Author: TechBrunch

Google announced Thursday that it will unveil a new Android-based XR platform to support AI capabilities. The company said the platform, called “Android XR,” supports app development on a variety of devices, including headsets and glasses. The company will release the first developer preview of Android XR on Thursday, which already supports existing tools such as ARCore, Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, Unity, and OpenXR. project muhan headset The company said Android XR will first launch with the Samsung-made Project Moohan headset and is expected to launch next year. Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm announced a partnership to produce XR devices early…

Humba Ventures today announced that it has raised $40 million in investments in deep technology and defense technology startups. The company is a sister company to Susa Ventures, a seed-stage company that has backed companies such as Robinhood, Human Interest, and Flexport. The fund was launched at a time when venture investment in defense technology is at an all-time high, with startups in the space raising nearly $3 billion through 2024, according to Crunchbase. Sousa has previously invested in fintech and software companies, but this is very different from the hardware investments the Humba team has already made. For example,…

Google is slowly peeling back the curtain on its vision of one day selling glasses with augmented reality and multimodal AI capabilities. However, the company's plans for these glasses are still vague. To date, we've seen multiple demos of Project Astra, DeepMind's effort to build real-time multimodal apps and agents using AI, running on mysterious prototype glasses. Ta. Google announced Wednesday that it will release these prototype glasses, equipped with AI and AR features, to a select number of users for real-world testing. Google announced Thursday that its Project Astra prototype glasses run on Android XR, Google's new operating system…

Anthropic has released one of its latest AI models, Claude 3.5 Haiku, for users of its AI chatbot platform Claude. Reports about the release of 3.5 Haiku on Claude began circulating on social media Thursday morning, and TechCrunch was able to independently confirm that the model is available on Claude on web and mobile. Claude Haiku 3.5 is finally available on web and mobile apps 🔥 https://t.co/qsCoKUuO9o pic.twitter.com/M14CrROf34 — TestingCatalog News 🗞 (@testingcatalog) December 12, 2024 The 3.5 Haiku, which Anthropic announced in November, matches or bests the performance of Anthropic's upcoming flagship model, the 3 Opus, on certain benchmarks.…

Epic Games has partnered with Telefónica, one of the world's largest communications providers, to pre-install the Epic Games Store on all new compatible Android devices on their network. Telefonica serves Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Latin America. The company says the partnership will bring the Epic Games Store to “millions of phones” and marks the first time its app store will be pre-installed on a consumer device. Telefonica customers will now be able to easily download Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League Sideswipe. Epic says users will be able to download third-party games in the future. “This strategic partnership…

The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to deny ByteDance and TikTok's emergency motion. The complaint is aimed at temporarily blocking a law banning TikTok in the United States unless the social network separates itself from Chinese ownership by January 19th. The Justice Department argued that “China's continued control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security,” and said the court should not delay the matter, Reuters reported. . ByteDance and TikTok filed a motion on Monday asking for a stay to give the Supreme Court a chance to reconsider the case. The…

Having access to software is becoming more of a necessity than a nice-to-have. Evinced is one of a wave of startups helping make that happen. The company plans to expand into Europe, where new accessibility regulations are about to go into effect, and has raised $55 million to fuel its expansion. Evinced is a suite of tools that integrates into the entire software development stack and makes accessibility metrics and solutions available across the board. So when engineers build a UI or component, they don't have to wait for a monthly accessibility code review to find out it doesn't work…

When SlideShare, the presentation-sharing service acquired by Scribd, launched in 2006, generative AI technology was much less advanced than it is today, and social networking platforms were just beginning to gain traction. Recognizing advances in AI and the growing desire for innovative ways to share documents, SlideShare founders Amit Ranjan (COO), Jonathan Butel (CTO), and Rashmi Sinha (CEO) are committed to building on this trend. A new social document sharing platform named Jaunt was officially launched on Thursday. This closely mirrors SlideShare, where users can easily upload different types of files and interact with them through features like sharing and…

AI models that understand video as well as text enable powerful new applications. At least that's what Jae Lee, co-founder of Twelve Labs, believes. Admittedly, Mr. Lee is a bit biased. Twelve Labs trains video analytics models for a variety of use cases. However, there may be some truth to his argument. Twelve Labs' model allows users to search for videos of specific moments, summarize clips, and ask questions such as “When did the person in the red shirt enter the restaurant?” You can. This is a powerful feature set. Perhaps this is why the company has attracted big-name backers…

Character AI is facing at least two lawsuits, with plaintiffs accusing the company of contributing to a teen's suicide, exposing a 9-year-old to “hypersexualized content,” and encouraging a 17-year-old user to self-harm. is being accused as such. Amid these ongoing lawsuits and widespread user criticism, the Google-backed company today announced new teen safety tools. It has a different model for teenagers, input/output blocks on sensitive topics, a notice warning users against continued use, and a more prominent disclaimer informing users that: That AI character is not a real person. The platform allows users to create various AI characters and talk…