These 61 robotics companies are hiring
It’s extremely heartening to see our little list effectively double since the last time we did one of these. While it’s true that layoffs continue to plague the tech industry…
Apple acquires AI startup specializing in overlooking manufacturing components
Apple has added another AI startup to its acquisition list with Canada-based DarwinAI, which specializes in vision-based tech to observe components during manufacturing to improve efficiency, Bloomberg reported. While Apple…
Zscaler buys Avalor to bring more AI into its security tools
Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity. In a…
AI companies like OpenAI are driven by anti-humanism
Let’s come to an understanding of how we got to this moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence. Similar to the way scientists controversially study and tinker with viruses —…
OpenAI’s deals with publishers could spell trouble for rivals
OpenAI’s legal battle with The New York Times over data to train its AI models might still be brewing. But OpenAI’s forging ahead on deals with other publishers, including some…
Anti-AI sentiment gets big applause at SXSW 2024 as storytellers dub AI cheerleading as ‘terrifying bullsh**’
A whiff of anti-AI sentiment got big applause at the SXSW conference in Austin this afternoon. Award-winning writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as “DANIELS,” originally…
Four things we learned when US spy chiefs testified to Congress
Cyberattacks, regional conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, commercial spyware, AI, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and TikTok. These are just some of the top perceived threats that the United States faces,…
Should artists be paid for training data? OpenAI VP wouldn’t say
Should artists whose work was used to train generative AI like ChatGPT be compensated for their contributions? Peter Deng, VP of consumer product at OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT…
Women in AI: Heidy Khlaaf, safety engineering director at Trail of Bits
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed…
Women in AI: Claire Leibowicz, AI and media integrity expert at PAI
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…
Women in AI: Sandra Watcher, professor of data ethics at Oxford
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…
OpenAI announces new board members, reinstates CEO Sam Altman
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has a seat at the table — or board, rather — once again. OpenAI today announced that Altman will be rejoining the company’s board…
Malware worm targets AI models to steal data and spam users
As worrisome as it might be that generative AI models such as ChatGPT and Gemini might one day become sentient or take our jobs, there are far more pressing concerns.…
Women in AI: Sarah Kreps, professor of government at Cornell
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the…
Terrifying drone only took hours to build
You can turn a commercial drone into an AI attack drone in just a few hours, an engineer has revealed. Entrepreneur and engineer Luis Wenus, recently posted on X (formerly…
Reddit is fighting over whether this photo is AI-generated
Remember that viral BuzzFeed post about a dress from back in the 2010s, the one that asked people to simply vote on what color they thought the dress was, and…
Here’s why most AI benchmarks tell us so little
On Tuesday, startup Anthropic released a family of generative AI models that it claims achieve best-in-class performance. Just a few days later, rival Inflection AI unveiled a model that it…
NFT platform Zora is offering a novel way for AI model makers to earn money
Zora, an NFT-based social network platform, is continuing its expansion beyond the crypto-sphere into the hot artificial intelligence market, Dee Goens, the startups’ co-founder, said on Chain Reaction. Not to…
Turnitin laid off staff earlier this year, after CEO forecast AI would allow it to cut headcount
People worry that advances in AI will lead to job losses, but rarely does a company’s CEO openly admit that AI will help to reduce their headcount. Turnitin, a plagiarism…
We tested Anthropic’s new chatbot — and came away a bit disappointed
This week, Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Google, Amazon and a who’s who of VCs and angel investors, released a family of models — Claude 3 — that it…
AI website builders like Wix still aren’t good enough to be useful
AI is making its way into a lot of things these days. You can always use ChatGPT and even Google Gemini to create code for apps and things. Website builders…
OpenAI says Musk only ever contributed $45 million, wanted to merge with Tesla or take control
OpenAI, the most valuable AI startup, said Wednesday it intends to dismiss all claims made by Elon Musk in a recent lawsuit and suggested that the billionaire entrepreneur, who was…
AI could be the solution for bureaucracy with Emilie Poteat from Advocate
Founders have spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to build practical consumer use cases for AI and machine learning. AI startup Advocate thinks that the…
Numbers Station lets business users chat with their data
Numbers Station, a startup that is using large language models (LLMs) to power its data analytics platform, is launching its first cloud-based product today: the aptly named Numbers Station Cloud,…
Multiverse raises $27M for quantum software targeting LLM leviathans
We’re still years away from seeing physical quantum computers break into the market with any scale and reliability, but don’t give up on deep tech. The market for high-level quantum…
India reverses AI stance, requires government approval for model launches
India has waded into global AI debate by issuing an advisory that requires tech firms to get government permission before launching new models. India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT issued…
Francine Bennett uses data science to make AI more responsible
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the…
Karine Perset helps governments understand AI
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the…
Is there anything AI can’t do?
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I…
AI chip startup Groq forms new business unit, acquires Definitive Intelligence
Groq, a startup developing chips to run generative AI models faster than conventional hardware, has an eye toward the enterprise — and public sector. Today, Groq announced that it’s forming…
Gemini on Android can’t ID songs, and it’s frustrating
If it wasn’t clear before that Google’s Gemini chatbot was rushed out the door, it is now. Gemini’s since-removed image generator put people of color in Nazi-era uniforms. The chatbot’s…
Diffusion transformers are the key behind OpenAI’s Sora — and they’re set to upend GenAI
OpenAI’s Sora, which can generate videos and interactive 3D environments on the fly, is a remarkable demonstration of the cutting edge in GenAI — a bonafide milestone. But curiously, one…
Superhuman wants to use AI to reply to emails for you
As an Apple Mail user in my personal life and a Gmail user in my professional life, I am surrounded by the default mail experiences that most people are familiar…
Perplexity’s new daily news podcast is 100% AI-generated
Perplexity, a still relatively new AI-based Google Search rival, is on a tear. For starters, the company raised over $70 million in January from top-tier investors, including Jeff Bezos. Following…
Former Twitter engineers are building Particle, an AI-powered news reader
A team led by former Twitter engineers is rethinking how AI can be used to help people process news and information. Particle.news, which entered into private beta over the weekend,…
Darwin AI gives small LatAm companies AI-powered sales assistant
Smaller companies are just as eager to use AI tech to supercharge their sales processes as their bigger competitors. However, they often lack the in-house IT expertise or the capital…
This Week in AI: Addressing racism in AI image generators
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…
A bumpy road for EV manufacturers
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Rivian…
Treating a chatbot nicely might boost its performance — here’s why
People are more likely to do something if you ask nicely. That’s a fact most of us are well aware of. But do generative AI models behave the same way?…
Mutale Nkonde’s nonprofit is working to make AI less biased
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the…