Author: TechBrunch
Elon Musk's AI company xAI is testing a standalone iOS app for the chatbot Grok, which was previously only available to X users. The app is currently live in multiple countries including the US, Australia, and India, has access to real-time data from the web and X, and offers generative AI features like text rewriting, long paragraph summaries, and quick Q&A. I will. You can also generate images from text prompts. “Grok is an AI-powered assistant designed for maximum authenticity, usefulness, and curiosity. Get answers to all your questions, create impressive images, upload photos, and more. and gain a deeper…
Elon Musk, like other AI experts, says there is little real-world data left to train AI models. “We're basically depleting the human reservoir of knowledge right now… in AI training,” Musk said in a livestreamed conversation with Stagwell chairman Mark Penn streamed on X late Wednesday. spoke. “That's basically what happened last year.” Musk, who owns the AI company xAI, echoed a theme touched on by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Satskeva in a December speech at the machine learning conference NeurIPS. Sutskever said the AI industry has reached what he calls “peak data,” predicting that the lack of training…
The White House this week announced a new label for internet-connected devices, the US Cyber Trust Mark, aimed at helping consumers make more informed decisions about the cybersecurity of the products they bring into their homes. ' was announced. To earn the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, companies must test their products against cybersecurity standards set by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology through compliance testing by an accredited laboratory. Targeted products range from baby monitors to smart home security devices. The US Cyber Trust mark was created after approximately two years of…
It's 2025, and companies still don't know what AI can do for them. That's the impression I got from this year's CES, which featured AI-powered kitchen appliances, cribs, and other products that don't actually require AI. See also: Spicerr is an “intelligent” touchscreen spice dispenser that learns your preferences and recommends unique recipes as you cook. In the first place, there are some doubts about Spicer's usefulness. Spicerr does not shatter, requires its own capsules that cost $15-20, and is not refillable. That aside, did people really want salt and pepper shakers that suggested meals in the first place? Elsewhere…
CES 2025 is in full swing. While the conference features announcements from tech giants like Nvidia, Samsung, and Toyota, there are also some very strange product concepts and announcements making the rounds on the show floor. We've rounded up the weirdest, silliest, and most eyebrow-raising products from CES 2025. A robot cat that cools down your coffee Image credit: Yukai Engineering Yukai Engineering's new adorable gadget is “Nékojita FuFu,” a tiny cat robot that can attach to mugs and bowls and blow air at human-like intervals to cool coffee or soup. According to the company, the product was created in…
Astrohaus has cornered a very specific niche. This Michigan-based startup builds hardware for writers who want to eliminate distractions. After all, it's really hard to finish that novel when Instagram exists. The company has made a name for itself by going against most technology trends, but its latest product has managed to jump on the bandwagon. Announced at CES 2025, Wordrunner embraces the mechanical keyboard craze while staying true to Astrohaus' mission statement of writing without distractions. The Freewrite Wordrunner is essentially a standard mechanical keyboard with a few tricks for writers. Specifically, the peripherals include a word meter (word…
Last April, Company X's billionaire owner Elon Musk teased the mysterious “unhinged mode” of Company X's AI-powered chatbot Grok. Almost a year later, xAI, the Musk-owned company behind Grok, has updated its FAQ page on its website to reveal the new mode. According to the FAQ page, Grok in Unhinged mode will provide answers that are “intended to be offensive, inappropriate, or offensive,” and is “much like an amateur stand-up comic who is still learning his craft.” ”. This mode doesn't seem to be available yet. TechCrunch tried to find it in X's Grok web interface to no avail. Unhinged…
When you walk up to someone wearing Halliday smart glasses, you might not realize that they're seeing smartphone notifications, real-time language translation, and advice from an AI assistant. The only advantage is a small green dot on their eyeball. Wearable startup Halliday unveiled smart glasses at CES 2025 that project a 3.5-inch circular display into your line of sight. The device that creates the display is called a DigiWindow, a small round module smaller than your pinky nail that sits inside the Halliday frame just above your right eye. Close-up of DigiWindow. Image credit: Sean O'Kane While most augmented reality…
Last year, police surveillance startup Flock Safety hired the mayor of a California city with more than 200,000 residents to promote its product. However, Moreno Valley Mayor Ulises Cabrera now refuses to allow Flock to use his position as mayor to benefit Flock, according to a lawsuit Cabrera filed against Flock in November 2024. He claims that he was unfairly dismissed for this reason. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Flock grew to a $3.5 billion valuation by selling license plate recognition technology across the country (and recently expanded into drones), but the lawsuit , concerns have been raised about the influence…
Francois Cholet, a former Google engineer and influential AI researcher, co-founded a nonprofit organization that helps develop benchmarks to examine “human-level” intelligence in AI. The nonprofit ARC Prize Foundation will be led by Greg Kamradt, former Salesforce engineering director and founder of AI product studio Leverage. Mr. Kamrat will serve as president and director. Fundraising for the ARC Prize Foundation will begin in late January. “[W]We are…growing into a proper nonprofit foundation that serves as a useful north star to artificial general intelligence,” Chollet wrote in a post on the nonprofit’s website. (Artificial general intelligence is a vague term, but…