Author: TechBrunch

President Donald Trump on Thursday proposed federal regulations for “digital assets,” including virtual currencies, digital tokens and stablecoins, and ordered the creation of a task force to assess the nation's crypto stockpiles. The task force will be led by David Sachs, former PayPal chief operating officer and founder of VC firm Craft Ventures, whom President Trump named the “emperor” of cryptocurrencies and AI. The group also includes the Treasury Secretary, Attorney General, Secretary of Commerce, and other government officials. President Trump’s latest executive order, titled “Strengthening U.S. Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission, currently…

OpenAI says it may store chats and related screenshots from customers using Operator, its AI “agent” tool, for up to 90 days even after users manually delete them. OpenAI has a similar deleted data retention policy for its AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT. However, ChatGPT's retention period is only 30 days, which is 60 days less than Operator's retention period. OpenAI says the operator's data retention policies are designed to combat abuse. “As agents are a relatively new technology, we wanted to ensure our team had time to better understand and consider potential exploitation vectors,” an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. “This…

YouTube celebrity MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) is in talks to join multiple bids for TikTok's U.S. operations. But he hasn't picked just one yet. First, on Monday, Employer.com CEO Jesse Tinsley said MrBeast is part of an all-cash bid for TikTok that he is leading. This was reiterated in a press release issued by the law firm representing Tinsley's group. But Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Mr.Beast, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Donaldson is in “ongoing discussions” with multiple bidders, but has not signed an “exclusive” contract with any of them. He said it was not tied.…

In a well-timed announcement that was perhaps intended to draw attention away from OpenAI's Operators, Anthropic Tuesday announced a new feature for its developer API called Citations. This allows developers to “root” answers from the Claude family of AI into source documents such as emails. According to Anthropic, Citations allows AI models to provide detailed references to the “exact sentences and passages” of documents used to generate responses. As of Thursday afternoon, Citations is available in both Anthropic's API and Google's Vertex AI platform. As Anthropic explains in a blog post about citations, developers can add source files so that…

While Meta lures TikTok creators to Instagram and Facebook with cash bonuses, its X competitor, Instagram Threads, is currently catering to creators, brands, and others who need more specialized tools to manage their presence on the app. Making other people's work easier. On Thursday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a handful of new features coming to Threads, including ways to schedule posts and see more metrics within Insights. In a post on the social network, Mosseri shared that users can now schedule posts in threads and view metrics for individual posts within the Insights dashboard. This provides Threads users with…

Autograph, the NFT company co-founded by Tom Brady, is merging with digital fitness company Future. As part of the merger, Mr. Brady will join Future's board of directors and serve as co-chairman. Brady co-founded Autograph in 2021 to find a way to connect athletes and artists with their fans, and eventually launched an NFT marketplace, raising more than $200 million worth a total of $3.1 billion, according to Pitchbook. It is said that they have procured the following. Late last year, the company removed the NFT component and relaunched itself as a platform that tracks and rewards fan engagement. The…

Security researchers have discovered a hidden, undisclosed feature in the Waymo app that allows you to display any text of your choice on the robotaxi's top display. Jane Manchun Wong, a prominent security researcher, posted an image to X on Saturday that included her X handle and other text on the top display of a Waymo car (officially known as a “dome”). did. “We hacked Waymo to display weird text like empty strings, ‘Won Jane’, and emojis as car IDs. Please don’t ban me or patch me, @waymo ( lol),” she wrote. Wong, who lives in San Francisco, told TechCrunch…

Epic Games is adding third-party games to the mobile app store and helping developers cover the associated iOS fees. The company is launching a free games program and will cover the cost of all titles from developers who participate in the program on iOS or iPadOS devices. With this program, Epic brings new free games to the store every month. The game will be available worldwide on Android and on iOS in the European Union. The company's mobile store launched in August and featured first-party titles such as Fortnite and Rocket League. With this expansion, Epic Games adds the first…

After releasing two developer beta versions last year, Google introduced the first public beta of Android 16 on Thursday. New features include live updates on the lock screen (such as live activity on iOS), an advanced professional video (APV) codec for high-quality video recording, and the ability for developers to adapt apps to different screen sizes and aspect ratios. Contains a framework for doing so. For consumers, support for live updates will be the most visible change. Apple introduced Live Activity in iOS 16 in 2022 to show ever-changing updates on delivery status, workouts, sports scores, and more. Android now…

Despite a decline in active users, social network X has grown in-app revenue over the past year, according to new data. Global consumer spending on X mobile apps on both iOS and Android increased 76.3% year over year when comparing two similar periods in January, according to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. But other data shows that X's daily active users are declining as usage of rivals like Bluesky and Threads increases. According to an analysis conducted by Appfigures, global consumer spending on iOS and Android at Company X reached $7.6 million from January 1 to 20, 2024. During…