Author: TechBrunch

AI models that understand video as well as text enable powerful new applications. At least that's what Jae Lee, co-founder of Twelve Labs, believes. Admittedly, Mr. Lee is a bit biased. Twelve Labs trains video analytics models for a variety of use cases. However, there may be some truth to his argument. Twelve Labs' model allows users to search for videos of specific moments, summarize clips, and ask questions such as “When did the person in the red shirt enter the restaurant?” You can. This is a powerful feature set. Perhaps this is why the company has attracted big-name backers…

Character AI is facing at least two lawsuits, with plaintiffs accusing the company of contributing to a teen's suicide, exposing a 9-year-old to “hypersexualized content,” and encouraging a 17-year-old user to self-harm. is being accused as such. Amid these ongoing lawsuits and widespread user criticism, the Google-backed company today announced new teen safety tools. It has a different model for teenagers, input/output blocks on sensitive topics, a notice warning users against continued use, and a more prominent disclaimer informing users that: That AI character is not a real person. The platform allows users to create various AI characters and talk…

AI training data comes with a hefty price tag, making it ideal for deep-pocketed technology companies. To this end, Harvard University plans to release a dataset containing 1 million public domain books across genres, languages, and authors, including Dickens, Dante, and Shakespeare, which are old and Not protected by copyright. The new dataset is not yet available, and it is not clear when or how it will be released. However, because it contains books derived from Google Books, Google's long-standing book-scanning project, Google will be involved in publishing “this far-reaching treasure trove.” Harvard University first teased the Institutional Data Initiative…

Bad news for those still using Skype. The Microsoft-owned phone and messaging platform has quietly stopped users from adding credit to their accounts or purchasing Skype phone numbers. Instead, Skype is locked into SaaS mode. It forces users to subscribe to regional and global Skype to Phone plans for a set monthly fee, potentially affecting millions of people. The latest Skype numbers released by Microsoft last year said it had 36 million daily active users. Microsoft has not officially announced this change. News of this change was first discovered last week in the form of a response from a volunteer…

AI is becoming increasingly expensive to develop and run. OpenAI's AI operating costs could reach $7 billion this year, while Anthropic's CEO recently suggested that a $10 billion-plus model could soon arrive. Therefore, we are looking for ways to make AI more affordable. Some researchers focus on techniques to optimize existing model architectures, the structures and components that make a model work. Some companies are developing new architectures that they believe will allow them to scale up affordably. Karan Goel belongs to the latter camp. At the startup he helped co-found, Cartesia, Goel works on what he calls state-space models…

Security researchers have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the infotainment units used in some Skoda cars. This vulnerability could allow a malicious attacker to remotely trigger certain controls and track the vehicle's location in real time. PCAutomotive, a cybersecurity company specializing in the automotive sector, revealed 12 new security vulnerabilities affecting the latest model of the Skoda Superb III sedan this week at Black Hat Europe. This comes a year after the organization disclosed nine other vulnerabilities affecting the same model. Skoda is a car brand owned by German car giant Volkswagen. Danila Parnyshev, head of security assessment at PCAutomotive, told…

In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of mental health startups these days, many of which were prompted by the pandemic and subsequent increased attention to mental health. is. However, in many cases there is little connection to clinical trials or health care systems. A new venture from Britain's KHP Ventures is tackling this issue with new £20 million ($25.5 million) funding specifically aimed at accelerating start-ups tackling depression, anxiety and mental illness. I'm planning on fixing it. The charity foundation Wellcome is supporting the fund as an anchor investor, contributing £8 million ($10.2 million). The fund is…

This summer, shortly after BeReal was acquired by French mobile game publisher Voodoo, the candid selfie-sharing app popular with Gen Z changed the way it asks users for consent to be tracked. The resulting pop-up is currently the subject of a privacy violation complaint in Europe. Confirmed violations of the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) could result in fines of up to 4% of annual global revenue. European privacy nonprofit noyb is behind the complaint, accusing BeReal of using manipulative tactics (also known as “dark patterns”) to pressure users into consenting to ad tracking. This violates the GDPR standard…

Tom Gardiner and Harry Marshall founded Trevor.io in 2016 as a no-code business intelligence platform that enables people without data to perform analytics on internal data. While its business was strong, customers increasingly asked the company for access to the same tools for customer-facing data. Gardiner told TechCrunch that the company initially resisted calls to build new products, keeping its head down and focusing on internal data tools. But soon the demand became too great to ignore, Gardiner said. “Bigger companies started knocking on our door and were like, 'Okay, we need to look into this,'” Gardiner said. As a…

Byte Federal, one of the largest Bitcoin ATM operators in the United States, said the personal data of thousands of customers may have been compromised in a recent breach. In documents filed with the Maine attorney general, Florida-based Byte Federal said the hackers had access to names, addresses, phone numbers, government-issued IDs, social security numbers, transaction activity and photos of users. It said it attempted to access the data of 58,000 customers. The company said the breach occurred on September 30th and was discovered by Byte Federal on November 18th. It said an anonymous attacker gained access to the company's…