Axios

Shrimp and jam pizza: a concoction so absurd no human could have dreamed it up. Because no one did. The recipe was created by a computer that read hundreds of artisanal pizza recipes, and was realized in edible form by a Boston pizza chef.

What’s going on: A group of MIT students are training artificial intelligence systems to come up with crazy new ideas in fashion, food, art, cocktails, and dance — and then bring them to life.

Apple will launch its inaugural TV subscription service in more than 100 countries, The Information reports.

The details: Apple has been working to become a front-runner in streaming services to compete with Netflix and Amazon, and plans to launch its streaming service in the U.S. in the first half of next year. The company set a $1 billion budget for 2018 content acquisitions for original content, per The Information, and has signed deals with Oprah Winfrey and Sesame Workshop.

Facebook will minimize the clutter of its Messenger interface by reducing the number of tabs from 9 to 3, the company announced. Features currently accessed via tabs will still be available in the app, but less prominent on screen.

Why it matters: Per Axios' Sara Fischer, Facebook is reversing Messenger's tab overload in part because it needs to make room for the roll-out of ads in the messaging app, which has 1.3 billion users worldwide.

Facebook is rolling out an ad archive report that will be accessible to anyone, regardless of whether they have access to Facebook's backend software (i.e., it's API). It will feature sortable data about political and issue ads being bought on Facebook in the U.S. and will be updated weekly.

The details: The first report shows Texas U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke was the top spender since May, spending $5.37 million. That topped spending by Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" Committee by more than $2 million.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is making his strongest case yet that the tech industry must embrace privacy or lose its chance to reshape the world.

Why it matters: Apple has made user privacy a central component of its design and pitch to consumers, drawing a sharp contrast with companies like Facebook and Google.

Netflix told investors Monday that it's aiming to raise another $2 billion in financing through debt securities to foot the bill for more content. In total, the streamer has committed to spending over $18 billion on content in the future.

Why it matters: Netflix spends far more on content than its competitors, particularly legacy TV. It does so to build its subscriber base (currently 130 million worldwide) big enough to have the leverage to one day increase subscription prices, bringing them closer to profitability.

Last Tuesday, YouTube experienced an outage for about an hour, which according to new data from Chartbeat provided to Axios, resulted in a 20% net increase in traffic across Chartbeat sites.

The big picture: Chartbeat analyzed the YouTube outage using global traffic data across a sample of more than 4,000 sites which are Chartbeat customers. They found that about half of the increased traffic (11%) went to general articles on publisher sites, and the other half (9%) went to articles about the YouTube outage.

Ahead of earnings this week, it's worth noting (again) that Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are doing more to expand their user bases and ad services abroad.

Why it matters: Facing saturation in the U.S. and North America, social media companies are looking to foreign markets as a way to increase ad revenue.

The push to create rivals to stunt the growth of Netflix has become a global phenomenon, as the streamer is now available in 190 countries and is poised to consistently make more money in the future abroad than in the U.S.

Why it matters: The same efforts seen in the U.S. — where broadcasters and telecom companies are teaming together to create Netflix competitors — are happening globally, pointing to the threat of Netflix's dominance abroad.

Uber plans to invest $260 million (£200 million) in order to help transition all of its London drivers to electric vehicles by 2025, CNBC reports.

The big picture: The initiative will involve a 15 pence per mile "clean air fee" on all Uber rides booked in London, along with cash incentives to drivers to encourage them to move to electric vehicles. By the end of 2021, the company expects 20,000 drivers in London to switch to electric vehicles.

Some repressive regimes and insurgent candidates are increasingly weaponizing social media technology to silence critics or exert control over vulnerable populations.

Why it matters: General lack of oversight of social media makes it easy for those in power to influence populations without being detected — or at least not until after damage is done.