repeat offenders.
• RFID systems, which mark each item with a tiny tag about the size of a piece of glitter, help track stolen merchandise.

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UConn, Houston, Purdue and UNC will be the four top-seeded teams in the NCAA Men's tournament.

• The women's top seeds are South Carolina, Iowa, USC and Texas.

👓 What we're watching: Purdue is once again a top seed, after losing as No. 1 team to a No. 16 team in the first round last year. That was only the second such upset in NCAA history. In 2018, No. 1 Virginia fell to No. 16 UMBC, and then in 2019, Virginia came back to win it all.

• In the women's tournament, this will be fans' last chance to see superstar Caitlin Clark play for Iowa before she graduates and goes pro.

Printable brackets: Men ... Women.

"On the Grid," the cover of The New Yorker's Spring Style & Design issue, "spoofs the way certain snazzy outfits can inspire fits of creativity in observers."

• More on the cover.