The Download: impressive new AI capabilities

February 16, 2024
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a…

India’s central bank extends some Paytm Payments Bank restrictions deadline to March 15

February 16, 2024

India’s central bank extended the deadline for some of the business restrictions it’s imposing on Paytm’s Payments Bank to March 15 from February 29, giving the Indian financial services firm an additional 15 days to comply with the rules but squashing chances of any major concessions.

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Clubhouse’s new feature turns your texts into custom voice messages

February 16, 2024

Clubhouse, the once-popular live audio app, announced today that users can now text their friends and they’ll hear those texts in the sender’s custom voice. In a bid to stay relevant amid user drop-off, Clubhouse debuted group voice chats where members can send asynchronous voice messages to each other, and they would appear in a […]

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Anthropic takes steps to prevent election misinformation

February 16, 2024

Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, is testing a technology to detect when users of its GenAI chatbot ask about political topics and redirect those users to “authoritative” sources of voting information. Called Prompt Shield, the technology, which relies on a combination of AI detection models and rules, shows […]

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How bacteria-fighting viruses could go mainstream

February 16, 2024
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Lynn Cole had a blood infection she couldn’t shake. For years, she was in and out of the hospital. Each time antibiotics would force the infection…

India may block Proton Mail

February 16, 2024

Proton, the Swiss privacy-focused software maker, says it has received a notice of a “possible block” of Proton Mail in India after the service was used in sending bomb threats to schools in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In a statement, a Proton spokesperson told Indian daily Hindustan Times that the firm condemns […]

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European digital rights group say the future of online privacy is on a knife edge

February 16, 2024

A coalition of more than two dozen digital and democratic rights groups, NGOs and not-for-profits, including noyb and Wikimedia Europe, have written to the European Union’s regulatory body for data protection urging it to reject a tactic that’s been controversially seized upon by Meta in its latest bid to circumvent the bloc’s privacy laws. If […]

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How Neara uses AI to protect utilities from extreme weather

February 16, 2024

Over the past few decades, extreme weather events have not only become more severe, but are also occurring more frequently. Neara is focused on enabling utility companies and energy providers to create models of their power networks and anything that might affect them, like wildfires or flooding. The Redfern, New South Wales, Australia-based startup recently […]

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