Meta says India is the largest market for Meta AI usage
WhatsApp’s massive 500 million users in India have supercharged Meta’s AI ambitions. Meta CFO Susan Li said Wednesday that India is the largest market in terms of Meta AI usage, a notable milestone considering the product launched in India just a few months ago. Li said during Meta’s second-quarter earnings
Read moreFounder behind social media app IRL charged with fraud
While venture capitalists and the rest of the technorati are off on holiday or attending the Paris Olympics, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its staff attorneys are keeping busy this summer. For the second time this week — and at least the fourth time in the past several
Read moreFintech Execs from Synctera, Unit, and Treasury Prime discuss the future of BaaS at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
The serious, long-term negative impact of the bankruptcy of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) fintech Synapse will be significant “on all of fintech, especially consumer-facing services,” one observer has said. In the wake of that company’s collapse, other startups in the space are working hard to prove that not all BaaS are created
Read moreGoogle releases new ‘open’ AI models with a focus on safety
Google has released a trio of new, “open” generative AI models that it’s calling “safer,” “smaller” and “more transparent” than most — a bold claim, to be sure. They’re additions to Google’s Gemma 2 family of generative models, which debuted back in May. The new models, Gemma 2 2B, ShieldGemma
Read moreGoogle Maps announces new features and somehow none of them are ‘pause navigation’
Look, we’ve all been there. You’re on a road trip and you pull off the highway for some food or fuel. And then Google Maps starts (rudely) yelling at you to get back on the road. The company has all the money and AI chips in the world and yet
Read moreAI startups ramp up federal lobbying efforts
AI lobbying at the U.S. federal level is intensifying in the midst of a continued generative AI boom and an election year that could influence future AI regulation. New data from OpenSecrets, a nonprofit group that tracks and publishes metrics on campaign financing and lobbying, shows that the number of
Read moreBungie employees say they were caught off-guard by 17% staff reduction
Bungie, the gaming company that created sci-fi hits such as Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, has laid off 220 employees, roughly a 17% reduction to its workforce, the company announced Wednesday. This is Bungie’s second round of layoffs since it was taken over by Sony in 2022. Two former Bungie employees
Read moreCopyright Office tells Congress: ‘Urgent need’ to outlaw AI-powered impersonation
The U.S. Copyright Office has issued the first part of a report on how AI may affect its domain, and its first recommendation out of the gate is: we need a new law right away to define and combat AI-powered impersonation. “It has become clear that the distribution of unauthorized
Read moreHow to enable Apple Intelligence on your iPhone
If you are on the developer beta, you can only use Apple Intelligence features if your language is set to U.S. English and region is set to U.S. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreThis Week in AI: Companies are growing skeptical of AI’s ROI
Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. This week in AI, Gartner released a report suggesting that around a third of generative AI projects in the enterprise will be abandoned after the proof-of-concept phase by year-end 2025. The reasons are many — poor data quality, inadequate risk controls, escalating
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