Author: TechBrunch
A closer look at venture capitalists investing in AI startups reveals that while companies are experimenting, they are very slow to add AI solutions to their ongoing business processes. However, there are some exceptions. And one of them appears to be a field known as AI Sales Development Representatives (AI SDRs). They use large-scale language models (LLM) and voice technology to create personalized outreach emails and make automated phone calls to potential customers. Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures, said of the AI SDR boom, “In some markets, we're seeing five to 10 companies succeeding in a short period of…
ChatGPT Search, an AI-powered search engine that went live this month, can be tricked into producing a completely misleading summary, British newspaper The Guardian has discovered. ChatGPT's search feature is intended to speed up your browsing by doing things like summarizing product reviews on web pages. But the Guardian found that by inserting hidden text into websites created by ChatGPT, it could be possible to ignore negative reviews and generate “completely positive” summaries. ChatGPT Search can also spit out malicious code using this method. Hidden text attacks like this are a well-known risk to LLMs, but this appears to be…
ChatGPT, Sora, and OpenAI developer APIs were down for more than four hours on Thursday. OpenAI said the major outage began at 11 a.m. PT, but as of 3:16 p.m. PT, the service was slowly coming back online. Frequent users of ChatGPT may remember that the service went down earlier this month. TechCrunch received an error message Thursday afternoon when trying to access ChatGPT and Sora. OpenAI said on its status page that the large-scale outage was caused by one of its upstream providers, but did not provide further details. OpenAI said as of 2:05 p.m. Pacific Time that ChatGPT…
The ChatGPT, Sora, and OpenAI developer APIs were down for an hour on Thursday and remained down for a while. According to OpenAI, the major outage began at 11 a.m. Pacific Time, and the service still appeared to be down as of the time of publishing this article, at approximately 12:40 p.m. Pacific Time. Frequent users of ChatGPT may remember that the service went down earlier this month. TechCrunch received an error message Thursday afternoon when trying to access ChatGPT and Sora. OpenAI said on its status page that the large-scale outage was caused by one of its upstream providers,…
A Chinese research institute has created what may be one of the most powerful “open” AI models ever. The model, called DeepSeek V3, was developed by AI company DeepSeek and released on Wednesday under a permissive license that allows developers to download and modify it for most applications, including commercial ones. DeepSeek V3 can handle a variety of text-based workloads and tasks from descriptive prompts to coding, translation, writing essays and emails, and more. According to DeepSeek's internal benchmark tests, DeepSeek V3 outperforms both “openly” available downloadable models and “closed” AI models that are only accessible via API. In some…
Henrik Fisker once envisioned a burgeoning EV empire at the startup he named after himself, which was to be led by the Ocean SUV. But cracks started showing in that vision almost as soon as the Ocean hit the road in 2023. Fisker cut production targets multiple times, failed to meet sales goals and laid off staff. What’s more, its Ocean SUV was beset with software and mechanical issues, rendering it inoperable for some. Add troublesome brakes, sudden power loss and doors that wouldn’t open to the list of issues that led to multiple safety investigations and ultimately a pause…
According to a new report in The Information, Microsoft and OpenAI are internally defining a very specific form of artificial general intelligence (AGI) based on the startup's interests. And by this definition, it will take years for OpenAI to get there. The two companies reportedly signed a deal last year that states OpenAI will only achieve AGI if it develops an AI system that generates at least $100 billion in profits. This is far from the strict technical and philosophical definition of AGI that many would expect. OpenAI will reportedly lose billions of dollars this year, and the startup has…
VC Jenny Fielding (pictured above), co-founder of Everywhere Ventures and former Techstars managing director, was basically trolling X when she posted”Do you guys have strong opinions about pre-seed founders having EAs to help them schedule? Just checking.” Fielding told TechCrunch that she knew the post was “a little mean,” but it generated a lot of buzz. Some have suggested that early-stage founders could simply use an AI executive assistant. Others were upset that venture capitalists implied they shouldn't hire people to back their companies, even in their early stages. However, Fielding pointed out that founders still harbor misconceptions from the…
Over the past few years, TechCrunch has looked back with anticipation at some of the worst, mishandled data breaches and security incidents. — Other giant companies will take note and avoid the same disasters. To no one's surprise, this year we're listing many of the same bad acts by a whole new class of companies. 23andMe blames users for massive data breach Last year, genetic testing giant 23andMe lost the genetic and ancestry data of nearly 7 million customers thanks to a data breach in which hackers brute-forced access to thousands of accounts and collected data on millions more. I…
Indian online pharmacy PharmEasy is now valued at about $456 million after investor Janus Henderson said in a filing that he valued his 12.9 million shares in the company at $766,043. Asset manager Global Research Fund originally spent $9.4 million to acquire these shares. This valuation is 92% lower than PharmEasy's all-time high of $5.6 billion. It's no wonder that valuation remains low, even though PharmEasy secured more than $200 million in new capital earlier this year and is preparing to file for an initial public offering (IPO) next year. PharmEasy had started a capital increase in 2023 amid a…