Author: TechBrunch
Social network However, the platform appears to be preparing to open up chatbots to free users. Over the weekend, several app researchers and users posted about a free version of Grok being made available to people in certain regions. TechCrunch has been able to confirm that X is testing access to Grok, at least for free users in New Zealand. Image credit: Screenshot by Techcrunch According to researchers working with Swak on . per day. To use Grok for free, your account must be created for at least 7 days and have a linked phone number. xAI launched Grok-2 in…
Friends of the United States: Senators have only a few weeks left to pass the Press Act. The bill is a federal “shield” bill that the House of Representatives passed with a bipartisan unanimous vote in January, but has been awaiting a final vote in the Senate ever since. If passed, the Press Act would provide nationwide protection for journalists across the country from having to forcefully identify or surrender confidential sources (except in emergencies such as preventing acts of terrorism). That will happen. The bill also allows for other protections, such as limiting the records the government can secretly…
Reuters reports that the U.S. Department of Commerce has ordered Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to stop shipping advanced chips to Chinese customers after chips made by the company were discovered in Huawei processors. I ordered him to do it. Huawei faces significant trade restrictions from the United States, so the suspension should allow the government to determine whether other companies are diverting chips to Huawei. TSMC has reportedly notified affected customers that shipments will be suspended starting Monday. The advanced chips being targeted are often used in artificial intelligence applications, an area where the U.S. already restricts chip exports from…
India, the world's most populous country and the second largest internet market after China, is becoming increasingly digital. However, this rapid digitization has increased the risk of online fraud. Cyber fraud is on the rise in India, with the Indian government estimating that cyber fraud could reach 0.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) (more than $14 billion) within the next year. Even government-backed systems, including Aadhaar, are sometimes targeted by malicious actors. New Delhi continues to introduce new regulatory requirements to limit fraudulent digital transactions. Nevertheless, these updates often place a burden on businesses to update their technology regularly. Efforts…
The problem with most previous attempts to regulate AI is that lawmakers focus on mythical future AI experiences rather than truly understanding the new risks that AI actually poses. That's what Andreessen Horowitz general partner VC Martin Casado made to a standing room audience at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 last week. Casado, who heads a16z's $1.25 billion infrastructure business, has invested in AI startups including World Labs, Cursor, Ideogram and Braintrust. “Innovative technology and regulation have been an ongoing debate for decades, right? So the common thread in all discussions about AI is that it seems to come out of nowhere.…
It is clear that Gen Z is influencing app consumption. Known as the “mobile-first generation,” they make up approximately 40% of all mobile users worldwide. Curious about their preferences, we recently reached out to app intelligence company Appfigures. The company provided us with an overview of the 50 most downloaded apps by Gen Z this year. However, due to privacy regulations, we were unable to obtain data for users between the ages of 13 and 17. The company only shares total downloads for users between the ages of 18 and 24, and does not share that data as it is…
Bankrupt cryptocurrency company FTX announced on Friday that Anthony Scaramucci (pictured above), his hedge fund Skybridge Capital, and others including Crypto.com and Mark Zuckerberg-backed lobbying group Fwd.us filed 23 lawsuits against organizations. These lawsuits are an attempt to recover funds from FTX's creditors following its bankruptcy. FTX said the funds targeted in these lawsuits were made at a time when the company was struggling to meet its cash flow needs, and that the funds targeted by founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried. It alleges that it was part of an “influence buying campaign” by Mr. “These 'investments' provided little benefit…
OpenAI's next flagship model may not represent as much progress as its predecessors, according to a new report in The Information. Employees who tested the new model, codenamed Orion, found that while its performance outperformed OpenAI's existing model, it did not see the same improvement seen with the transition from GPT-3 to GPT-4. It is reported that they discovered that. In other words, the rate of improvement appears to be slowing. In fact, in some areas, such as coding, Orion may not be reliably better than previous models. In response, OpenAI established a foundation team to consider how models can…
A new code introduced in the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system could make it more difficult for both police and thieves to unlock iPhones. 404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that cellphones being kept for forensic testing appeared to be restarting automatically. This was confirmed by security experts as well. After rebooting, these phones will be harder to unlock by password cracking tools. Apple did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. This restart appears to occur if an iPhone with iOS 18.1 is not unlocked for a period of time.…
Exactly 20 years ago, Mozilla began shipping version 1.0 of its Firefox browser. Back then, you could download or buy a CD-ROM with the guidebook from Mozilla (or maybe you could get it on one of the free CDs that came with many magazines at the time). (No) Born from the ashes of Netscape, Firefox would go on to capture well over 30% of the global market. However, a period of stagnation followed, and after the arrival of the faster and lighter Google Chrome, Firefox slowly but surely lost market share. It also didn't help that at the time, Mozilla…