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Today — 24 February 2025TechCrunch News

1,000 artists release ‘silent’ album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI

24 February 2025 at 16:58

The U.K. government wants to move full steam ahead on big plans to use and build AI across the country, but not everyone is marching to the beat of its drum. On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a “silent album”, in protest of planned changes to copyright law — changes the artists say […]

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UK’s internet watchdog toughens approach to deepfake porn

24 February 2025 at 16:01

Ofcom, the U.K.’s internet safety regulator, has published another new draft guidance as it continues to implement the Online Safety Act (OSA) — the latest set of recommendations aim to support in-scope firms to meet legal obligations to protect women and girls from online threats like harassment and bullying, misogyny, and intimate image abuse. The […]

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Web Summit attendees aren’t buying Scale AI CEO’s push for America ‘to win the AI war’

24 February 2025 at 15:53

In a bold move last month, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, telling President Trump that “America must win the AI war.” The statement sparked mixed reactions, as seen during Wang’s appearance Sunday during the opening night of Web Summit Qatar. When Wang’s interviewer, Axios’ Felix Salmon, […]

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Anthropic reportedly ups its next funding round to $3.5B

24 February 2025 at 15:48

Anthropic’s next funding round is reportedly growing larger. Anthropic, which makes the AI chatbot Claude, is finalizing a $3.5 billion fundraising round that values the company at $61.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic initially set out to raise $2 billion, but investors have now agreed to a larger tranche, per the WSJ. […]

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Chegg sues Google over AI search summaries

24 February 2025 at 14:50

Edtech company Chegg has sued Google claiming that the tech giant’s AI summaries of search results have hurt Chegg’s traffic and revenue. In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Chegg accuses Google of unfair competition — specifically reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment. Google, Chegg claims, forces […]

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Even Elon Musk forgets that X isn’t Twitter sometimes

24 February 2025 at 14:19

Do you sometimes refer to X by its old name, Twitter? That’s okay. Even Elon Musk, the man who changed Twitter’s name to X, still occasionally refers to the social media platform he runs as Twitter. “Twitter added far more features with fewer people,” said Musk in a post on X Monday. The owner of […]

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Holmes and Balwani’s appeal falls flat as court upholds fraud convictions

24 February 2025 at 14:01

Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani’s appeal to overturn their fraud convictions and reduce their prison sentences was denied Monday by the Northern District Court of California, which also refused to soften their $452 million joint restitution order. Holmes, the founder of Theranos, and Balwani, its former COO, were convicted in separate trials in 2022 […]

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Apple exec Phil Schiller testifies that he raised concerns over App Store commissions on web-based sales

24 February 2025 at 13:54

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, the executive in charge of leading the App Store, testified in court on Monday that he had originally raised concerns about the 27% commission the iPhone maker planned to charge app developers on any purchases made outside the App Store. In addition to being a potential compliance risk, he suggested that […]

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DOGE’s HR email is getting the ‘Bee Movie’ spam treatment

24 February 2025 at 12:33

Over the weekend, Elon Musk surveyed his followers on X — the platform he spent $44 billion to buy — asking whether federal employees should be required to send his team an email with a list of five things they accomplished this week. With the yes votes totaling over 70%, Musk followed through. Federal employees […]

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Anthropic used Pokémon to benchmark its newest AI model

24 February 2025 at 11:10

Anthropic used Pokémon to benchmark its newest AI model. Yes, really. In a blog post published Monday, Anthropic said that it tested its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on the Game Boy classic Pokémon Red. The company equipped the model with basic memory, screen pixel input, and function calls to press buttons and navigate around the […]

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SpaceX says Starship self-destructed after propellant leaks caused fires and comms blackout

24 February 2025 at 11:05

SpaceX said Monday that last month’s Starship explosion was brought on by a cascading series of events caused by propellant leaks — a problem the company says has been addressed ahead of an eighth test flight that could happen as early as Friday. The spaceflight company is still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) […]

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SoundCloud partners with Ticketmaster to let artists list events

24 February 2025 at 11:00

Music streamer SoundCloud announced a partnership with Ticketmaster and Universe, owned by Live Nation, to let artists list events on their profile in a customized way. The company said it would create more promotion opportunities for artists in the future in partnership with Ticketmaster through a new promotion program but didn’t give any more details. […]

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Khosla Ventures seeks $3.5B in fresh capital

24 February 2025 at 10:48

Khosla Ventures, a firm known for early investments in OpenAI, is raising $3.5 billion across three funds, The Wall Street Journal reported. That target is 17% larger than the firm’s previous 2023 fund haul of $3 billion.   About half of the new capital will be allocated to its ninth core venture fund. The remaining money will […]

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Google Drive users can now access and search transcripts for videos

24 February 2025 at 10:30

After launching automatically generated captions for videos last year, Google Drive is now launching searchable video transcripts. Google announced that starting Monday, Drive users can now view and search transcripts for their videos. The new feature gets rid of the need to upload a video’s audio to a transcription service like Otter. Transcripts will appear […]

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Anthropic launches a new AI model that ‘thinks’ as long as you want

24 February 2025 at 10:30

Anthropic is releasing a new frontier AI model called Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which the company designed to “think” about questions for as long as users want it to. Anthropic calls Claude 3.7 Sonnet the industry’s first “hybrid AI reasoning model,” because it’s a single model that can give both real-time answers and more considered, “thought-out” […]

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Grok 3 appears to be driving Grok usage to new heights

24 February 2025 at 10:07

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, released Grok 3, its long-awaited flagship AI model, last week. Grok 3 powers the Grok chatbot apps for mobile and the web, as well as the Grok experience on the Musk-owned social network X. Given that there’s so much competition in the AI chatbot space these days, it wasn’t a […]

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The SEC will not sue Robinhood over crypto

24 February 2025 at 09:33

Robinhood on Monday said that the SEC has closed its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit and will not pursue action. This follows Coinbase saying on Friday that the SEC has dropped its lawsuit against it. The SEC, under former chair and crypto hawk Gary Gensler, was looking into a number of crypto exchanges over how […]

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Perplexity teases a web browser called Comet

24 February 2025 at 09:17

AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’s building its own web browser. In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn’t yet available. It’s unclear when it might be — or what the browser will look like, even. But we do have a name: Comet. “Just like […]

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Three years on, Europe looks to Ukraine for the future of defense tech

24 February 2025 at 09:07

Today marks three years since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have heroically fought the war with grit and determination, but they have also, against the odds, innovated on and off the battlefield.  In addition to establishing a defense tech initiative called BRAVE1, the country has also hosted tech conferences like […]

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TikTok (with Douyin) becomes first app to reach $6B in annual consumer spending

24 February 2025 at 08:55

TikTok, including its Chinese counterpart Douyin, in 2024 became the first non-game app to reach $6 billion in in-app purchase revenue in a year. According to a new report from app intelligence provider Sensor Tower, TikTok also generated a record high of $1.9 billion in gross in-app purchase (IAP) revenue in the fourth quarter of […]

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