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Showing posts from February, 2025

Amazon introduces Alexa+, the next generation of Alexa

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The first time I spoke to Alexa, it felt like the future had arrived. I walked into the room, asked Alexa to play “A Sky Full of Stars,” and it just worked. As a product maker, it struck me that this was technology at its best—doing what the customer wants effortlessly, intuitively, and naturally—and I wanted all the technology in my life to work that way. With 600 million Alexa devices now out in the world, the latest advancements in generative AI have unlocked new possibilities—enabling us to reimagine the experience in our pursuit of making customers’ lives better and easier every day. Today,amazon introduced Alexa+, the next-generation assistant powered by generative AI. Alexa+ is more conversational, smarter, personalized—and she helps you get things done. She keeps you entertained, helps you learn, keeps you organized, summarizes complex topics, and can converse about virtually anything. Alexa+ can manage and protect your home, make reservations, and help you track, discover, a...

Sonos lays off 200 ahead of rumored set-top box release

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Sonos announced that it has laid off 200 people in a letter posted to its site Wednesday. The news follows a 100-person layoff in August. Both rounds arrive in the wake of a disastrously botched update to the Sonos app that alienated broad swaths of the premium audio hardware firm’s extremely loyal fanbase. The new […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THptXs

Researchers created an open rival to OpenAI’s o1 ‘reasoning’ model for under $50

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AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI “reasoning” model for under $50 in cloud compute credits, according to a new research paper released last Friday. The model, known as s1, performs similarly to cutting-edge reasoning models, such as OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek’s R1, on tests measuring math […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THptPD

Router maker Zyxel tells customers to replace vulnerable hardware exploited by hackers

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The Taiwanese hardware maker says it has no plans patch the flaws impacting legacy router models © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THnrSs

European AI startups raised $8 billion in 2024

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In just a few days, France will host the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, with heads of state flocking to Paris to meet global tech leaders. They’ll most likely announce some big investments and diplomatic agreements focused on safety or the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the summit, early-stage VC firm Galion.exe, growth investment […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THnhNW

Hitachi Ventures raises $400M fund to invest in everything from fusion to AI

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The size of the new fund is a vote of confidence in a range of deep tech verticals. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THnhC5

Google wants Search to be more like an AI assistant in 2025

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Google Search is in the midst of a “journey” around AI, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. The start of that journey was AI overviews, a controversial and monumental shift in how Google delivers information to billions of Search users. But that was just the beginning. “As AI continues […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THnh3R

Alphabet praises DeepSeek, but it’s massively ramping up its AI spending

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Alphabet is shrugging off concerns sparked by DeepSeek over AI spending, boosting its capital expenditures to a whopping $75 billion. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THngV7

Snap says TikTok uncertainty benefited its business

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During Snap’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future has positively affected its business. “We’re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THng60

AMD pulls up the release of its next-gen data center GPUs

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AMD says that it plans to launch its next major data center GPUs, the AMD Instinct MI350 series, sooner than originally announced. During the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call Tuesday, AMD CEO Lisa Su said AMD plans to sample the MI350 with “lead customers” this quarter and “accelerate” production shipments to “mid-year.” “So, we had […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THnffj

Neuralk-AI is developing AI models specifically designed for structured data

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Tabular data is a broad term that encompasses structured data that generally fits into a specific row and column. It can be a SQL database, a spreadsheet, a .CSV file, etc. While there has been tremendous progress on artificial intelligence applied to unstructured and sequential data, these large language models are fuzzy by design. They […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmSgl

China hits back at Trump tariffs with Google antitrust investigation

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China said Tuesday it has launched an antitrust investigation into Google, part of a swift retaliation after the U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. The probe by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation will examine alleged monopolistic practices by the U.S. tech giant, which has had its search and internet […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmSXp

Accel backs Indian AI startup building ‘ChatGPT for presentations’

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Presentations.ai has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Accel to scale its AI-powered software for generating presentations. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmSPn

Stripe brings aboard new head of ‘startup and VC partnerships’

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Asya Bradley, a former fintech founder and investor, has joined payments giant Stripe as its new head of Startup & Venture Capital Partnerships. Bradley announced the news on February 2 in a post on LinkedIn, though her bio shows that she joined Stripe back in November. Neither Stripe nor Bradley were immediately available for comment.  […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmRsL

No, DeepSeek isn’t uncensored if you run it locally

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DeepSeek's model is censored at both the application and training layers, a Wired investigation shows. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmRT7

Meta says it may stop development of AI systems it deems too risky

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to make artificial general intelligence (AGI) — which is roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can — openly available one day. But in a new policy document, Meta suggests that there are certain scenarios in which it may not release a highly capable AI […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmRHR

DeepSeek: The countries and agencies that have banned the AI company’s tech

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DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company, is raising the ire of regulators around the world. DeepSeek’s viral AI models and chatbot apps have been banned by a growing number of countries and government bodies, which have expressed concerns over DeepSeek’s ethics, privacy, and security practices. Corporations have banned DeepSeek, too — by the hundreds. The biggest […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THmR58

DeepSeek Struggles: AI That Can’t Even Say “Hi”?

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In the ever-growing world of AI, users expect chatbots to handle complex tasks efficiently. However, recent experiences with DeepSeek , a popular AI model, suggest it might be struggling with even the most basic requests. Several users have reported that when asking DeepSeek to perform something as simple as saying Hi , the chatbot responded with The server is busy, please try again later . This has raised concerns about the model’s reliability, as users question how an advanced AI can fail at a fundamental function. While server overloads and temporary issues are common with AI models, the inability to handle such a trivial request makes many wonder: Is DeepSeek facing deeper problems ? Some speculate that the AI might be under heavy usage, while others believe this could point to underlying inefficiencies in its system design. As AI continues to evolve, users are becoming less tolerant of downtime and errors. If a chatbot can't respond to basic greetings, how can it be truste...

Tana snaps up $25M, with its AI-powered knowledge graph for work racking up a 160k+ waitlist

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An app that helps people and teams in the working world simplify their to-do lists — ideally by organising and doing some of the work for them — has remained one of the unsolved goals in business technology. Leaning into AI, on top of battle scars from once building Google Wave, a startup called Tana […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THlPsW

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng receives a hero’s welcome back home

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DeepSeek founder Lian Wenfeng is being hailed as a hero in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where he grew up and reportedly returned for the Lunar New Year, joined by bodyguards. Wenfeng—who, at 40, is already a billionaire due to his hedge fund, High-Flyer—is apparently even more beloved by locals following DeepSeek’s breakthrough research, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THlF4r

OpenAI unveils a new ChatGPT agent for ‘deep research’

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OpenAI is announcing a new AI “agent” designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot platform. Appropriately enough, it’s called deep research. OpenAI said in a blog post published Sunday that this new capability was designed for “people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THlDhm

Apple reportedly launching a new event invite feature code-named Confetti

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Apple will be giving iCloud users a new way to invite people to parties, meetings, and other events, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company has code-named the service Confetti, and it could launch as early as this week, Gurman says. There aren’t many details about how it will actually work, but Confetti is reportedly […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THlD8k

Shein app returns to India via Reliance deal

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Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein has relaunched in India through a partnership with Reliance Retail, nearly five years after it was banned amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The new Shein India Fast Fashion app, developed and launched by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, marks the firm’s significant return to one of Asia’s largest […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THkNz6

Senator warns of national security risks after Elon Musk’s DOGE granted ‘full access’ to sensitive Treasury systems

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U.S. senator says Musk's access to Treasury systems represents a "national security risk." © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THkNp9

X expands lawsuit over advertiser ‘boycott’ to include Lego, Nestlé, Pinterest, and others

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X is now suing more advertisers in an antitrust lawsuit focusing on what the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has claimed is a “systematic illegal boycott.” The company formerly known as Twitter first filed the lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and its brand safety initiative the Global Alliance of Responsible Media in August 2024. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THkNhd

DeepSeek gets Silicon Valley talking

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Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re looking at DeepSeek’s major boost in the U.S.; Elon Musk admitting he was wrong about FSD; teens losing trust in Big Tech; and more! Let’s do it. DeepSeek went viral this week after its AI models led Wall Street analysts and technologists to question whether the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THkNJy

Autonomous vehicle testing in California dropped 50%. Here’s why.

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Tech companies developing self-driving vehicle technology have tapped the brakes on testing on California’s public roads, according to new data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency reported Friday a total of 4.5 million autonomous vehicle test miles were logged in 2024, a 50% drop from the previous year. That figure covers two […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THjZG9

Sam Altman: OpenAI has been on the ‘wrong side of history’ concerning open source

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To cap off a day of product releases, OpenAI researchers, engineers, and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, answered questions in a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday. OpenAI finds itself in a bit of a precarious position. It’s battling the perception that it’s ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese companies like DeepSeek, which […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THjYlH

MLCommons and Hugging Face team up to release massive speech dataset for AI research

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MLCommons, a nonprofit AI safety working group, has teamed up with AI dev platform Hugging Face to release one of the world’s largest collections of public domain voice recordings for AI research. The dataset, called Unsupervised People’s Speech, contains more than a million hours of audio spanning at least 89 languages. MLCommons says it was […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THjYGh

‘Hundreds’ of companies are blocking DeepSeek over China data risks

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Some companies are blocking DeepSeek over concerns their data will end up with the Chinese government. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/THjY12