Author: TechBrunch

Indian fintech startup CRED has introduced new features to help customers manage their cash flow and gain deeper insights as the company looks to drive engagement by providing much-needed personal finance tools. The Bengaluru-based startup, primarily known for its credit card bill payment and consumer lending services, is now foraying into the personal finance management space with a new feature it has dubbed CRED Money. CRED Money consolidates financial data from all your bank accounts and allows you to track your bank transactions and recurring payments (SIP investments, rent, staff salaries, etc.) on a single dashboard. Users can also search…

A powerful new video-generative AI model became widely available today, but it comes with a problem: The model appears to censor topics deemed too politically sensitive by the government in its native China. Developed by Beijing-based company Kuaishou, the model, “Kling,” was launched on a waiting list earlier this year for users with a Chinese phone number. Today, it's available to anyone willing to provide an email address. After signing up, users fill out a prompt and the model generates a five-second video of themselves describing themselves. Kling works as advertised: The 720p videos, which take a minute or two…

When it rains, it pours when it comes to cutting-edge AI models. Mistral released its latest flagship model, the Large 2, on Wednesday, which the company claims is on par with the latest state-of-the-art models from OpenAI and Meta in terms of code generation, mathematics and inference. The release of Mistral Large 2 comes just one day after Meta released its latest and greatest open source model, Llama 3.1 405b. Mistral says Large 2 raises the bar for performance and cost for open models, and they back that up with some benchmarks. The Large 2 appears to outperform Llama 3.1…

There are many reasons why we don't see many robots in our homes, other than robot vacuums, the most important of which is the challenge of unstructured and semi-structured environments. From floor plans to lighting, surfaces, and even people and pets, no two homes are the same. Even if robots could effectively map each home, the space is in constant flux. This week, researchers at MIT CSAIL announced a new way to train domestic robots in simulation: You can use your iPhone to scan parts of your home and upload them into the simulation. Simulation has been a fundamental element…

Apple announced on Wednesday that Apple Maps is now available on the web through a public beta, meaning you can now access the service directly from your browser. The release puts Apple Maps in direct competition with Google Maps, which has been available on the web for some time. Maps on the web are accessible in English and are compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, and Chrome and Edge on Windows PC. Apple plans to support additional languages, browsers, and platforms in the future. The web version of Apple Maps works just like the mobile app: you…

Alternative app store AltStore has released its first third-party iOS app in the European Union. The launch comes months after the company released an updated version of its app marketplace in the EU. AltStore PAL comes as a response to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces Apple to open up to new rivals. The first batch includes torrent app iTorrent, which allows users to download P2P (peer-to-peer) files, and qBitControl, a qBittorrent remote client for iOS devices. Also included in the list is PeopleDrop, a social discovery platform designed to help you connect with people nearby. There's also UTM…

Microsoft this afternoon previewed Bing Generated Search, its answer to Google's AI-powered search experience. Currently available only to a “small percentage” of users, Bing Generated Search is based on a combination of large- and small-scale generative AI models (it's not clear exactly which models) that aggregate information from across the web and generate summaries in response to search queries. For example, if a user searches for “What is a Spaghetti Western?”, a Bing-generated search will surface information about the history, origins, and top examples of the film subgenre, along with links and sources to show where those details came from.…

Hey everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. Last Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek reelection and instead gave his “full endorsement” to Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Within days, Harris had secured the support of a majority of Democratic delegates. Harris has been outspoken on technology and AI policy, but what would that mean for AI regulation in the US if she wins the presidential election? My colleague Anthony Ha wrote a bit about this over the weekend. Harris and President Biden had previously said they “reject the false choice between protecting…

Investment in generative AI startups, which are developing AI-powered products that generate text, voice, video and more, isn't slowing down, but it's consolidating into earlier-stage ventures and their numbers are shrinking. According to Crunchbase data obtained by TechCrunch, 225 startups raised $12.3 billion in venture capital in the first half of 2023 (January through July 16). If this trend continues, generative AI companies are on track to raise as much as or more than the roughly $21.8 billion they raised in 2023. Here's a breakdown of the first half of 2024 totals: 198 Angel/Seed Investments: $500M 39 Early Stage Investments:…

Today's story focuses on a rural Essex high school that ended up in breach of UK GDPR laws. It may come as a surprise to those who used to take lunch money to school, but kids these days can do a biometric face scan to pay for their meals. But as scandals with companies like Clearview AI have shown, collecting biometric data can easily become a privacy nightmare. That's why the UK's GDPR stipulates that the use of facial recognition technology must be opt-in by default. And in this high school, parents could only opt out of using the technology…