Avride sidewalk bots will start delivering restaurant orders and groceries in central Tokyo this week through a partnership with e-commerce giant Rakuten, the latest commercial expansion by the Yandex spinout into Northeast Asia. The Austin-based autonomous vehicle startup is one of four projects under Nebius Group, a Netherlands-based company formerly called Yandex NV that sold […]
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Companies around America have started cutting DEI programs and eliminating DEI commitments from public documents in response to legal and political threats from the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize,” DEI programs deemed illegal in private sector companies that receive […]
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Inception, a new Palo Alto-based company started by Stanford computer science professor Stefano Ermon, claims to have developed a novel AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a diffusion-based large language model, or a “DLM” for short. The generative AI models receiving the most attention now can be broadly divided into two types: […]
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Bybit has already paid more than $4 million to bounty hunters who helped trace and freeze some of the stolen funds.
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ElevenLabs, an AI startup that just raised a $180 million mega-funding round, has been primarily known for its audio-generation prowess. The company took a step in another technological direction by launching its first stand-alone speech-to-text model called Scribe. The startup, valued at $3.3 billion, has aided many other companies in providing speech-to-text services through its […]
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Google announced on Wednesday that it has received FDA clearance for the Pixel Watch 3’s “Loss of Pulse Detection” feature and will be launching it in the U.S. at the end of March. The feature can detect when a user’s heart stops beating due to an event like primary cardiac arrest, respiratory or circulatory failure, […]
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Dating app Hinge launched a new feature called “Match Note” on Wednesday, allowing users to privately share information with matches that they haven’t shared publicly on their profile. Users can add a Match Note by going to their profile, similar to how they can add a text prompt. The note is always visible to new […]
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At Amazon’s annual Devices & Services event on Wednesday, the company introduced Alexa+, an enhanced version of its voice assistant, now powered by generative AI. During the demonstration, Amazon showcased how users can share documents with Alexa+, allowing it to recall important details and answer questions about those documents. Mara Segal, director of Alexa, provided […]
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Amazon is not giving up on making its Alexa a virtual shopping assistant. On Wednesday, the company announced that Alexa+, its revamped Alexa experience, will be able to help consumers grocery shop from home using more natural conversations and requests. The feature will work with Amazon Fresh or any other grocery partner working with Amazon, […]
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Amazon’s new and improved Alexa experience, Alexa+, starts at $19.99 per month, or free for Amazon Prime subscribers. It’ll roll out in early access beginning next month in the U.S., and then will come to a wider group of users in waves over the subsequent months, Amazon said. Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 […]
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As part of the reveal of Amazon’s new AI-powered Alexa+ assistant, the tech giant announced that it’s launching two new features designed for kids called “Explore with Alexa” and “Stories with Alexa.” The features, which leverage Alexa’s new AI capabilities, will be available to Amazon Kids+ subscribers. The company demonstrated the new features at a […]
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Amazon says that Alexa+, the new and improved Alexa unveiled on Wednesday, is powered by a “model agnostic” system that always uses the “best” AI model for a given task. On stage at a New York City press event, Amazon VP Daniel Rausch explained that Alexa+ draws on Bedrock — the company’s cloud platform designed […]
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A new startup wants to help developers create customized, contextual coding assistants that can connect with any model and integrate seamlessly with their development environments. Founded in June 2023 by CEO Ty Dunn and CTO Nate Sesti (pictured above), Y Combinator alum Continue has already garnered some 23,000 stars on GitHub and 11,000 Discord community […]
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TechCrunch Sessions: AI, taking place on June 5 at Zellerbach Hall in UC Berkeley, will feature a panel discussing how startups can compete against established rivals in the AI industry. The panel, “How to Launch a Product Against Entrenched Incumbents,” will look at ways small companies are managing to stay relevant in a fast-paced and […]
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Capim, a startup offering Brazilians the option to buy now, pay later (BNPL) for dental services, has raised $26.7 million in Series A funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Founded in July 2021 by Marcelo Lutz and Roberto Biselli, who serve as co-CEOs, São Paulo-based Capim describes itself as a vertical SaaS company specializing in the […]
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As part of the new Alexa+ experience Amazon introduced on Wednesday, the smart assistant will gain the ability to navigate through movies on Prime Video on your behalf. Thanks to integrations between Alexa, Prime Video, and Fire TV, Alexa+, as the upgraded assistant is called, will be able to “jump to a scene” in a […]
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Security researchers found evidence that Cellebrite was used by Serbian police to hack into the cellphones of a local journalist and an activist.
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At an event in New York on Wednesday, Amazon announced an upgraded Alexa experience — Alexa+ — powered by generative AI technologies. Onstage, Amazon’s devices and services chief Panos Panay called it a “complete re-architecture” of the AI assistant. “While the vision of Alexa has been ambitious and remains incredibly compelling, until right this moment […]
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YouTube continues to assert its dominance in the podcasting space, presenting significant competition to both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. In an announcement on Wednesday, the company revealed YouTube has surpassed 1 billion monthly active podcast viewers. This milestone highlights YouTube’s popularity in the podcast industry and emphasizes consumer preference for video-first formats. Last year, YouTube […]
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Microsoft says that it has completed a multi-year project to allow Europe-based customers using its cloud services to store and process data in the EU. The project, the EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud, began in January 2023, went on for two more years, and finally wrapped up this February, Microsoft said. With its […]
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