Author: TechBrunch
Meta AI, Meta's AI assistant, is getting a new voice mode. At its Meta Connect 2024 developer conference in Menlo Park on Wednesday morning, Meta announced that you can now voice-answer questions across the platforms where its Meta AI is available, including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook. You can choose from multiple voices, including celebrity AI clones that Meta hired for the purpose (Awkwafina, Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell). The new Meta AI voice feature isn't like OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, which is highly expressive and can pick up the emotive tones of a…
Marvin Prutlab, CEO of the emerging startup Convergence, and his co-founder Andy Tulis (CTO) met while working on recommendation systems and AI assistants at Shopify. The two joined enterprise AI platform Cohere and came up with the idea for the startup a few months ago. [Cohere] “Because we'd been using agents for a few years — three or four years,” Prutlab said. They realized the concept of agents was premature a few years ago. The duo hired talent from Google DeepMind, Meta, OpenAI, and PolyAI, developed the product in just a few months, and attracted significant interest from investors. Currently,…
Meta Connect 2024 is just around the corner, with expected announcements and updates on Meta's latest AI models and metaverse ambitions. The developer-focused event will feature a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is expected to unveil new hardware and software to support Meta's two big ambitions: AI and the metaverse. This could include anything from a new Quest headset, updates to Meta's Llama AI models, and changes to Meta's Facebook, Instagram, and Threads platforms. Meta Connect 2024 will go live at 10am PST and you can stream it on the Meta Connect site, the Meta Developer Facebook page, or,…
In 2019, Microsoft launched Dapr, a new open source project to make it easier for developers to build event-driven distributed applications. Like many popular open source projects, Dapr has spawned its own ecosystem, especially after Microsoft donated it to the Linux Foundation. And as is often the case, some of the creators of Dapr and the related KEDA project have left to start their own companies, including Diagrid, which is launching its fully managed Dapr service in public beta today. The new service, Catalyst, acts as an API platform, giving developers an alternative to managing their own Dapr installations. Image…
Two of the industry's most famous sisters, Erin Foster and Sara Foster, sit down with business partner Phil Schwartz at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to talk consumer investing, cultural curation, and what it means to be a creative today. Conversations taking place on the main stage at Disrupt will cover a range of topics, including the creator economy, consumer investment and more. Erin Foster and Sara Foster are the very definition of a multi-hyphenate duo. They are the founders of Oversubscribed Ventures, which invests in consumer brands and technology (its portfolio includes diaper brand Kudos). Sarah is also an angel investor,…
Hydrogen as a fuel has many advantages — it can be burned instead of coal to produce heat, it can be run through electrolysers to generate electricity, and it can refuel cars as quickly as gasoline or diesel — but getting it to where it's needed is a challenge. Hydrogen, the lightest gas in the universe, is hard to contain: it leaks through tiny cracks and seeps into certain metals, where it breaks down. Transporting it typically requires compressing it or liquefying it, both of which require a lot of energy. But there's an alternative: attach hydrogen atoms to carrier…
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Let us revise that phrase to reflect the current AI gold rush: nothing is certain except death, taxes, and new AI models, the last of which is emerging at an unprecedented pace. Earlier this week, Google released its upgraded Gemini model, and earlier this month OpenAI unveiled its o1 model, but on Wednesday it was Meta's turn to show off its latest model at Meta Connect 2024, its annual developer conference in Menlo Park. Llama diversity Meta's family of multilingual Llama models has reached version 3.2. With this…
Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook service, continues to experiment with AI to improve audiobook discoverability and provide customized recommendations. Recent tests include AI-powered tags that analyze customer feedback to make customized suggestions based on individual preferences, and topic pages that recommend tags to help you find highly relevant subjects. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that the experiment is only available to 50% of U.S. users with iOS and Android devices. Image credit: Audible Through the app's new “Tags” carousel, Audible's AI analyzes customer reviews and provides brief descriptions of why other listeners enjoyed a particular audiobook. For example, at the top…
The European Commission has published a list of the first 100-plus signatories to the AI Pact, an initiative focused on getting companies to publish “voluntary commitments” about how they will approach and deploy artificial intelligence. The EU's risk-based, legally binding AI rulebook (AI Act) came into force last month, but its compliance deadlines will take several years to come into full force, creating a non-compliance gap that the EU is seeking to fill with its AI treaty. The initiative aims to increase engagement and foster commitment so that companies can take preemptive steps to implement the law's requirements ahead of…
Toyota Ventures was founded in 2017 to help startups envision the future, with the aim of ensuring that Toyota, as a car manufacturer and brand, remains at the forefront of innovation. The company initially targeted mobility startups, but the move into climate tech was a natural fit: Toyota Ventures now manages more than $800 million in assets across six funds, with $300 million dedicated to climate-related funds. During Climate Week NYC, Rebecca Beran spoke with Lisa Coca, partner at Toyota Ventures and head of the firm's Climate Fund, about trends and challenges in investing in climate tech. This week's episode…