Author: TechBrunch

Apple has removed WhatsApp, an end-to-end encrypted messaging app owned by Meta, from China's App Store following a government order citing national security concerns, news agency Reuters reported on Friday. Ta. Meta's new Twitter-like text-based social networking app, Threads, was also removed from the App Store for the same reason. “The Cyberspace Administration of China has ordered the removal of these apps from Chinese store shelves based on national security concerns,” Apple said in a statement to the news agency. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that two of its apps are no longer available on Apple's App Store in China, but…

Artificial intelligence has been a target for governments concerned about its potential to be used for fraud, disinformation, and other malicious online activities. In the UK, regulators are currently preparing to investigate how AI can be used to combat content that is particularly harmful to children. Ofcom, the regulator responsible for enforcing the UK's online safety laws, is investigating how AI and other automated tools are used now and in the future, particularly to proactively detect and remove illegal content online. announced that they are planning to start discussions on whether it can be used for this purpose. Protect children…

Generative AI models are increasingly being introduced into healthcare settings, but in some cases it is perhaps too early. Early adopters believe they can unlock insights that would otherwise be missed while realizing increased efficiency. However, critics say these models are flawed and biased and can lead to poorer health outcomes. But is there a quantitative way to know how helpful or harmful a model is when tasked with a task like summarizing patient records or answering health-related questions? AI startup Hugging Face proposes a solution in a newly released benchmark test called Open Medical-LLM. Created in collaboration with researchers…

Ibotta debuted at $117 per share on Thursday, beginning its journey as a publicly traded company. This is a significant increase from the IPO price of $88 and also an increase from the proposed price of $76 to $84 per share. And this pop comes even as the company expanded its offering earlier this week, with existing shareholders increasing the offering by just under 1 million shares. Although the stock price has not continued to rise in early trading, it remains stable above the IPO price of approximately $100 at the time of writing. The company “left money for very…

Consolidation is happening rapidly in the security world. Lacework, a cloud security startup whose previous funding round had a post-money valuation of $8.3 billion, is in talks to be acquired by another security company, Wiz, for just $150 million to $200 million, according to sources. It is said that A person close to the negotiations said the two companies have already signed letters of intent and that the status of negotiations is “somewhere in the middle.” That means the acquisition is not yet complete and the deal could still fall through. While both companies are working on the broader field…

A financially motivated criminal hacking group says it has stolen a confidential database containing millions of records used by companies to screen potential customers for links to sanctions and financial crimes. The hackers, who call themselves GhostR, said in March they stole 5.3 million records from the World-Check testing database and threatened to publish the data online. World-Check is a screening database used for “Know Your Customer” checks (KYC), which allows businesses to identify potential customers as high-risk, such as those involved in money laundering or under government sanctions. , you can determine if you are a potential criminal. The…

AT&T's recent mega-customer data breach (74 million accounts affected) reveals how much influence data carriers have on their users and that their data exists because of hacks I made it. On Thursday, he announced $61 million in funding to help a Washington, D.C.-based startup called Cape, founded by former Palantir executives, build what it claims will be a safer approach. Giving away your name, address, social security number, or location because they never asked for it in the first place. According to the company's website, “You can't leak or sell what you don't have.” “We ask for minimal personal information…

Meta has released Llama 3, the latest in the Llama series of open source generative AI models. More precisely, the company has open sourced two of his models of the new Llama 3 family, and the remaining models are expected to be released in an unspecified future. Mehta said the new model Llama 3 8B contains 8 billion parameters, Llama 3 70B contains 70 billion parameters, and the previous generation Llama models Llama 2 8B and Llama 2 70B. He described it as a “huge improvement” compared to the previous. In terms of performance. (Parameters essentially define an AI model's…

Meta is making some big moves today to advance AI services across its platform. The company has upgraded his AI chatbot with its latest large-scale language model, Llama 3, which now runs in the search bar of his four major apps: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In addition to this, the company also announced other new features such as faster image generation and access to his web search results. This confirms and expands on a test TechCrunch reported last week that found the company had begun testing meta AI in Instagram's search bar. The company also plans to launch a…

TechCrunch reports that NASA's decision to cancel its $11 billion, 15-year mission to return samples to Mars could spark a supply frenzy for startups. NASA is going back to square one in hopes of getting the space industry to cooperate, saying the plan is too slow and too expensive. Sure, you might worry that NASA won't be able to manage its own missions on an acceptable schedule and budget, but huge amounts of money are being swallowed up by startups working on making space more accessible. Opportunity can be a huge boon. Startups aren't all social media apps, enterprise software,…