Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, said this week that the company will temporarily turn off its “Make Design” AI feature after being accused of “heavily” teaching the tool on other apps. The new feature, shown off at the company’s annual Config conference, was meant to speed up the design process by creating UI layouts and components from text prompts. However, it was criticized for looking too much like Apple’s Weather app. YouTube changed its rules in a quiet way this week, letting users ask for the removal of AI-generated or other fake content that imitates their voice or face. The…
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Stars are a digital currency that Telegram added last month that can be used inside the app. The company is now adding paid material to its list of uses. Toncoin is the cryptocurrency that Telegram uses over The Open Network (TON) blockchain. The chat app also lets channels turn the stars they have into Toncoin. They can also use them to get channel deals at a discount. At first, Stars were only used to pay for digital things sold by bots and apps in Telegram. Now, people who make content can post it, and users can access it with starts.…
Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, says the company will briefly turn off its “Make Design” AI feature, which was accused of copying the looks of Apple’s own Weather app. Andy Allen, founder of NotBoring Software, was the first person to notice the problem. NotBoring Software makes a suite of apps that includes a famous Weather app that can be customized and other useful apps. He tested Figma’s tool and found that when it was used as a design aid, it would constantly copy Apple’s Weather app. Allen went on X, which used to be Twitter, to say that Figma was…
Some of SpaceX’s rivals are upset about its big plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times a year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance sent comments to regulators asking them to make sure that other launch providers in the area were affected as little as possible. Blue Origin even suggested that Starship operations should be limited to certain times and that other launch providers should have the right to refuse launches that would conflict with Starship’s operations. But SpaceX might have even bigger plans for Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37…
Meta isn’t the only business that has to deal with the rise of material made by AI and how it impacts its platform. In June, YouTube also quietly changed its rules so that people can ask for the removal of AI-generated or other fake material that uses their voice or face. With this change, people can use YouTube’s privacy request process to ask for this kind of AI material to be taken down. This is more of what they had planned when they first talked about their approach to responsible AI in November. YouTube wants people who are touched by…
At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) last month, Apple showed off iOS 18. Since then, the company has put out two developer betas in the past few weeks that add support for more languages in iOS 18’s lock screen, Siri, keyboard, and search. Because of the new update, you can now change the time on the lock screen to show it in 12 different languages, including Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, and Telugu. A lot of changes are made to the iOS keyboard, and now it supports predictive typing in three languages…
Podcasts, music, and audiobooks…and emergency alerts? The latest test for the streaming app Spotify is of an emergency warning system in Sweden, which is new ground for the company. There are code references in the Spotify app that show the company is thinking about a way to help get the word out about “accidents, serious events, or disruptions of important services.” Spotify was told that the company is trying this kind of system, but they didn’t say why they would want to offer this kind of service to their people. The Swedish law doesn’t require the app to do that,…
A cloud-based human resources and labor management software startup called SmartHR announced on Monday that it had raised $140 million in funding. The round was led by KKR and included current backers as well as Teachers’ Ventures Growth, an investment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Three years ago, the company raised a $142.5 million (15.6 billion JPY) Series D round, which gave it a value of $1.6 billion. The Series E round is the latest sign that investors are still interested in tech that helps businesses better handle their biggest cost–staff. The Company Wouldn’t Say Anything About Its…
The European Commission is looking into whether the controversial decision that Meta has made regional users of its social networks, Facebook and Instagram, since last fall does not follow the Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the EU. Meta and other so-called “gatekeepers” have had to follow the ex ante market contestability rule since March 7. If the adtech giant doesn’t, it could cost them a lot of money. If there are proven breaches, the fines can be up to 10% of the company’s total world income, or 20% if the same thing happens again. More importantly, Meta might finally have…
One of the best things about Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash generative AI models is that they can supposedly handle and study a lot of data. In press conferences and demos, Google has said over and over that the models’ “long context” lets them do things that weren’t possible before, like reviewing several hundred-page papers or looking across scenes in film footage. But new study shows that those things aren’t really what the models are good at. Two different studies looked at how well Google’s Gemini models and others can make sense of huge amounts of data, like…
This week, Crunchbase released new numbers that show investments in robotics are once again going in the right way. After a record year in 2021, when the pandemic caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, the number of people generally steadily dropped over the next two years. As the second part of the year starts, 2024 is on track to do better than 2023. So far this year, $4.2 billion has been invested in this area in the first six months. This year is on track to beat 2023’s total of $6.8 billion for the whole year. It’s…
In an interview that came out Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, talked about his hopes for the future of AI. He said that he strongly thinks there will not be “just one AI.” While talking about how open source can help many people get AI tools, Zuckerberg took a moment to criticize the work of rivals who he didn’t name because he thinks they aren’t being open. He said that these competitors seem to think they are “creating God.” In a new YouTube interview with Kane Sutter (@Kallaway), Zuckerberg said, “I don’t think that AI technology should be kind…
That was the salad days of fresh food delivery startups. But those that stuck with it and built businesses that are making money are still here and want to grow even more. One of these companies, the Czech food delivery service Rohlik, announced on Friday that it would be getting an extra $170 million. Rohlik, whose name comes from the Czech word for “baker” or “little roll that a baker might make,” has tried to stand out. Its main goal has been to run smaller stores and build relationships with local sellers and producers, like butchers and fishmongers, instead of…
Amazon is being sued again in the UK for unfair competition. The most recent claim, which was made on Thursday, asks the UK’s Competition Appeals Tribunal for more than £2.7BN in damages, which is about $3.4BN at the moment. The case is being taken by Andreas Stephan, who is a professor of competition law and the head of the Law School at the University of East Anglia. More than 200,000 UK-based Amazon third-party sellers are supporting him. According to the lawsuit, Amazon has abused its dominant position in the marketplace services it provides to third-party sellers in order to reach…
Just this month, TikTok released a brand-new social app called Whee. It’s like Instagram and lets you take pictures to share with your friends. Whee lets you use picture filters and send messages, just like Instagram. But it’s not clear what the company has planned for Whee because the app hasn’t been promoted on Apple’s Search Ads yet and doesn’t have many users, according to new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. Without help with promotion, new apps on the App Store today aren’t seen by many people. That also seems to be the case for Whee, which quietly came…
NASA announced Wednesday that it has chosen SpaceX to build a spacecraft that will leave orbit around the International Space Station in 2030. The deal is worth up to $843 million. The International Space Station (ISS) is almost done with its useful life. As plans for new space stations owned by businesses heat up, the first one will have to be safely thrown away at the end of the decade. NASA calls the craft the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, but not much else is known about it yet. NASA made it clear, though, that the vehicle will be different from SpaceX’s…
It has been common for years, even centuries, to give robots skin that looks like human skin. But giving them real, live skin that can be changed into horrifying, slimy faces? That’s different. There is a new paper in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science that is mostly just an experiment. This won’t be the front of your next smart home hub or cleaner. But the clever machines that have been built up over billions of years of evolution might be better in some cases than artificial skin (which is still being worked on) or surfaces that aren’t as complicated.…
When you first start making climate tech software, it might make sense to work on something related to carbon accounting. This is because the most popular climate tech software companies are working on accounting, offsetting, removing, or telling regulators about climate change. It’s easy to see where funders are interested by looking at the startups in the area: The accounting firm Persefoni in New York has raised $164.2 million so far, while Plan A in Berlin has raised $43 million, Supercritical raised $15.8 million, and CUR8 raised $6.7 million. But there was a short period of growth in this sector…
On Tuesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, made it clear that he looks up to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Using the example of winning a bike race, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked what the plan is for when Microsoft’s huge AI future isn’t so dependent on OpenAI. But Suleyman stepped aside. “I don’t believe the metaphor that there is a finish line.” “This is yet another false frame,” he said. “Everything must no longer be seen as a dangerous race.” Then he told the official Microsoft line about his company’s deal with OpenAI,…
Though the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the need for quick and safe ways to send valuable, fragile drugs and their parts around the world is still very much alive. SkyCell says it has made hardware and software that will make the transportation process better and cleaner than before. It has also raised a lot of money to keep growing its business. The Swiss startup has finished its $116 million Series D round. It will use the money to work with more companies in Asia and the U.S. Tybourne Capital Management and CCI are each putting in $59 million. This is…
A few days after the Wall Street Journal said that Apple and Meta were in talks to combine Meta’s AI models, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg said that the iPhone maker had no plans to do so. Bloomberg says that Apple and Meta talked for a short time in March about the chance of working together. At this point, Apple was in talks with a number of companies to see if their models could work with their products. Bloomberg said that the company dropped the plan to put Meta’s AI models on iPhones because they were worried about privacy. It was…
A short video clip from a recent conversation with Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, went somewhat viral on X (formerly Twitter) over the weekend. Durov tells Tucker Carlson, a right-wing talk show host, in the video that he is the only product manager at the company and that he only works with “about 30 engineers.” When Durov bragged that his company in Dubai was “super efficient,” security experts say that what he said should have raised red flags for users. “Without end-to-end encryption, there are a lot of targets that are easy to attack, and the servers are in…
Streaming is going through a change—the number of users is going down and the big players are trying to get together—but the long-awaited dream of making money finally seems possible (especially for Netflix). So now is a great time for The New York Times to talk to some of the biggest names in the business about what they think will happen next. These people include Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, Mike Hopkins, head of Amazon Prime Video, and Barry Diller, chairman of IAC. A lot of people seemed to agree on the main points: there should be more ads, higher…
A big investor in Byju, Prosus, said on Monday that its once-$2.1 billion stake in the Indian edtech startup is now worth nothing. However, it is still hoping that the once-most-valuable Indian startup can be saved. Prosus, which has a 9.6% stake in Byju’s and is the other big outside investor, said in its quarterly report that its stake in the startup is now worth nothing “due to the significant decrease in value for equity investors.” Erwin Tu, CIO of Prosus Group, said on an earnings call that the company is still optimistic about Byju’s future, but that the Indian…
Meta is now letting all users in India use its Llama-3-powered AI robot. It was tested for a few months during the general elections. However, Meta AI only works with English right now and not any other languages. To try Meta AI in India, the company began rolling it out to a small group of users on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook in April. After a few days, the company took the bot live in more than a dozen countries. It wasn’t in India, though, probably because that country was having its general elections at the time. Meta is letting…
Apple said Thursday that Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 and Final Cut Camera are now available. The company first talked about both apps at an iPad show in May. Apple also put out changes for Mac Final Cut Pro. New features have been added to the iPad version so that it can work with the new iPad Pro with an M4 chip. Apple says the new chip can render up to two times faster than the M1 and can handle up to four times as many ProRes RAW streams. When it comes out, Final Cut Pro for iPad 2…
As soon as it opened, Paris quickly became a major hub for AI startups in Europe. A new deal could make that situation even stronger. Poolside.ai is a creative AI company based in Paris that is making tools to speed up software development. Sources tell TechCrunch that the company is raising at least $400 million and will be worth $2 billion after the money is raised. Sources tell us that Bain Capital Ventures and DST are currently talking about how to co-lead the round. BCV has backed the company before, and DST is a new partner. It was already known…
Zepto raised a huge $665 million in new funding, bringing its value from $1.4 billion to $3.6 billion, which is more than doubling in less than a year. The Mumbai-based startup is now putting even more effort into taking over India’s competitive quick commerce market. People in towns in India can quickly buy and get delivered anything from groceries to electronics through Zepto. India is a great place for the rapid-delivery model to work, but most startups in developed markets have failed in this area. It was led by Glade Brook, Nexus, and StepStone Group, and Zepto said it was…
Like many other highly valued startups, SpaceX lets its workers sell some of their shares to outside investors approved by the company as a way to cash out. Has seen an internal SpaceX memo from May 2022 that talks about a job offer like this. Musk wrote on X last month that SpaceX has sales like this for its workers about every six months. It’s interesting to read about the buyers who are allowed to buy these secondary shares and the great deals they get. It shows that investors paid employees $70 per share in this deal. Compared to the…
It’s becoming easier for bad people to hack computers, which is causing a clear trend in security technology. To keep people and businesses safe, security needs to keep getting more complicated. This idea was first thought of by the security company PQShield, which focuses on “post-quantum” cryptography. These are software and hardware solutions that, in theory, are future-proof and can withstand hacks done with the most powerful quantum computers in the future. Now, the company is saying that it will be getting an extra $37 million to meet the demand from the industry to build hardware and other systems based…
AI, especially creative AI, is the big story in technology in 2024, whether you like it or not. With the billions of dollars it has raised and the popularity of its services like ChatGPT, OpenAI may have gotten most of the notice and money so far. But a new study from top VC Accel and the analysts at Dealroom says that a new wave of people who want to make their mark is coming up in Europe and Israel. Europe and Israel together usually bring in about 45% of all venture capital funding each year. But when it comes to…
Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage in technology. To get more people to use and join LinkedIn, the company unveiled a bunch of new AI-powered services on Thursday. The company is betting a lot on AI and people’s desire to see it woven into the platform. They’re adding tools that can help people look for jobs and then apply for them (yes, there’s a tool that can write your whole application and cover letter), find relevant learning material (of course, it’s about AI), and search all of LinkedIn faster to find what you need. First, let’s talk about…
This is how VC A lot of other venture capitalists tried to get the deal, but Nikhil Basu Trivedi beat them all. There are a lot of young AI startups that venture capitalists are chasing hard these days. GPTZero has already made millions of dollars in its first year and a half of life. GPTZero was started by Edward Tian, 24, and Alex Cui, 26, who have been friends since high school. They give a detection tool that helps people figure out if a piece of content was made by AI. Team Footwork co-founder Nikhil Basu Trivedi led a $10…
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has gotten enough votes from shareholders to get his 2018 stock option pay package accepted. Shareholders also agreed with the company’s plan to re-incorporate Tesla in Texas, moving it away from Delaware, which is where Musk’s pay package was thrown out. At Thursday’s annual meeting of shareholders, which took place at Tesla’s gigafactory in Texas, people cheered and stood up when general counsel Brandon Ehrhart announced the results of the vote. It wasn’t clear right away what the margin of win was. Musk jumped around on stage Thursday and said, “I just want to start…
There has been way too much drama leading up to Thursday’s yearly meeting of Tesla shareholders. A vote will be held by the company to “re-ratify” the $56 billion pay package that Elon Musk received in 2018. This package was thrown out by a judge in Delaware Chancery Court earlier this year. Also, there will be a vote on whether the company should move its incorporation from Delaware to Texas. People who really support Tesla are telling the company’s “retail army” of owners to vote for both, but to pay Musk more attention when they vote. It’s not clear what…
The opening of a battery materials plant in Finland by BASF had to be put off earlier this year because environmental groups and the court agreed that the company did not have a good plan for how to deal with its trash. As battery factories pop up all over the world, the fear of wastewater could stop their building. One company, on the other hand, says that recycling it is the better option. The wastewater from these plants is full of sodium sulfate, which is made when sulfuric acid and caustic soda are broken down. These are chemicals that are…
A anthropomorphic robot behind the wheel? Is that the key to self-driving cars that don’t hit people or telephone poles? That’s what some researchers at the University of Tokyo think, and they explain their point of view in a scientific paper that came out this week. One of the researchers works as a consultant for Toyota. They made a “musculoskeletal humanoid” named Musashi and taught it how to drive a small electric car on a test track. For Musashi, the road in front of it and the views in the side windows are like human eyes because the car has…
TikTok seems to want to compete with Google’s search power after being the leader in social media. Told by the company that it is testing a feature that will let users take or share a picture to find similar items in TikTok Shop. The first person to notice the function was X user Jonah Manzano. All users in the US and Southeast Asia can use it. The new feature will show up as a camera icon in the search bar in TikTok Shop for users who can see it. Let’s say you like the plate you’re served on a lot…
After a successful first flight, Apex, a company that makes satellites, has raised $95 million to grow its business. The Los Angeles-based company launched and took delivery of its first spacecraft, a model named Aries, in March. That mission seems to have gone off without a hitch, which doesn’t happen very often in the space business. Now that the company has a history of successful flights, it is fully focused on growth. Among other things, that means making more of the Aries car and putting money into making Nova, a spaceship that weighs about twice as much as Aries. Ian…
The most important changes to Apple’s iMessage and Messages app in iOS 18 aren’t the Genmoji or AI emoji or even the option to send texts via satellite. Texting with Android users will be a lot easier now that you can finally plan messages to go out at a later time and date. You will also be able to use RCS, the next generation of messaging that will replace SMS. These messaging tools will have a big effect on how people talk to each other every day, even though they were announced at WWDC 2024 along with AI and other…