Author: TechBrunch

Berlin-based Pacifico Biolab believes it has a unique approach that uses fermentation to create whole muscle structures, aiming to replace traditional seafood with alternatives. Fermentation, the process of growing cells in bioreactors, is already used to make many alternative proteins such as cultured meat, but co-founder and CEO Zach Austin We call the process a “complete transformation.” Prior to joining Pacifico Biolab, Austin worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey in London. After he finished his job at the UK government's coronavirus task force, he met co-founder Washington Nelson Logroño Vintimilla, who had moved to Europe from Ecuador for graduate…

Over the past few decades, extreme weather events have not only become more severe but also more frequent. Neara is focused on enabling utilities and energy providers to model their power networks and the things that could impact them, such as wildfires and floods. The Redfern, New South Wales, Australia-based startup recently launched an AI and machine learning product that creates large-scale models of networks and assesses risk without manual inspection. Since launching commercially in 2019, Neara has raised a total of AUD 45 million (approximately USD 29.3 million) from investors including Square Peg Capital, Skip Capital and Press Ventures.…

New features and firsts for OpenAI. — Sora, a video generation model, can perform some truly impressive cinematic feats.But the model is uniform. more OpenAI has more capabilities than originally assumed, at least judging from a technical paper published this evening. Co-authored by a number of OpenAI researchers, the paper, entitled “Video Generation Models as World Simulators,” peels back the curtain on key aspects of Sora's architecture, including how Sora can handle arbitrary resolutions and aspect ratios. It reveals that it can generate videos (up to 1080p). According to the paper, Sora can perform a variety of image and video…

Spurred by the growing threat of deepfakes, the FTC is amending existing rules that prohibit impersonation of businesses and government agencies to include all consumers. Depending on the final language and the public comments the FTC receives, the rule changes will allow GenAI platforms to identify products and services that they know or have reason to know are being used to harm consumers through identity theft. It may also be illegal to provide such information. “Scammers are using AI tools to impersonate a wider range of individuals with uncanny accuracy,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “With…

After announcing results that exceeded expectations US-based Coinbase has big plans, announced in its fourth quarter earnings report. The second-largest cryptocurrency exchange will focus this year on its popular USDC stablecoin efforts, leveraging its recently launched Layer 2 blockchain base as a way to experiment and improve the utility of blockchain. The company has told investors that it intends to do so, and is committed to continuing to work on regulation on behalf of its company and the larger Web3 industry. Meanwhile, the bull market and capital flows into financial institutions are starting to pick up again. Coinbase’s strong fourth-quarter…

There's some joy in this A cold world is the equivalent of opening a new comic book on a lazy Sunday morning. There's nothing to do and no need to be anywhere. Just you, a mug of coffee, and some continuous art. Not much has fundamentally changed about American comics since publishers began collecting newspaper bindings in the early 20th century. True, the content has radically changed, but at the end of the day the basics still remain: characters and text captured in panels designed to be read in sequence. However, in recent decades, the variety of shipping methods has…

There have been many attempts at open-source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft, and Jasper to name a few), all of which have focused on privacy without compromising functionality. Established with the goal of creating a protected offline experience. However, development has proven to be very slow. That's because, in addition to the usual challenges associated with open source projects, programming the assistant is extremely difficult. difficult. Technologies like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa have years, if not decades, of research and development and huge infrastructures to boot. But that doesn't deter the people at Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network…

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected OpenAI's attempt to trademark “GPT,” ruling that the term is “merely descriptive” and cannot be registered. This is a blow to his OpenAI brand, but don't expect competitors to start releasing their own versions of the ubiquitous chatbot. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known brand in AI today, the most popular conversation model on the market, and the model that most visibly took large-scale language models from curiosity to global trend. is. However, according to the USPTO, this name does not meet the criteria for trademark registration and protection by the “TM” suffix.…

July 2021, someone sent Google a batch of malicious code that can be used to hack PCs running Chrome, Firefox, and Windows Defender. That code was part of an exploitation framework called Heliconia. According to Google, the exploits targeting these applications were zero-day at the time, meaning the software maker was unaware of the bug. More than a year later, in November 2022, Google's Threat Analysis Group, the company's team that investigates government-backed threats, published a blog post analyzing these exploits and the Heliconia framework. Google researchers concluded that the code belonged to Variston, a little-known start-up based in Barcelona.…

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. Get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important crypto articles delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12pm PT. Subscribe here. Hello. Welcome to the new and improved TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. This is our 5th edition and includes a regular news schedule, as well as some regular segments and features. So if you like what you see (or don't), let us know at jacquelyn@techcrunch.com. This week, roses were red, violets were blue, and the crypto market was green – for you.If you Follow me on Xyou may have already seen…