Author: TechBrunch

The Threads team hasn't yet committed to developing a separate inbox or direct messaging system for the social network, despite user requests, and will continue to use Instagram's inbox, although the company may make it easier to send messages to Instagram from the Threads app. App researcher Adwaith Varma posted an unannounced Threads feature on Threads, highlighting a new message button on users' profiles: Tapping on that button will reveal a text box and send button, allowing you to quickly send a message to someone's Instagram inbox. Threads confirmed to TechCrunch that this is a public test with a limited…

A love of food, and of course cheese, has led co-founder Roman Plewka and his team at German fermentation startup Formo to secure a massive $61 million Series B funding round to continue scaling their climate-friendly, animal-free cheese production. The Berlin-based startup's first product is based on koji protein, a type of fungal microorganism that has been used for millennia in Asian dishes such as miso and soy sauce. While koji is an ancient ingredient, Formo claims to be the first fermentation startup that can use it to industrially produce dairy-free cheese. The problem is, the words “vegan cheese” can…

Indian food delivery startup Swiggy is considering increasing the size of its initial public offering by $150 million, aiming to raise a total of $1.4 billion in what is likely to be one of India's largest public offerings this year. The Bengaluru-based startup plans to seek shareholder approval to raise up to 50 billion rupees ($600 million) through a new share issue, up from an earlier planned $450 million, according to a 15-page notice of a general meeting filed late last week. Swiggy, which was valued at $10.7 billion in its last fundraising in early 2022, is considering going ahead…

While living in the U.S., the Trivedi family was looking for a customary way to worship at one of India's jyotirlingas, which symbolize the Hindu god Shiva. One Sunday in 2023, after searching YouTube for ways to make ritual offerings of flowers and other items at Indian temples, the family came across a video on an emerging devotional app called Sri Mandir. The app provides customized videos of ritual prayers from over 50 Hindu temples across India and allows users to virtually join in prayers, make donations and access religious content from their iPhone or Android smartphone. It was just…

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform every industry, but perhaps the most dramatic breakthrough in this new era of data-infused machine intelligence will be in drug discovery. By analyzing vast amounts of biological data, AI helps researchers predict how different compounds will interact with specific targets in the body, accelerating the discovery of promising drug candidates. That's why CardiaTec, a University of Cambridge spinout company working to eradicate cardiovascular disease (CVD), today announced it has raised $6.5 million in seed funding to further its efforts. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), CVD is the leading cause of death worldwide,…

Apple announced several AI-powered upgrades to watchOS on Monday at its Apple Event 2024. Most of these were announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, but Apple revealed more details during its keynote this morning. The Translator app will be coming to the latest version of watchOS, watchOS 11. Like other platforms, the Translator app will leverage AI for speech recognition and translation in various languages. On the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra, the translation feature also works without a phone connection, and according to Apple, these are the only…

Amazon's audiobook business, Audible, announced Monday that it will use AI trained on the voices of professional narrators to generate new audiobook recordings. Audible says that starting this week, a select group of US-based audiobook narrators will be invited to train the AI ​​voice, which will then be used to record audio, giving the narrators the opportunity to approve the synthesized voice for a particular piece, as well as edit pronunciation and pacing. According to Audible, narrators who participate in the program will be compensated on a per-title royalty-share basis for audiobooks created using Audible's AI voices. Source link

At its latest iPhone 16 event, Apple announced that iOS 18, the new version of its iPhone operating system, will be officially released on September 16th. As previously announced at WWDC 2024, iOS 18 introduces a host of new features. Among the notable features are a set of customization options, such as the ability to arrange apps and widgets on the home screen and customize buttons. Other features include new text effects, the ability to lock and hide apps, a new way to manage your email inbox, the introduction of iMessages via satellite, and a major redesign of the Photos…

Apple's biggest event of the year has arrived, with the announcement of the iPhone 16 lineup and a slew of AI-related updates in iOS 18. Like WWDC in June, Apple Intelligence was the main focus of this year's Apple event, and Apple's announcement lineup reflected a number of highly anticipated hardware announcements, including new iPhone 16, AirPods 4, and Apple Watch Series 10. Broadcast live from the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Apple's “Glowtime” event began at 10am PST, and you can watch the full recording of the Apple event here. It remains to be seen whether Monday's announcement will spark…

After months of speculation, Apple Intelligence took center stage in June at WWDC 2024. The platform was announced following a flurry of news about generative AI from companies like Google and Open AI, raising concerns that the notoriously tight-lipped tech giant had missed out on the latest tech boom. But contrary to such speculation, Apple has assembled a team to work on a typically Apple approach to artificial intelligence, and while the demo was flashy (Apple always loves a splash), Apple Intelligence is ultimately a very pragmatic approach to the field. Apple Intelligence (yes, that's AI for short) is not…