Author: TechBrunch

What happens if the first 10 employers are not at all people? TechCrunch, which takes place in Western Moscon in San Francisco from October 27-29, is delving into a new wave of startups that stumbled 2025 and replaced or augmented early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support. It has been automated since day one. Hosted on Builders Stage, the panel features a combination of technical founders and veteran operators who are actually doing it, debating where the boundaries between humans and machines should be drawn, and how far it is. Meet the speaker Caleb Peffer,…

TransUnion, a credit reporting giant, discloses data breaches that affect the personal information of more than 4.4 million customers. In a filing Thursday with the Maine Attorney General's Office, Transunion attributed the July 28 violation to unauthorized access to third-party applications that store customer personal data for its U.S. consumer support business. Transunion claimed that “credit information was not accessed,” but did not provide immediate evidence of that claim. The data breach notification did not specify that certain types of personal data were stolen. Transunion spokesman David Blumberg did not immediately comment when contacted by TechCrunch. Transunion is one of…

WhatsApp is launching new AI features that allow users to reposition, proofread or adjust the tone of their messages, the meta-owned company announced Wednesday. A new feature called “Writing Help” uses Meta's private processing technology. This allows users to receive responses generated by Meta or WhatsApp reading the original message or the proposed rewrite and receiving AI-generated responses. This means that even when people use the new tools, messages on the platform remain private. Writing help allows users to get AI-generated suggestions that rewrite messages in professional, entertaining, collaborative, or paraphrased ways. WhatsApp introduced the feature to product images that…

According to the FBI's top cyber chief, the Chinese hacking campaign, which previously hacked by nine US telecommunications and internet providers, has been confirmed to have hacked at least 200 American companies. FBI assistant director Brett Leatherman told the Washington Post that hackers called Salt Timone have also invaded businesses in 80 countries, revealing the first global Chinese spy campaign. Leatherman did not name the hacked company. AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen have previously been identified as violations, while Charter Communication and Windstream were later designated as victims. Hackers targeted call records among senior American politicians and officials, allowing them to…

ChatGpt rivals like Google's Gemini, Xai's Grok, and, to a lesser extent, Meta AI, are filling the gap in Openai's popular AI chatbot ChatGpt, according to a new report focusing on the consumer AI landscape from venture company Andreessen Horowitz. This report presents two and a half years of data on the evolving consumer use of AI products in the fifth iteration. And for the fifth time, 14 companies appeared on the list of top AI products: ChatGpt, Perplexity, Poe, Character AI, Midjourney, Leonardo, Veed, Cutout, ElevenLabs, Photoroom, Gamma, Quillbot, Civitai, and Hugging Face. Image credit: A16Z Companies represent a…

Steve Jobs once said, “It's all a remix.” And it is a philosophy that Mark Cuba has taken to heart, building his entire career of entrepreneurship and investment in that simple belief. According to Cuba, the real opportunity is finding patterns others have missed, turning it into billions of dollars of confusion. In today's episode of fairness, Cuba joined TechCrunch's Rebecca Bellan to discuss decades-long strategy of betting on technology before it becomes mainstream, from early investments in local networks and streaming services to current healthcare and AI ventures. But Cuba's real insight isn't just about picking the winner. Understand…

The U.S. Treasury Department has approved the international fraud network used by North Korea to infiltrate US companies under the guise of legitimate job seekers, agency officials announced Wednesday. The sanctions are the latest lawsuit filed by the US Treasury in recent months that aims to help North Korean government workers seek employment in American companies using fake identities and documents to apply for employment. When hired, hackers earn wages from the company, but they force their employers by stealing sensitive company data and demanding ransom. In a statement Wednesday, the Treasury Ministry said the fraud network generated at least…

Last year, Google debuted a new age video editor called Vids for Google Workspace Productivity Suite. On Wednesday, the company added new features such as AI avatars, automatic transcript cropping and inter-image tools. They also release free features for consumers with limited functionality. This version of the editor has basic editing controls along with access to Google's template library, font collections and stock media libraries, but does not provide AI functionality at this time. In the business world, startups like Sythesia and D-ID provide businesses with access to AI avatars and related tools for creating training and educational videos. Google…

This week on the StrictlyVC download, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos speaks with Jeff Clavier and Andy McLoughlin of UNKork Capital. They discuss how seed-stage companies position themselves in this environment, from their recent investments in AI chip maker Groq to betting on AI native companies attacking sexy industries such as materials science and robotics. Additionally, the three delve into Unkork's philosophy of finding companies with unique datasets before it becomes clear to the market. How UNCORK advises established portfolio companies to reform themselves in the AI-first world. And whether the San Francisco comeback is sustainable whether it is driven by…

Libby, the library's e-book and audiobook app, adds AI to the disappointment of readers and librarians who prefer that AI is not inserted into their favorite apps. The new feature “Inspire Me” allows users to retrieve book recommendations using prompts or previously saved titles. To use this feature, readers tap the “Inspire Me” option on the Libby homepage. Here you can seek fiction or non-fiction, narrowing down suggestions from other factors, such as age range, content type. For example, you can tap suggestions such as “Spinbow” or “Funny” and tap specific scenarios such as “Dark humor on modern family dysfunction”…