July 8, 2025

Battling next-gen financial fraud 

From a cluster of call centers in Canada, a criminal network defrauded elderly victims in the US out of $21 million in total between 2021 and 2024. The fraudsters used voice over internet protocol technology to dupe victims into believing the calls came from their grandchildren in the US, customizing conversations using banks of personal data,…

Technology

TikTok ‘French Scar’ challenge triggers safety probe in Italy

March 21, 2023

TikTok has another problem to add to its growing pile: Italy’s consumer watchdog has opened an investigation over user safety concerns — stepping in after a so-called “French scar” challenge went viral on the video sharing platform in which users have been seen apparently pinching their faces in order to create and show off red […]

TikTok ‘French Scar’ challenge triggers safety probe in Italy by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Pilot AI taps algorithms to extract info from sales calls

March 21, 2023

Maxwell Lu, formerly a product engineer at Salesforce and the head of revenue operations at a previous startup, found himself frustrated by the task of re-listening to sales calls to write up notes and fill out entries in customer relationship management (CRM) software. Searching for a better way, he decided to build tech that could […]

Pilot AI taps algorithms to extract info from sales calls by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

IPRally, a patent search engine powered by explainable AI, raises $10.8M

March 21, 2023

IPRally, a Finnish startup building a knowledge graph-based patent search engine, has raised €10 million ($10.8 million) in a Series A round of funding. Founded in 2018, IPRally is one of a number of emerging players looking to infiltrate a billion-dollar intellectual property (IP) management market dominated by incumbents such as Clarivate, Anaqua, and Questel. The […]

IPRally, a patent search engine powered by explainable AI, raises $10.8M by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

How AI experts are using GPT-4

March 21, 2023
WOW, last week was intense. Several leading AI companies had major product releases. Google said it was giving developers access to its AI language models, and AI startup Anthropic unveiled its AI assistant Claude. But one announcement outshined them all: OpenAI’s new multimodal large language model, GPT-4. My colleague William Douglas Heaven got an exclusive preview. Read about…

TikTok overhauls its community guidelines, adds new policies on AI and climate misinformation

March 21, 2023

TikTok is announcing updates to its community guidelines that are designed to make the app a more secure environment for users. The company has overhauled the guidelines to make them easier to understand, and added new policies on AI and climate misinformation. TikTok has also added more detail about its existing policies regarding civil and […]

TikTok overhauls its community guidelines, adds new policies on AI and climate misinformation by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Mapping drone startup Wingtra is charting a new future after landing $22M

March 21, 2023

Wingtra’s drones are used to perform surveying missions by organizations around the world, including NASA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Now the startup is mapping out a new expansion strategy after landing $22 million in Series B funding, which it will use to improve its current tech and add new features. “Our product roadmap […]

Mapping drone startup Wingtra is charting a new future after landing $22M by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The UN just handed out an urgent climate to-do list. Here’s what it says.

March 20, 2023
Time is running short to address climate change, but there are feasible and effective solutions on the table, according to a new UN climate report released today.  Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse-gas emissions are still climbing, hitting a record high in 2022. If humanity wants to limit the worst effects of climate…