Author: TechBrunch
On Thursday, O2, the UK's largest mobile network operator, introduced a chatbot designed to frustrate phone scammers. The service, called dAIsy, imitates an elderly woman who spends her time chatting about things like knitting and her cat Fluffy, allowing scammers to steal her (fake) bank account. The aim is to keep you endlessly involved in your attempts to obtain information. A press release about O2's “AI Granny” says it has “various It is stated that it combines “an AI model”. answer. The AI was partially trained by Jim Browning, an expert on “scammers” who has a large following on YouTube.…
A lawsuit brought against one of the fastest growing companies in history by the world's richest man is inevitably interesting. However, while the allegations have not yet been proven, the incident has already exposed a series of emails between Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others in the early days of OpenAI. Here are some of the more interesting snippets I found while sifting through their correspondence. Note that these emails were published as part of an attempt to prove that OpenAI is somehow violating antitrust laws (a frankly implausible claim). Musk has also made some sense of his feelings of…
For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. AI deals continued to dominate venture funding during the third quarter. AI companies raised $18.9 billion in Q3, according to Crunchbase data. That figure represents 28% of all venture funding. The third quarter also saw the close of the largest venture deal of all time: OpenAI raised a behemoth $6.6 billion round. OpenAI’s deal was one of six AI funding rounds over $1 billion in 2024. Here are the U.S.-based AI companies that raised $100 million or more so far in 2024: November…
Bluesky, the social network that has seen a surge in users this week as users abandon X, says it has “no intention” of using user content to train its generative AI tools. The social network announced on the same day that X (formerly Twitter) will implement new terms of service that will allow the platform to use public posts to train its AI. “Many artists and creators are based on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns about other platforms training their data,” Bluesky said in a post on the app. “We do not use your content to train our generative…
Is the grass greener next door? I'm not sure, but I'm sure the sky is bluer. It's been two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter (now known as X) and people started setting up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which are no longer in operation), and Spill have been mentioned as potential replacements, but with the exception of Meta's Threads, few companies have achieved the speed of growth that Bluesky achieved. Bluesky was invite-only for almost a year, but became available to everyone in February 2024, gaining about 800,000 new users in a single day. As…
WhatsApp on Thursday won a legal victory by persuading a US federal judge to release three court documents containing new revelations about the inner workings of Pegasus, a spyware made by Israeli surveillance technology maker NSO Group. . The newly unsealed documents include information gleaned from NSO employee depositions and internal documents during legal proceedings, as well as WhatsApp messages exchanged between NSO employees (ironically). In particular, it also includes information obtained by WhatsApp by subpoenaing NSO. The documents also reveal that NSO has blocked access to Pegasus spyware for 10 government customers in recent years due to misuse of…
OpenAI at one point considered acquiring Cerabras, an AI chip manufacturer that is going public, according to new legal filings. Elon Musk's ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI includes how OpenAI considered acquiring Cerebras around 2017, a year after Cerebras was founded and just a few years after OpenAI began operations. Contains new evidence to explain why. In an email to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk, Ilya Satskever, one of OpenAI's co-founders and former chief scientist, said that he would sell Cerebra through Musk's EV company, Tesla, in an email to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk. The idea of acquiring…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Want it delivered to your inbox every Friday? Sign up here! Despite the short work week in many regions, the last few days have been filled with deal announcements and fundraising news, but it's hard to find out just how much was on hold before the US election. is too early. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Daniel Harvey Gonzalez (Opens in new window) / Getty Images There are early signs that the U.S. IPO window may reopen, but don't get ahead of…
Last summer, a twin-engine propeller plane landed in the gray, cratered landscape of Greenland's capital Nuuk. The 28-year-old man disembarked and planned to march on the Nordic parliament building with a bold proposal. “I went looking to buy Greenland,” Praxis founder Dryden Brown later wrote in a viral tweet. On a call with TechCrunch last week, he penned down an edgelord rant. “They obviously take some sort of pride in the idea of being acquired, and it's almost condescending,” he says. “But they really want to be independent.” So instead of buying Greenland, he wondered if he could work with…
If you landed on this page, there's a good chance you're looking for a VPN, or virtual private network. Perhaps someone recommended a particular product or service or an ad caught your curiosity? Maybe you value your privacy or simply want to stay online in an ever-changing world. Maybe you want to maintain your privacy. Before we jump into unfamiliar territory, we want to tell you that you might not actually need a VPN after all. Today's VPNs can do a lot, from protecting your privacy from surveillance to increasing your internet speed and protecting you from malicious online threats.…