Author: TechBrunch

A new report says Apple's approach to leveraging ideas from the third-party developer community for new iOS and Mac features and apps could come with a big price. With the release of iOS 18 later this fall, Apple's changes could affect apps that currently bring in an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded about 58 million times in the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference every June, the iPhone maker previews upcoming releases of its software and operating system. These releases often include features that were previously…

Snap showed off an early version of a real-time, on-device image diffusion model that can generate vivid AR experiences at the Augmented World Expo on Tuesday, where the company also unveiled generative AI tools for AR creators. Snap co-founder and CTO Bobby Murphy said onstage that the model is small enough to run on a smartphone and fast enough to re-render frames in real time as dictated by text prompts. Murphy said the emergence of generative AI image diffusion models is exciting, but these models need to be significantly faster to be effective for augmented reality, which is why his…

Researchers have discovered a bug that could allow anyone to spoof a Microsoft corporate email account, making phishing attacks more likely to appear credible and fool their targets. As of this writing, the bug has not been fixed. To demonstrate the bug, the researcher sent TechCrunch an email that appears to have been sent from Microsoft's account security team. Last week, Vsevolod Kokorin, also known online as Slonser, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he had discovered an email spoofing bug and reported it to Microsoft, but Microsoft rejected his report because they couldn't reproduce the bug he discovered. Kokorin…

We all know the feeling of sending a funny TikTok video, hoping for a reaction from your friends only to get a laughing emoji in return, or worse, no reaction at all. Seen is looking to solve this problem with its new social app, which lets your friends record live videos of their reactions to the content you send them. The video messaging app, available for iOS devices, was co-founded by veteran entrepreneur Faheem Qazi and actress Karen Gillan, best known for her role as Nebula in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Seen lets you send videos in private one-on-one iMessages…

Stop worrying: a new AI-powered search engine has arrived, and its developers believe it's better than many others out there. The platform, called Genspark, uses generative AI to create custom summaries in response to search queries: When you enter a search such as “What is the best formula for newborns?”, Genspark generates a Sparkpage, a one-page summary compiled from websites and content from around the web. It's an experience (obviously) similar to the Arc Search feature in the Arc Browser released earlier this year, and Google AI Overviews in Google Search. But Eric Jing, who co-founded the eponymous organization behind…

Butterflies is a social network where humans and AI interact with each other through posts, comments, and DMs. After five months in beta, the app is launching to the public on iOS and Android on Tuesday. Anyone can create an AI persona, called a Butterfly, in the app in a few minutes. The Butterfly can then automatically create posts on social networks that other AIs and humans can interact with. Each Butterfly has a story, opinions, and feelings. Butterflies was founded by Vu Tran, a former engineering manager at Snap. Vu came up with the idea for Butterflies after noticing…

Apple is continuing its push into AI, this time expanding into education offerings. The company announced on Tuesday that it will train all Apple Developer Academy students and mentors in the fundamentals of AI. Apple Developer Academy graduates will also be able to participate in the training. Starting this fall, students will learn how to build, train and deploy machine learning models across Apple devices. “Courses include fundamentals of AI technologies and frameworks, Core ML and its features that deliver fast performance on Apple devices, and guidance on how to build and train AI models from scratch,” Apple said. The…

Spanish police have arrested a British man for allegedly leading an organised cybercrime ring that breached dozens of US companies. Spanish police confirmed in a press release that the 22-year-old Briton, whose name has not been released, was arrested at Parma airport as he was attempting to leave the country on a charter flight to Naples. Spanish police said in a statement that the alleged hacker used phishing techniques to steal passwords and break into at least 45 companies in the United States, stealing internal corporate information and cryptocurrency. Police said the suspected hacker had $27 million worth of cryptocurrency…

One of the hottest areas in the generative AI space is customer support, which isn't surprising given the technology's potential to increase scale while reducing contact center costs. Critics argue that generative AI-powered customer support technology could lower wages, lead to layoffs, and ultimately result in an error-prone end-user experience. Meanwhile, proponents argue that generative AI augments workers rather than replaces them, freeing them up to focus on more meaningful tasks. Jesse Chan is an advocate — though a little biased, of course. Together with Ashwin Sreenivas, Chan co-founded Decagon, a generative AI platform that automates various aspects of customer…

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