Author: TechBrunch
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will investigate all aspects of the rise of AI technology, FTC Chair Lina Khan said at TechCrunch's Strictly VC event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. But Khan said the commission's goal is not to crush startups trying to compete in the space with increased regulation. “We want to make sure that the arteries of commerce are open, the avenues of commerce are open, and that if you have a good idea and you can commercialize it — if there's interest in the market — you have a fair chance to compete,” Khan told the…
It's always interesting to see what gets people excited about a keynote. There's always one big, big name item that makes the biggest headlines — at WWDC 2024 this week, that award went to Apple Intelligence — but often it's the little things that presenters sling around that really get people excited. The arrival of Calculator for iPad was the biggest pre-AI attraction at the event; even the mention of the app got the crowd excited before the company showed off its impressive equation-solving capabilities. Sometimes, some deferred gratification is all you need. As surprising as it is to admit,…
One of the biggest questions surrounding models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Midjourney since they launched is what role, if any, they will play in everyday life. That's something Apple is trying to answer with its own take on the category, Apple Intelligence, which was officially unveiled at WWDC 2024 this week. The company went all out for show at its launch event on Monday. That's what keynotes are all about. When Senior Vice President Craig Federighi wasn't skydiving or doing parkour tricks with the help of some Hollywood (Cupertino, to be precise) wizardry, Apple was determined to prove that its…
When generative AI tools started to gain traction following the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the finance industry was one of the first to recognize the potential of these tools to speed up the process of data collection and research — after all, speed is crucial when advising investors who need to respond quickly to market changes. Now, a startup called Linq has entered the space with an AI agent that can automate a variety of tasks required for financial analysis and research, and has raised $6.6 million in a funding round led by InterVest and Atinum, with participation…
Artificial intelligence, despite its incredible capabilities, is starting to get a bad rap among consumers. AI chatbots are prone to hallucinations – making up answers when they don't know how to respond and confidently presenting false information as if it were fact. Google's search AI overhaul went so wrong that the company was forced to admit that it never intended to encourage users to put glue on pizza or eat stones, and then rolled back the feature for some search queries after it made so many mistakes. Microsoft's AI-powered recording feature “recall” will now be turned off by default after…
It’s WWDC 2024 keynote time! Each year Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference with a few hours of just straight announcements, like the long-awaited Apple Intelligence and a makeover for smart AI assistant, Siri. We expected much of them to revolve around the company’s artificial intelligence ambitions (and here), and Apple didn’t disappoint. We also bring you news about Vision Pro and lots of feature refreshes. Here’s how to watch the archive of WWDC 2024. Developers should expect hardware and software updates, per the usual, and some other items we initially thought would be unveiled. Brian Heater also went…
Jordan Meyer and Matthew Dryhurst founded Spawning AI to create tools that give artists more control over how their work is used online, and their latest project, called Source.Plus, aims to curate “copyright-free” media for training AI models. The Source.Plus project's initial effort is a dataset of about 40 million public domain and Creative Commons CC0-licensed images, which allow creators to waive nearly all legal rights to their work. Meyer claims that the Source.Plus dataset is “high quality” enough to train state-of-the-art image generation models, despite being significantly smaller than other generative AI training data sets. “At Source.Plus, we're building…
TikTok, a social media leader that seems interested in challenging Google's dominance in search, confirmed to TechCrunch that it's testing a feature that lets users take or upload photos and then find similar products in the TikTok Shop. The feature, which was first spotted by X user Jonah Manzano, is available to all users in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Users who have access to the new feature will see it in the form of a camera icon in the search bar of the TikTok Shop. For example, say you're served a dish at a restaurant and you love it…
The biggest update coming to Apple's iMessage and Messages app in iOS 18 isn't AI Emoji, Genmoji, or the ability to send texts via satellite. It's finally the ability to send messages at a later date and time, and support for RCS, the next-generation messaging standard that replaces SMS, which makes texting with Android users a lot easier. Though they got lost amid a flurry of AI announcements and other user interface tweaks at WWDC 2024, these messaging features will have a major impact on how people communicate on a daily basis. For years, consumer demand for scheduled messages has…
After teasing it back in March, Google is finally bringing the Gemini Nano AI model to Pixel 8 and 8a users. Users will have access to the model as a developer option in the June Pixel drop. Other additions in the feature drop include Display Port connection support for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a, reverse phone number lookup for unknown numbers, fall and collision detection for Pixel Watch 2, and doorbell notifications for Pixel tablets. Pixel smartphone updates The Gemini Nano model will allow for detailed summaries of transcriptions in the Recorder app, and beyond this, the company did not…