Author: TechBrunch

State-of-the-art language models like GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro are touted as “multimodal” — able to understand not just text but also images and speech — but new research reveals that these models don't actually see in the ways we might expect them to — in fact, they may not see at all. Let's be clear up front: no one is claiming that their AI can see like humans can (well, maybe some people can). But the marketing and benchmarks used to promote these models use phrases like “visual capabilities” and “visual understanding” to describe how the models see and…

You know you've got a successful startup when you start getting ripped off by big tech companies. Retro is a perfect example of this. Retro is a popular photo-sharing app that has garnered a following among users who prefer to be able to privately share photos and videos with friends and family. The company was recently caught off guard by a post from X (formerly Twitter), which debuted a new feature in Google Photos called “My Week.” Unfortunately for Retro, the feature is very similar to their own photo-sharing app, encouraging users to take photos as a daily record and…

After years of criticism over Apple's lack of innovation when it comes to Siri, the company has promised to release a smarter version of its digital assistant this fall. Powered by Apple Intelligence, the company's generative AI service, and a partnership with OpenAI, Siri will get a host of new features and updates. Here we explain what's changing with Siri and what the introduction of Apple Intelligence will enable the digital assistant to do. ChatGPT Integration Image credit: Apple Siri will soon be able to use OpenAI's ChatGPT to answer certain questions: For example, if you need recipe ideas for…

Amid growing competition from TikTok and Reels, YouTube on Thursday unveiled a series of new features aimed at boosting the appeal of its short-form video service, YouTube Shorts. In a video update for creators, YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Vorich introduced six new tools to help creators create short videos, including one that automatically converts longer videos into shorts, as well as tools to inspire creativity, such as “Add Yours” stickers that encourage others to share their own content related to a creator's video. “One of the things I love about it is that anyone can make a short video.…

By now we know a lot about computer cybersecurity, but what happens when a robotic arm on a production line is hacked and instructed to kill its human coworkers? This “device security” is a thorny problem that Rome-based startup Exein is tackling. The IoT cybersecurity company has raised €15 million in a Series B round led by 33N, a venture capital firm specializing in cybersecurity and infrastructure software. The funds will be used to expand operations in Europe, the US and Asia. Exein's IoT security solution seeks to build security measures directly into device software to “protect” devices from attacks,…

WhatsApp is now allowing businesses to send authentication and login codes to users in India through its API, and the company confirmed that it has enabled the feature in India from July 1. Meta introduced the ability for retailers to authenticate users from other regions last year, but in June it began allowing these types of messages from organisations in Malaysia and in July from organisations in India. Last month, the company began applying international authentication rates to activities such as sending login codes to users across borders. “As we discussed onstage at Conversations last month, we want to empower…

Defense AI startup Helsing has raised €450 million ($487 million) in a Series C funding round led by General Catalyst. The company now plans to expand into European countries that border Russia. The announcement comes as NATO holds its annual summit in Washington, D.C., where Russia's invasion of Ukraine is high on the agenda. As part of the plan, Helsing will set up a new company in Estonia and spend €70 million on defense projects in the Baltic states over the next three years. The Germany-based company also has offices in Munich, London and Paris, and the new funding will…

When Aizada Marat moved to California from New York with her husband, KODIF co-founder and CEO Chingiz Jumanazarov, in 2018, she needed to sort out her immigration status. That's when things started to go wrong. A Kyrgyz-born, Harvard-educated lawyer, she came to the United States at age 17 for a one-year exchange program through the U.S. State Department-sponsored Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX). After graduating from Harvard University, Marat moved to London due to immigration issues, and then came to California with Jumanazarov, who had enrolled in Stanford Business School, to take a job offer from the major law firm…

WhatsApp Business is changing its per-conversation pricing for businesses. A conversation is a 24-hour thread between a merchant and a user. The company is lowering the rates for utility messages and increasing the rates for marketing messages. Meta charges businesses through four categories of messages: marketing (offers, new products), utility (order updates, account balances), authentication (one-time passwords) and service (customer inquiries). The new utility rates will come into effect from August 4 this year, while the new marketing conversation rates will come into effect from October 4 this year. This is the first update to conversation rates since WhatsApp started…

HerculesAI (formerly Zero Systems) has been working on automating professional services since 2017, initially focusing on the legal industry. As part of that, the company has been building large language models for years, long before the idea became public knowledge. So when ChatGPT came along in late 2022 and suddenly everyone was talking about LLMs, the company was in the right place at the right time. The company today announced a $26 million Series B investment to build on its recent momentum. The company's CEO and co-founder, Alex Babin, said the company had been working since around 2020 on developing…