Author: TechBrunch
AI agents are supposed to be the next big trend in AI, but there's no exact definition of what they are. At the moment, people can't agree on what exactly an AI agent consists of. Simply put, an AI agent uses AI-powered software to perform a set of tasks that a human customer service agent, HR professional, or IT help desk employee would have performed in the past, but ultimately could include any task. You ask an agent to do something, and they do it for you. They span multiple systems and do more than just answer questions. Seems simple…
Welcome to Startups Weekly, your weekly dose of the can't miss happenings from the startup world. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Friday. This week we look at an AI startup that wants to help people get more creative using video, Kudos, which raised $3 million to eliminate diaper rash, and VCs backing other VCs. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Helsing Investors continue to pour dollars and euros into startups that help defend the world from aggressive nation states. Hellsing, a defense startup that uses AI to improve battlefield decision-making, has raised 450…
New research is investigating whether AI can become an automated assistant in creative tasks, with mixed results: AI appears to help naturally less creative people write more original short stories, but it also weakens creativity across the group — a trade-off that may become increasingly common as AI tools influence creative endeavors. The study, by Anil Doshi of University College London and Oliver Hauser of the University of Exeter, was published in the journal Science Advances. While it is necessarily limited by its focus on short stories, it seems to support the opinion expressed by many: that while AI may…
Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne has acquired HeadSpin in a bargain sale, TechCrunch has learned exclusively, and sources say most of the company's former employees received nothing in return for their options. HeadSpin is a mobile app testing company whose founder was sentenced to prison for fraud earlier this year. Since its founding in 2015, HeadSpin has raised a total of $117 million from investors including Google Ventures, Iconiq, Dell Technologies Ventures, Battery Ventures, Felicis, and Tiger Global. The company was last valued at $1.1 billion in 2020. One former employee, who asked not to be named, told TechCrunch that…
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a new bill aimed at protecting artists, songwriters, and journalists from having their content used to train AI models or generate AI content without their consent. Called the Content Provenance and Integrity from Editorial and Deepfake Media Act (COPIED Act), the bill also aims to make it easier to identify AI-generated content and combat the rise of harmful deepfakes. The bill was authored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Senate Artificial Intelligence Working Group Member Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), and Commerce Committee Member Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). The bill would require companies…
When Keith Rabois announced in January that he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital world, and not just because Rabois is a big name in the industry. This was surprising because, unlike many other fields, venture capitalists, especially those who reach partner or general partner level like Lavoie, traditionally don't move around much. VC funds have a 10-year life cycle, and partners have good reasons to stay the course. In some cases, a partner may become the “key man” of the firm's fund, in which case,…
Archer Aviation and Southwest Airlines are teaming up to figure out what it would take to build a network of electric air taxis at California airports, with Southwest's customer data at the center of it all. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday, laying the groundwork for Archer to tap into Southwest's customer base and gain access to data about its customers to help inform decisions like where to build vertical takeoff and landing sites and local eVTOL stations. This marks the second U.S. airline Archer has partnered with, after United Airlines, suggesting the eVTOL company is…
Five years ago, numerous apps began implementing dark mode, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, and WhatsApp. Apple and Google began offering system-wide dark themes for their mobile operating systems in 2018. Wikipedia has finally caught up and will begin implementing dark mode on its mobile website in 2024. If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile this week, you may have seen a pop-up informing you that dark mode is primetime. Here's how to turn on dark mode: Visit the Wikipedia site. Tap on the hamburger menu at the top. Tap on Settings. In the Color section, select “Dark” as…
AT&T said Friday that cybercriminals had stolen call records from “almost all” of its customers, a data breach that will force the company to notify about 110 million people. AT&T said the stolen data included records of which phone numbers certain customers called and texted, as well as the total number of calls and text messages and the duration of calls, for a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022. AT&T said the stolen data did not include the content, times or dates of calls or text messages. AT&T said that for some affected customers, cybercriminals were…
A new Federal Trade Commission investigation is looking into the “dark patterns” that subscription apps and websites use to extract more money and data from users. “Dark patterns” is actually a term used in the FTC report to refer to manipulative design techniques that trick users into doing things they wouldn't normally do or paying for things they wouldn't normally pay for. They're not necessarily illegal, but they're ethically questionable, so it's good to be aware of them. So the FTC said it looked at 642 websites and apps offering subscriptions earlier this year and found that about 76% of…