Author: TechBrunch
It's officially that time of year when music streaming services start offering users the chance to reflect on their music listening habits for the year. YouTube Music announced Monday that users can now access the 2024 Music Recap to get personalized stats on the year's top artists, songs, moods, genres, and more. The 2024 Music Overview can be accessed on YouTube and the YouTube Music app. You'll see a banner prompting you to check your summary, but if not, go to your profile, select the “Summary” option, and tap “Get Summary.” This year's YouTube Music Recap includes animated cards similar…
On Monday, the shortlist for Apple's coveted iPhone App of the Year award revealed once again how the iPhone maker is downplaying the impact of AI technology on the mobile app ecosystem. Similar to last year, Apple's top 2024 iPhone finalists list will help iPhone users perform specific tasks, such as recording professional videos (Kino), coordinating running plans (Runna), and planning trips (Tripsy). They prefer more traditional iOS apps, including apps that help them. ). Other AI apps such as ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and apps that create AI photos and videos were not nominated for iPhone App of…
Instagram is introducing a feature that will allow users to share their location with friends through direct messages (DMs), the company announced on Monday. The feature signals that the Meta-owned social network is taking on services like Apple's Find My and Snapchat's Snap Map, which are popular ways for users to see the live locations of friends and loved ones. I am. The launch of this feature comes as no complete surprise, as Instagram was seen testing a way for users to see the live locations of their friends earlier this year. It's worth noting that Meta's other messaging app,…
Recipe app Pestle is rolling out a new feature that uses AI to automatically turn your favorite TikTok recipe videos into detailed step-by-step instructions. This new feature handles video captions, where creators tend to document ingredient lists and instructions, but is powered by on-device machine learning rather than using a third-party AI provider. This feature is similar to Pestle, which was released for Instagram Reels earlier this summer. Pestle's recipe app and cooking assistant, launched in 2022 by developer Will Bishop, makes it easy to save recipes you find on the web, just like any other app in its field.…
Anthropic is proposing a new standard for connecting AI assistants to systems where data resides. Anthropic is open sourcing a standard called Model Context Protocol (MCP) today that could help AI models generate better and more relevant responses to queries. says. MCP enables any model, not just Anthropic, to retrieve data from sources such as business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as content repositories and app development environments. “As AI assistants have gained mainstream adoption, the industry has invested heavily in model capabilities and achieved rapid advances in inference and quality,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post.…
The UK is seeking help to establish a new AI security institute aimed at countering Russia and other adversaries in what it calls a “new AI arms race”. The UK government has previously launched a number of funding initiatives to support cybersecurity projects, but the rise in AI-based state attacks is the driving force behind this latest effort. The Institute for AI Security Research (LASR) will initially receive £8.22m ($10.3m) of funding from the government itself, but it employs what it calls a “catalyst model”, with industry We hope that other organizations will contribute to this. pot. In a statement…
Back in 2016, Hammad Syed and former WhatsApp engineer Mahmoud Felfel thought it would be a good idea to build a Chrome extension with text-to-speech functionality for Medium articles. This extension allows you to read Medium stories aloud and was featured on Product Hunt. A year later, it spawned an entire business. “We saw a huge opportunity in helping individuals and organizations create realistic audio content for their applications,” Syed told TechCrunch. “We can now deploy human-quality voice experiences faster than ever before without having to build our own models.” Syed and Felfel's company, PlayAI (formerly PlayHT), bills itself as…
Entrepreneur Marc Lore has already sold both companies for a combined billion dollars. He now plans to take food delivery and takeout business Wonder public within the next few years at an ambitious valuation of $40 billion. We recently spoke with Lore in person in New York about Wonder and its ultimate goal of making meal planning easier, but we also touched on Lore's business philosophy. Below is some of what he had to say about the latter, lightly edited for length and clarity. The lore of so-called founder mode is that founders and CEOs proactively collaborate with their direct…
Looking ahead to 2024, Mike Packer, a partner at fintech-focused QED Investors, predicted that funding for fintech startups in Latin America will bottom out by the end of the year. Although the momentum was not straight to the top right, Packer's prediction may have been correct. With one month left in this year, the amount of venture capital invested in fintech companies based in Latin America has already surpassed that of 2023. According to PitchBook data, $2.6 billion has been invested in 174 deals so far in 2024. This compares to $1.5 billion invested in 241 deals in 2023. Although…
VC Jenny Fielding, 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 that 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 2020-2021…