On Thursday, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to 16 American technology firms, including Google and OpenAI, asking for past communications with the Biden Administration that might suggest the former President “coerced or colluded” with companies to “censor lawful speech” in AI products. The Trump Administration’s top technology advisers previously signaled it would pick […]
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In the wake of Universal Music Group’s (UMG) public spat with TikTok, which saw the label pulling its full catalog from the video app earlier this year, the company is doubling down on its deal with Spotify. On Thursday, UMG announced an expansion of its strategic relationship with the streaming music service that will focus […]
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Wonderschool, a startup that provides software and support to help individuals and local governments spin up childcare businesses, has acquired EarlyDay, which operates an early childhood educator marketplace. TechCrunch has covered Wonderschool since its infancy, including both of its seed rounds and its Series A (led by Andreessen Horowitz). Terms of the deal were not […]
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Google.org, Google’s charitable wing, is launching a new program to help fund nonprofits developing tech that leverages generative AI. Called Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, the program is to be funded by $20 million in grants and include 21 nonprofits to start, including Quill.org, a company creating AI-powered tools for student writing feedback, and World Bank, […]
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Matter Venture Partners will invest in between 15 and 20 companies with the new fund in the area of “hard tech.”
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Increasingly, the AI industry is moving toward generative AI models with longer contexts. But models with large context windows tend to be compute-intensive. Ori Goshen, the CEO of AI startup AI21 Labs, asserts that this doesn’t have to be the case — and his company is releasing a generative model to prove it. Contexts, or […]
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Google announced today that it will soon roll out on-device AI-powered features such as recording summaries and smart replies on the Pixel 8. These features will be based on Gemini Nano, a small-sized model Google released last year, primed to run on devices. The company said that Summerizer in Recorder and Smart Reply in Gboard […]
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With TikTok potentially poised for a U.S. ban, YouTube is touting how well its own TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, is paying off for creators. The company on Thursday said its short-form video platform now averages over 70 billion daily views and over 25% of channels in YouTube’s Partner Progam monetize their videos through revenue-sharing on […]
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Amazon announced Thursday the launch of its new app for Amazon One, its contactless palm recognition service that allows customers to hover their palm over a device in order to purchase from select places, including over 500 Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon stores, and more than 150 third-party locations. Instead of signing up for Amazon […]
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