Geek-Guy.com

Category: AI

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Klarna’s revenue per employee soars to nearly $1 million thanks to AI efficiency push

Last year, Klarna announced a significant initiative to leverage its internally developed AI systems, powered by OpenAI, across its operations. This wasn’t empty talk for the buy now, pay later giant. The company not only ended its pricey contract with Salesforce CRM, but also curtailed its hiring efforts, allowing AI to do some of the…

AMD strikes a deal to sell ZT Systems’ server-manufacturing business for $3B

Semiconductor giant AMD followed through with its plan to spin out ZT Systems’ server-manufacturing business. AMD announced on Monday that it was selling ZT Systems’ server-manufacturing business to electronic manufacturing services company Sanmina. The $3 billion deal is a mix of cash and stock: $2.25 billion in cash, a $300 million premium including 50% cash…

xAI’s Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

Microsoft on Monday became one of the first hyperscalers to provide managed access to Grok, the AI model developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI. Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry platform, Grok — specifically Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini — will “have all the service-level agreements Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,”…

GitHub, Microsoft embrace Anthropic’s spec for connecting AI models to data sources

GitHub and Microsoft, GitHub’s corporate parent, are joining the steering committee for MCP, Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides. The announcement, which was made at Microsoft’s Build 2025 conference on Monday, comes as MCP gains steam in the AI industry. Earlier this year, both OpenAI and Google said they…

Microsoft wants to tap AI to accelerate scientific discovery

Can AI speed up aspects of the scientific process? Microsoft appears to think so. At the company’s Build 2025 conference on Monday, Microsoft announced Microsoft Discovery, a platform that taps agentic AI to “transform the [scientific] discovery process,” according to a press release provided to TechCrunch. Microsoft Discovery is “extensible,” Microsoft says, and can handle…

AI dev tools for Windows get a fresh coat of paint

Microsoft wants to make it easier for developers to build AI-powered apps on Windows devices. On Monday during its Build 2025 conference, Microsoft announced Windows AI Foundry, a rebranding and expansion of the Windows Copilot Runtime service the company launched last May. Microsoft describes Windows AI Foundry as a “unified platform for local AI development” —…

Ex-Siri head reportedly wanted Apple to choose Google’s Gemini over ChatGPT

Former Siri head John Giannandrea pushed Apple to choose Google’s Gemini chatbot over ChatGPT for the first chatbot integration with Siri last year, according to a Bloomberg report looking at Apple’s uneven AI efforts. Giannandrea, an ex-Google executive who was demoted in a leadership reshuffle in March, thought that OpenAI’s bot wouldn’t have staying power…

Clock’s ticking: Save up to $900 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 tickets before prices rise

Tick-tock! Time’s almost up to save up to $900 on individual passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025! Or go big and grab an Early Bird ticket now and get a second for your +1 at 90% off — but only for a limited time. These unbeatable deals disappear May 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT — don’t…

Grok says it’s ‘skeptical’ about Holocaust death toll, then blames ‘programming error’

Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by xAI and widely deployed across its new corporate sibling X, wasn’t just obsessed with white genocide this week. As first noted in Rolling Stone, Grok also answered a question on Thursday about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II by saying that “historical records,…

U.S. lawmakers have concerns about Apple-Alibaba deal

The Trump administration and congressional officials are scrutinizing a deal between Apple and Alibaba that would bring Alibaba-powered AI features to iPhones sold in China, according to The New York Times. Citing anonymous sources, the NYT says White House officials and members of the House Select Committee on China have asked Apple executives directly about…

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is choosing chatbots over podcasts

While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he likes podcasts, he might not actually be listening to them anymore. That tidbit comes towards the end of a longer Bloomberg profile of Nadella, with a focus on Microsoft’s AI strategy and its complicated relationship with OpenAI. To illustrate how much he uses the company’s Copilot AI assistant…

MIT disavows doctoral student paper on AI’s productivity benefits

MIT says that due to concerns about the “integrity” of a high-profile paper on the effects of artificial intelligence on the productivity of a materials science lab, the paper should be “withdrawn from public discourse.” The paper in question, “Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation,” was written by a doctoral student in the university’s…

Google I/O 2025: What to expect, including updates to Gemini and Android 16

Google I/O, Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us. Scheduled for May 20 to 21 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, I/O will showcase product announcements from across Google’s portfolio. Expect plenty of news relating to Android, Chrome, Google Search, YouTube, and — of course — Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. Earlier…

AI startup Cohere acquires Ottogrid, a platform for conducting market research

AI startup Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based platform that develops enterprise tools for automating certain kinds of high-level market research. Sully Omarr, one of the founders of Ottogrid, announced the deal Friday in a post on X. He didn’t disclose the terms. Ottogrid will sunset its product, according to Omarr, but give customers “ample…

Orca Security Acquires Opus to Gain AI Agent Orchestration Technology

Orca Security this week revealed it has acquired Opus to gain access to technologies capable of orchestrating artificial intelligence (AI) agents that are trained to automate a range of cybersecurity tasks. Opus previously has been employing that core capability to drive a vulnerability management platform that Orca Security now plans to sunset. Orca Security CEO..…

AI video startup Moonvalley lands $53M, according to filing

Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from a group of 14 unnamed…

Sam Altman’s goal for ChatGPT to remember ‘your whole life’ is both exciting and disturbing

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out a big vision for the future of ChatGPT at an AI event hosted by VC firm Sequoia earlier this month.  When asked by one attendee about how ChatGPT can become more personalized, Altman replied that he eventually wants the model to document and remember everything in a person’s life.…

 FTC wants a new, segregated software system to police deepfake porn 

The head of the Federal Trade Commission described to lawmakers Thursday new technology, personnel and infrastructure the agency needs as it prepares to implement and enforce the Take It Down Act, placing the FTC’s enforcement wing at the forefront of the fight against nonconsensual deepfake pornography. The FTC’s proposed budget holds funding at $425.7 million,…

Fake fired Twitter worker ‘Rahul Ligma’ is a real engineer with an AI data startup used by Harvard

The morning after Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter (now X), reporters encountered two men with boxes outside the company’s headquarters. One introduced himself as recently laid-off Twitter engineer “Rahul Ligma.”  His real name is Rahul Sonwalker but the prank went viral. He piled on his character’s notoriety when he went to the Bahamas to…

Anthropic’s lawyer was forced to apologize after Claude hallucinated a legal citation

A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday. Claude hallucinated the citation with “an inaccurate title and inaccurate authors,” Anthropic says in the filing, first reported…

FBI warns of fake texts, deepfake calls impersonating senior U.S. officials

The FBI said Thursday that malicious actors have been impersonating senior U.S. government officials in a text and voice messaging campaign, using phishing texts and AI-generated audio to trick other government officials into giving up access to their personal accounts. The warning provided few details about the campaign, which started in April and appears to…

North Korea’s ‘state-run syndicate’ looks at cyber operations as a survival mechanism

Over the past few years, cybersecurity experts have increasingly said that nation-state operatives and cybercriminals often blur the boundaries between geopolitical and financial motivations. A new report released Wednesday shows how North Korea has flipped that idea on its head.  North Korea has silently forged a global cyber operation that experts now liken to a…

Google rolls out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome. Most notably, TalkBack, Android’s screen reader, now lets you ask Gemini about what’s in images and what’s on your screen. Last year, Google brought Gemini’s capabilities to TalkBack to give people who are blind or have low vision…

Cognichip emerges from stealth with the goal of using generative AI to develop new chips

Chips are a critical component of the AI industry. But new chips don’t hit the market with the same speed as new AI models and products do. Cognichip has a lofty goal of creating a foundational AI model that can help bring new chips to market faster. San Francisco-based Cognichip is working to build a…

SoundCloud backtracks on AI-related terms of use updates

SoundCloud says it’s revising its terms after widespread backlash over a clause related to AI model training. Earlier this year, SoundCloud quietly updated its usage policies, adding wording that many users interpreted as legal cover to allow the company to train AI on audio uploaded to its platform. SoundCloud was quick to assert that it wasn’t…

MCP, OAuth 2.1, PKCE, and the Future of AI Authorization

6 min readThe MCP authorization spec sets a new standard for securing non-human AI agents – with lessons for anyone building autonomous, scalable systems. The post MCP, OAuth 2.1, PKCE, and the Future of AI Authorization appeared first on Aembit. The post MCP, OAuth 2.1, PKCE, and the Future of AI Authorization appeared first on…

Stability AI releases an audio-generating model that can run on smartphones

AI startup Stability AI has released Stable Audio Open Small, a “stereo” audio-generating AI model that the company claims is the fastest on the market — and efficient enough to run on smartphones. Stable Audio Open Small is the fruit of a collaboration between Stability AI and Arm, the chipmaker that produces many of the…

DeepMind claims its newest AI tool is a whiz at math and science problems

Google’s AI R&D lab, DeepMind says it has developed a new AI system to tackle problems with “machine-gradeable” solutions. In experiments, the system, called AlphaEvolve, could help optimize some of the infrastructure Google uses to train its AI models, DeepMind said. The company says it’s building a user interface for interacting with AlphaEvolve, and plans…

Tensor9 helps vendors deploy their software into any environment using digital twins

Enterprises want access to new software and AI tools but can’t risk sending their sensitive data out to a third-party software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. Tensor9 looks to help software companies land more enterprise customers by helping them deploy their software directly into a customer’s tech stack. Tensor9 converts a software vendor’s code into the format needed…

Databricks to buy open-source database startup Neon for $1B

Data analytics platform Databricks said on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, for about $1 billion. Databricks said acquiring Neon’s tech would let it combine the startup’s serverless relational database management system with its own data intelligence services to let its customers…

TensorWave raises $100M to grow its AMD-powered cloud infrastructure

TensorWave, a data center provider building facilities primarily with AMD hardware, has raised $100 million as it seeks to further build out its data center infrastructure. The funding round was led by Magnetar and AMD Ventures, and brings the company’s total capital raised to $146.7 million, according to Crunchbase. Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners and…

Copyright office criticizes AI ‘fair use’ before director’s dismissal 

President Donald Trump’s firing over the weekend of Shira Perlmutter, director of the U.S. Copyright Office, has drawn strong criticism from Democrats and tech experts who believe her dismissal is related to a report on generative AI and copyright law that the register of copyrights released a day earlier. That report, overseen by Perlmutter, questioned…

Anthropic, Google score win by nabbing OpenAI-backed Harvey as a user

Popular legal AI tool Harvey will now be using leading foundation models from Anthropic and Google, moving beyond strictly using OpenAI’s, Harvey announced in a blog post on Tuesday. This is noteworthy because Harvey is one of the OpenAI Startup Fund’s most successful early-backed portfolio companies. The OpenAI Startup Fund is an OpenAI-associated fund to…

AWS enters into ‘strategic partnership’ with Saudi Arabia-backed Humain

Amazon says it will work with Humain, the AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, to invest “$5 billion-plus” in a strategic partnership to build an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia. The AI Zone will include dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI infrastructure, servers, networks, and training and certification programs, according…

Google’s bringing Gemini to your car with Android Auto

Google is bringing Gemini, its generative AI, to all cars that support Android Auto in the next few months, the company announced at its Android Show ahead of the company’s 2025 I/O developer conference. The company says adding Gemini functionality to Android Auto and, later this year, to cars that run Google’s built-in operating system,…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…

Trump admin officially rescinds Biden’s AI diffusion rules

After a week or so of rumors, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) formally rescinded the Biden Administration’s Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule days before it was set to go into effect. The Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule, which was introduced by former president Joe Biden in January and set to come into force on May 15,…

Audible is expanding its AI-narrated audiobook library 

Audible, Amazon’s audiobook service, announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with select publishers to convert print and e-books into AI-narrated audiobooks. This initiative aims to quickly expand its catalog as it competes with Apple, Spotify, and others in the rapidly growing audiobook market. Audible is leveraging Amazon’s AI capabilities to assist publishers in producing audiobooks.…

Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan is coming to TechCrunch Sessions: AI

Hungry to learn more about Anthropic, directly from Anthropic? You aren’t alone if so, which is why we’re so delighted to announce that Anthropic co-founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan is joining the main stage at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. And TechCrunch Sessions: AI is right around…

Microsoft Build 2025: What to expect, from Azure to Copilot upgrades

Microsoft is hosting its annual Build developer conference next week from May 19 to 22. The event is guaranteed to include announcements regarding new AI integrations, services, and apps, including for Windows. At last year’s Build, Microsoft announced an integration of Copilot into Microsoft Teams, Copilot+ AI-powered PCs, Windows Volumetric Apps for Meta Quest headsets,…

Even a16z VCs say no one really knows what an AI agent is

Buzzwords that are stretched to the point of being meaningless are as old as the tech industry itself. The top current one is “AI agent” and its variants, like “agentic.” So, unsurprisingly, no one really knows what an AI agent is. Even people with software engineering backgrounds who work for Andreessen Horowitz, one of the premier venture…

Saudi prince launches AI venture as Trump, Musk, Altman, and Zuckerberg arrive for conference

Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, launched an AI company called Humain to bolster the country’s artificial intelligence sector. The company plans to build out the country’s AI infrastructure, including the construction of data centers. This news arrives as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to attend a U.S.-Saudi investment forum on…

OpenAI’s Stargate project reportedly struggling to get off the ground, thanks to tariffs

OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate data center project is facing delays thanks to tariff-related economic uncertainty, reports Bloomberg. Growing market volatility and cheaper AI services have made banks, private equity investors, and asset managers wary of investing in Stargate, an OpenAI-led project that aims to raise up to $500 million for AI infrastructure in the U.S. and…

Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training

President Donald Trump has fired Shira Perlmutter, who leads the U.S. Copyright Office. The firing was reported by CBS News and Politico, and seemingly confirmed by a statement from Representative Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the Committee for House Administration. “Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power…

OpenAI’s enterprise adoption appears to be accelerating, at the expense of rivals

OpenAI appears to be pulling well ahead of rivals in the race to capture enterprises’ AI spend, according to transaction data from fintech firm Ramp. According to Ramp’s AI Index, which estimates the business adoption rate of AI products by drawing on Ramp’s card and bill pay data, 32.4% of U.S. businesses were paying for…

A timeline of the U.S. semiconductor market in 2025

It’s already been a tumultuous year for the U.S. semiconductor industry. The semiconductor industry plays a sizable role in the “AI race” that the U.S. seems determined to win, which is why this context is worth paying attention to: from Intel’s appointment of Lip-Bu Tan — who wasted no time getting to work trying to…

Google I/O 2025: What to expect, including updates to Gemini and Android 16

Google I/O, Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us. Scheduled for May 20 to 21 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, I/O will showcase product announcements from across Google’s portfolio. Expect plenty of news relating to Android, Chrome, Google Search, YouTube, and — of course — Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. Here’s…

Senators move to quash the use of Chinese AI system by federal contractors 

A bipartisan Senate bill would formally ban the use of DeepSeek by federal contractors, part of a larger effort to keep the Chinese-made large language model out of government systems and networks, where lawmakers fear it could pose cybersecurity and national security concerns. The bill, introduced by Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.,…

DeepSeek: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot app

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its…

This is your last chance to exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI — don’t miss out

Applications are almost closed, and you have until 11:59 p.m. PT tonight to reserve your exhibitor table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, our premiere industry event that’s happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5. Imagine walking into a room filled with 1,200+ investors, founders, enterprise leaders, and journalists — all hunting for the next…

Microsoft employees are banned from using DeepSeek app, president says 

Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to DeepSeek’s application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile.) Smith…

ChatGPT’s deep research tool gets a GitHub connector to answer questions about code

OpenAI is enhancing its AI-powered “deep research” feature with the ability to analyze codebases on GitHub. On Thursday, OpenAI announced what it’s calling the first “connector” for ChatGPT deep research, the company’s tool that searches across the web and other sources to compile thorough research reports on a topic. Now, ChatGPT deep research can link…