Author: TechBrunch

Users of conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend. Well, the popular chatbot is refusing to answer questions about “David Mayer.” If you ask it to do so, it will immediately freeze. Conspiracy theories abound, but there's a more mundane reason at the heart of this strange behavior. Word that the name is harmful to chatbots spread quickly over the weekend, with more people trying to trick the service into simply recognizing the name. Bad luck: Every time you try to get ChatGPT to spell that particular name, it may fail or cut off the middle…

U.S. officials said Tuesday that a Chinese-backed hacker group called Salt Typhoon continues to attack the networks of the nation's largest phone and internet providers, weeks after a long-running hacking campaign first came to light. announced that it had invaded some parts of the country. Cybersecurity agency CISA said affected telecom companies were still working to eliminate the hackers, in part because the hackers' motives were unclear. Rumors first surfaced in October that Salt Typhoon would be present on networks such as AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen (formerly CenturyLink). T-Mobile was targeted, but said it had largely repelled the attackers. The…

AI-driven demand for electricity is soaring that some big tech companies are at risk of falling short of their climate commitments. But Amazon is partnering with AI startup Orbital to test new materials that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, using AWS data centers as its initial location. One of the biggest costs of carbon capture is generating sufficient airflow for the adsorbent to capture meaningful amounts of carbon dioxide. Data centers appear to be the perfect place to deploy such technology, as cooling systems move large volumes of air to keep thousands of servers running at optimal temperatures. Orbital…

It's been nearly a decade since Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing division, introduced SageMaker, a platform for creating, training, and deploying AI models. In previous years, AWS has focused on significantly expanding the capabilities of SageMaker, but this year the goal was to streamline it. At the re:Invent 2024 conference, AWS announced SageMaker Unified Studio, a single place to search and work with data from across your organization. SageMaker Unified Studio integrates tools from other AWS services, including existing SageMaker Studio, to enable customers to discover, prepare, and process data to build models. “Customers are using data in…

Clarifai, once known as a young computer vision startup working with the Department of Defense on its controversial project Maven, has been embroiled in questionable ideas about AI ethics for years before Silicon Valley came to its defense. He has distanced himself from his early days as a supporter of this, and has become interested in the development of autonomous weapons. Technology and potential cyber breaches from Russia. In recent years, the company has focused on building AI tools for enterprise and government customers. Now, the company has revealed the latest chapter in its trajectory, the ability for users to…

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing division, announced a new family of multimodal generative AI models called Nova at Tuesday's re:Invent conference. There are four text generation models: Micro, Lite, Pro, and Premier. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on stage that Micro, Lite and Pro will be available to AWS customers on Tuesday, with Premier expected to be available in early 2025. In addition to these, there is an image generation model, Nova Canvas, and a video generation model, Nova Reel. Both were also released on AWS this morning. “We have continued to work on our own frontier model,”…

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing division, is announcing new tools to deal with hallucinations, scenarios in which AI models behave unreliably. The service, Automated Reasoning checks, announced at AWS's re:Invent 2024 conference in Las Vegas, validates model responses by cross-referencing customer-provided information to ensure accuracy. AWS claims in a press release that automated inference checks are the “first and only” safeguard against hallucinations. But it's, well…just be generous. Automatic inference checking is similar to the correction feature Microsoft introduced this summer, which also flags AI-generated text that may be factually incorrect. Google also offers tools in its AI…

Celebrity greetings app Cameo is pivoting to creators with a new product called CameoX. The company was hit hard by the pandemic as people were stuck at home and celebrated birthdays, graduations and other celebrations with celebrity shoutouts. It became a tech unicorn with a $1 billion valuation, but as life returned to normal, Cameo suffered multiple layoffs, additional funding depleted its valuation, and an FTC fine for undisclosed celebrity endorsements. turned out to be unable to pay. . Cameo's struggle to attract A-list celebrities was only part of the problem. Its business model relies on video messaging and has…

Product teams often have large amounts of screen recordings and screenshots stored that go unused. Producing videos using these screen recordings was time consuming and expensive. That's why two former Microsoft employees started building Lica, an AI tool that makes it easy to create tutorials and product videos from screenshots and screen recordings. The startup was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman, who has worked as a product manager at Microsoft, Snap, and Waymo, and Purvanshi Mehta, who previously worked as a data scientist and project manager at Microsoft. Kalyanaraman, who has worked on these products, including adding AI capabilities…

Fashion resale marketplace ThredUp has sold its European operations to focus on its core U.S. domestic market. ThredUp expanded into Europe in 2021 with the acquisition of Remix, a Bulgarian startup with operations in a handful of markets in Central and Eastern Europe. Back in May, ThredUp announced a new general manager, Florin Filote, to lead its European operations, and Filote is currently leading a management buyout for the division he leads. Founded in 2009, ThredUp specializes in vintage clothing and accessories and has raised more than $300 million in funding ahead of its 2021 IPO. Like many startups that…