April 23, 2025

Roundtables: Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product

Recorded on April 23, 2025 Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product Speakers: David Rotman, editor at large, and Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been crowned the 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2025 by MIT Technology Review‘s readers. BCIs are electrodes implanted into the brain to send neural commands to computers, primarily to assist…

April 2025

A year after Elon Musk’s takeover, UK revenues for X plummeted

April 16, 2025
X has not been fairing well in the U.K., previously a major source of revenue for the social network prior to Elon Musk’s arrival. Still named Twitter UK Ltd, revenues and profits for X’s UK entity collapsed by over 60% in the year after Musk took it over and changed its moderation controls, according to […]

Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”

April 16, 2025
Colossal Biosciences not only wants to bring back the woolly mammoth—it wants to patent it, too. MIT Technology Review has learned the Texas startup is seeking a patent that would give it exclusive legal rights to create and sell gene-edited elephants containing ancient mammoth DNA. Colossal, which calls itself “the de-extinction company,” hopes to use…

Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud

April 16, 2025
Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend […]

AI is coming for music, too

April 16, 2025
Artificial intelligence was barely a term in 1956, when top scientists from the field of computing arrived at Dartmouth College for a summer conference. The computer scientist John McCarthy had coined the phrase in the funding proposal for the event, a gathering to work through how to build machines that could use language, solve problems…

What is vibe coding, exactly?

April 16, 2025
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly took to X back in February to post about his new hobby, he probably had no idea he was about…

Visa-backed African unicorn Moniepoint tackles remittances. But is it late to the game?

April 16, 2025
When Visa invested in Nigerian fintech Moniepoint earlier this year, it didn’t just validate the newly minted unicorn — it signaled a bold new direction. As part of that deal, the Nigerian fintech best known for building one of Africa’s largest business banking platforms, hinted at plans to integrate with Visa Direct, a move that […]

Opera adds its Aria AI assistant to Opera Mini browser

April 16, 2025
Norway-based browser company Opera said today that it is making its AI assistant Aria available to Opera Mini users on Android. This move will help users with low-end devices and data constraints access better AI features. Aria AI can help users get the latest news and information on different topics, learn more about various subjects, and […]

TS Anil, CEO of Monzo, is joining our StrictlyVC London lineup

April 16, 2025
StrictlyVC, the boutique brand powered by TechCrunch and known for evening events that invite headliners into smaller rooms to connect with live audiences, is headed back to London on May 13 — and its latest speaker lineup is one of its strongest yet. Joining the stage is TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, the digital […]