Author: TechBrunch

Voice cloning startup ElevenLabs today announced a new tool that lets users generate sound effects through prompts. The company first announced the project in February. The tool, available to all users starting today, allows users to generate sound snippets by inputting prompts such as “sound of waves,” “metal crashing,” “birds chirping” or “race car engine noise.” The sound effects tool also lets you generate instrumental music clips up to 22 seconds long using prompts like guitar loops, jazz saxophone solos, music techno loops, and more. Free users can generate 10,000 characters per month. Generating a sound byte takes about 150…

Asia's startup ecosystem hasn't been doing so well in recent years, with everything from geopolitics to rising interest rates impacting investor appetite. Many venture firms have retreated from China, once the largest venture market in Asia, and while the number of funding rounds in other regions hasn't dropped significantly, the number of rounds has shrunk significantly. Investors are not putting as much money into them as they used to. Still, some investors are bullish on the continent's potential and are developing global strategies to seek investments with the potential to pay off. Venture firm Antler appears to be one such…

The 2024 election is likely to be the first in which fake audio and video of candidates become a serious factor. As the race heats up, voters should take notice. New research shows that cloning the voices of the president and other major politicians faces little backlash from AI companies. The Digital Hate Countermeasures Center looked at six different AI-powered voice cloning services – Invideo AI, Veed, ElevenLabs, Speechify, Descript and PlayHT – and each service attempted to clone the voices of eight leading politicians and generate five false statements in each voice. In 193 cases out of 240 total…

When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he would look at the billboards in his car window to figure out how close he was to home. Now, as CEO of OneScreen.ai, he helps startups like fintech company Ramp and tech recruiter Karat advertise on billboards and other platforms. “I think billboards are cool and help bring creativity back into marketing,” Ewing told TechCrunch. “Unlike digital screens, billboards are like a canvas for marketers.” Ewing joined Boston-based OneScreen last year, which provides software that acts as a middleman between startups and outdoor advertising space (billboards, subway ads,…

Eric Lefkofsky is no stranger to going public: This will be his fourth time publicly listed. The serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at nearly $4 billion, has already taken three companies he founded public. Today, he's the founder of Tempus, a genomic testing and data analytics company preparing for an IPO, but he's best known as the co-founder of daily deal pioneer Groupon, which went public in 2011 at a valuation of about $13 billion in one of the year's most high-profile debuts. While Groupon's IPO and the years following it were notoriously troubled, the public offerings of…

TechCrunch Disrupt showcases cutting-edge technology and innovation, and this year's event did not disappoint. Of the thousands of insightful breakout sessions submitted to this year's Audience Choice program, five breakout sessions rose to the top and were selected by thousands of people around the world to speak at this year's event. Without further ado, here are the 2024 Audience Choice Breakout Session winners who will be speaking in October: Outside-in: Connecting startups and big banks to drive the future of finance The future of finance lies in collaboration between traditional institutions and agile startups. Led by Arvind Purushotham (Citi Ventures),…

Cybersecurity firm Check Point has announced that attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in its enterprise VPN products to infiltrate customers' corporate networks. The company has not yet revealed who is responsible for the cyberattack or how many customers were affected by the intrusion, which was linked to a vulnerability that security researchers said was “extremely easy” to exploit. Check Point said in a blog post this week that a vulnerability in its Quantum network security devices could allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive credentials from affected devices and gain access to a victim's entire network. Check Point said attackers…

Spotify continues to face criticism over its decision to end support for its in-car streaming device, Car Thing, announced in early May. The company said the device will no longer work after December 9, 2024. On TikTok, Gen Z users have posted videos expressing their frustration with Spotify's response and recommendations such as switching to Android Auto and CarPlay. In many cases, they note, they never had access to their car's built-in infotainment system in the first place, making them the target market for dedicated players like Car Thing. The streaming service's in-car gadget hasn't been on the market long…

In a series of posts on X on Thursday, Paul Graham, co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, denied allegations that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pressured him to step down as president of Y Combinator in 2019 over a potential conflict of interest. “People are [Y Combinator] “Sam Altman was fired,” Graham wrote. “That is not true.” Altman became a partner at Y Combinator in 2011, initially working part-time, and in February 2014, Graham appointed him president of Y Combinator. Altman co-founded the nonprofit OpenAI in 2015 with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston, and has…

Factories and manufacturing facilities are becoming “smart” through sensors, robotics and other connected technologies, creating a treasure trove of potential data that can be mined for insights into bottlenecks and other improvements, or even to speed up processes that would otherwise require a lot of manual labor. However, much of the data generated is unstructured and not easy to put to immediate use. While big data analytics has long been a mainstay in industries such as finance and logistics, it has yet to fully penetrate the manufacturing sector. This has created a gold mine of untapped insights and, more recently,…