Author: TechBrunch
Google announced on Monday that it will now open its AI technology, Gemini, to teens using school accounts, in addition to the teens who already use personal accounts. The company is also giving educators access to the new tools in conjunction with the release. Google says giving teens access to Gemini will help equip them with the skills they need to succeed in a future filled with generative AI. The company believes Gemini will help students become more confident learners through real-time feedback. Google says it won't use chat data with students to train or improve AI models, and it's…
Months after filing charges against Apple for non-compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission has reported its preliminary findings to Apple. The conclusion is that the current App Store rules violate the DMA. If found to be in violation of the DMA, fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover could be imposed. “'Act differently' should be their new slogan,” EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to X. “For too long, Apple has shut out innovative companies and denied consumers new opportunities and choices.” In this particular case, the Commission considers that third-party developers should…
Mixhalo, the live event audio streaming platform, announced this week that it is launching a new translation service. Simply called Mixhalo Translate, the service combines the startup's ultra-low latency in-person streaming with AI-generated speech translation — a combination that makes a lot of sense in a conference setting. “Interpretation at conferences and live events is done the same way today as it was in 1995,” CEO John Vaas said in a statement. As someone who attended several conferences in Asia not that long ago, I can attest to the fact that modern rigs haven't changed much in the past decade.…
Prosus, one of Bijou's key investors, said on Monday that its stake in the Indian edtech startup once worth $2.1 billion is now worthless, but it remains hopeful that India's once most valuable startup can be rescued. Prosus, Bijoux’s largest outside investor with a 9.6% stake, said in a quarterly report that the value of its stake in the startup had gone to zero “due to a significant decline in value to equity investors.”Prosus Group Chief Information Officer Erwin Tu said on the earnings call that the company remains optimistic about Bijoux’s prospects but that improving governance at the Indian…
Vinod Khosla is hotter than ever. The Sun Microsystems co-founder turned high-profile investor, first at Kleiner Perkins and for the past two decades at his own venture firm, Khosla Ventures, has always been sought out by founders for his forthright advice and the firm's track record, which includes investments in Stripe, Square, Affirm, and DoorDash. But his $50 million bet on OpenAI in 2019 thrust Khosla Ventures and Khosla himself into the spotlight, even though it was far from clear that the outfit would be successful at its current scale. He's having a lot of fun. When I sat down…
After months of testing during the general elections, Meta has rolled out its Llama-3-powered AI chatbot to all users in India. However, Meta AI currently only supports English and not other local languages. The company began testing Meta AI in India in April, rolling it out to select users across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. A few days later, the company officially rolled out the bot to more than a dozen countries, but not India, likely due to the country's general elections at the time. Meta not only makes the chatbot available to all users through the in-app search bar,…
To shine a well-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on women academics and others focused on AI, TechCrunch is launching an interview series highlighting notable women who have contributed to the AI revolution. Annika Collier Navaroli is a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and a Technology Public Voices Fellow at the OpEd Project in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation. She is known for her research and advocacy in the technology space. Previously, she served as a practitioner fellow on race and technology at the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. Prior to that, she led…
The EU Digital Identity Wallet is an ambitious project from the European Union that hasn’t yet attracted much attention, but is worth keeping an eye on as it could have big payoffs in the coming years. The goal is to create a universal digital identity system for citizens. If all goes as planned, Europeans will be able to download and use a free EU Digital Identity wallet to access a wide range of public and private services, using identity verification and other credentials stored in an app on their smartphones. Following the recent adoption of key legal frameworks, EU countries…
Who's afraid of the Big Bad DEI? The acronym has now become almost toxic. The term creates almost instant tension between those who support it and those who want to abolish it. A prime example of this divide is the response to a post on X last week by Alexandr Wang, founder of the startup Scale AI, in which he wrote about moving away from DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and embracing “MEI” (merit, excellence, and intelligence) instead. “Size is a meritocracy, and we must always maintain that attitude,” Wang wrote. “Inviting someone to join our mission has always meant…
As Apple enters the AI race, it is also seeking help from partners. In an Apple Intelligence announcement earlier this month, Apple said it would partner with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to an improved version of Siri, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple and Facebook parent company Meta are in talks about a similar deal. Those talks have not yet been finalized and may reportedly fall through. Meta declined to comment, and Apple did not immediately respond. As Sara Perez pointed out, Apple's approach to AI seems a bit boring and pragmatic at the moment. The…