Geek-Guy.com

Category: AI

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Public comments to White House on AI policy touch on copyright, tariffs

Individuals, industry groups, and local governments submitted over 10,000 comments to the White House about its work-in-progress national AI policy, also known as the AI Action Plan. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on Thursday published the text of the submissions in a PDF spanning 18,480 pages. The comments, which touch…

Spotify’s AI playlist rolls out to Asia and more markets

Spotify announced on Thursday that it expanded the availability of its AI Playlist feature to over 40 additional markets, including countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean.  The AI-powered tool, currently in beta on Android and iOS devices, lets listeners create personalized playlists based on written prompts, such as “workout music to make my…

Speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Applications now open

TechCrunch Disrupt returns October 27–29 to Moscone West in San Francisco — and we’re inviting thought leaders, founders, VCs, and tech experts to apply for a chance to take the stage at one of the most anticipated tech events of the year. Applications are now open to speak at Disrupt 2025, where over 10,000+ tech…

Dropbox adds new features to Dash, its AI-powered search tool

Companies like Google and Microsoft have equipped their productivity suites with AI features and assistants, while startups such as ClickUp and ReadAI have focused heavily on building AI integrations and search capabilities. In alignment with this growing trend of infusing digital work suites with AI, Dropbox on Thursday upgraded its AI search tool, Dash, first…

Adobe wants to create a robots.txt styled indicator for images used in AI training

For years, websites included information about what kind of crawlers were not allowed on their site with a robots.txt file. Adobe, which wants to create a similar standard for images, has added a tool to content credentials with an intention to give them a bit more control over what is used to train AI models.…

Windsurf slashes prices as competition with Cursor heats up

AI coding assistant startup Windsurf cut its prices “across the board” it announced on Monday, touting “massive savings” for its users as competition with its rival Cursor intensifies. Windsurf said it’s getting rid of its complex system of “flow action credits,” which charged developers for actions its AI did in the background. It’s also cutting…

OpenAI seeks to make its upcoming open AI model best-in-class

Toward the end of March, OpenAI announced its intention to release its first “open” language model since GPT‑2 sometime this year. Now, details about that model are beginning to trickle out from the company’s sessions with the AI developer community. Sources tell TechCrunch that Aidan Clark, OpenAI’s VP of research, is leading development of the open model,…

Here are the 19 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2025

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch; three companies raised more than one “megaround,” and seven companies raised rounds $1 billion in size or larger. How will 2025 compare?…

OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 may be less aligned than the company’s previous AI models

In mid-April, OpenAI launched a powerful new AI model, GPT-4.1, that the company claimed “excelled” at following instructions. But the results of several independent tests suggest the model is less aligned — that is to say, less reliable — than previous OpenAI releases. When OpenAI launches a new model, it typically publishes a detailed technical…

Regulating AI Behavior with a Hypervisor

Interesting research: “Guillotine: Hypervisors for Isolating Malicious AIs.” Abstract:As AI models become more embedded in critical sectors like finance, healthcare, and the military, their inscrutable behavior poses ever-greater risks to society. To mitigate this risk, we propose Guillotine, a hypervisor architecture for sandboxing powerful AI models—models that, by accident or malice, can generate existential threats…

Bring a plus-one to TechCrunch Sessions: AI and save 50% on their ticket through May 4

You’re not the only one thinking about where AI is headed. So why come alone? From now through May 4, buy your Early Bird ticket to TechCrunch Sessions: AI and save up to $210 — plus get 50% off a second ticket for your colleague, co-founder, collaborator, friend, or whoever you want to bring. It’s…

AI note-taking app Fireflies adds new ways to extract insights from meeting notes

Khosla Ventures-backed Fireflies.ai, an AI-powered note-taking app, on Wednesday released a set of domain-specific “mini apps” to extract insights from meeting transcripts automatically. With the widespread availability of automatic speech recognition models and generative AI, meeting intelligence startups like Otter, Read AI, Circleback, Krisp, and Granola have registered impressive growth. Fireflies, similarly, has seen 8x…

Endor Labs, which builds tools to scan AI-generated code for vulnerabilities, lands $93M

AI-generated code is no doubt changing how software is built, but it’s also introducing new security challenges. More than 50% of organizations encounter security issues with AI-produced code sometimes or frequently, according to a late 2023 survey by developer security platform Synk. For Endor Labs, that opportunity proved alluring enough that it chose to change…

AI can help defenders stop nation-state threat actors at machine speed

Last year, the escalating concerns about Chinese threat actors breaching U.S. organizations reached a crescendo as federal authorities issued increasingly urgent advisories about China’s “Typhoon” groups infiltrating U.S. networks, pressing organizations to take immediate action. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that these groups were engaged…

Tech resilience, breakout startups, and banking reinvented: The big conversations at StrictlyVC London in May

StrictlyVC is heading to London on May 13, uniting top investors and entrepreneurs to spark meaningful connections and drive forward innovation. We’re thrilled to welcome industry leaders like Nazo Moosa, general partner at Paladin Capital Group; Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel; and TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, to the stage. Paladin is proud…

Noxtua raises $92M for its sovereign AI tuned for the German legal system

Back in 2020, Xayn was a privacy-based, on-device AI startup designed specifically for smartphones. But that early experience eventually saw the company pivot into developing sovereign AI for the legal sphere. Now Xayn has rebranded as Noxtua and raised a $92.2 million (roughly €81.2 million) Series B round. The round was led by strategic investor…

Why OpenAI wanted to buy Cursor but opted for the fast-growing Windsurf

Anysphere, maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, is growing so quickly, it’s not in the market to be sold, even to OpenAI, a source close to the company tells TechCrunch. It’s been a hot target. Cursor is one of the most popular AI-powered coding tools and its revenue has been growing astronomically – doubling on…

OpenAI exec says the company would buy Google’s Chrome browser if offered the chance

An OpenAI exec said during Google’s antitrust trial this week that OpenAI would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser, were it made available for sale. The executive, ChatGPT chief Nick Turley, said in a court hearing Tuesday that acquiring Chrome would allow OpenAI to “offer a really incredible experience” and “introduce users into what…

A Chinese AI video startup appears to be blocking politically sensitive images

A China-based startup, Sand AI, has released an openly licensed video-generating AI model that’s garnered praise from entrepreneurs like Microsoft Research Asia founding director Kai-Fu Lee. But Sand AI appears to be censoring images that might raise the ire of Chinese regulators from the hosted version of the model, according to TechCrunch’s testing. Earlier this…

Character.AI unveils AvatarFX, an AI video model to create lifelike chatbots

Character.AI, a leading platform for chatting and roleplaying with AI-generated characters, unveiled its forthcoming video generation model, AvatarFX, on Tuesday. Available in closed beta, the model animates the platform’s characters in a variety of styles and voices, from human-like characters to 2D animal cartoons. AvatarFX distinguishes itself from competitors like OpenAI’s Sora because it isn’t…

Ex-Meta engineer raises $14M for Lace AI, a revenue generation software startup

As an AI engineer at Meta, Boris Valkov helped build PyTorch, one of the world’s largest machine learning libraries. During his time there, Valkov realized that artificial intelligence “was about to unlock capabilities…in the application layer in the software stack.” He left Meta in late 2021 to start Lace AI, a startup that has developed…

Two undergrads built an AI speech model to rival NotebookLM

A pair of undergrads, neither with extensive AI expertise, say that they’ve created an openly available AI model that can generate podcast-style clips similar to Google’s NotebookLM. The market for synthetic speech tools is vast and growing. ElevenLabs is one of the largest players, but there’s no shortage of challengers (see PlayAI, Sesame, and so…

Adaptive Computer wants to reinvent the PC with ‘vibe’ coding for non-programmers

Dennis Xu is a repeat tech startup founder, but he’s the first to admit he’s not a programmer.  After co-founding AI note-taking app Mem — one of OpenAI’s earliest venture investments — he has now launched a new startup called Adaptive Computer.  Its grandiose mission is nothing less than a complete reimagining of personal computer…

The AI Fix #47: An AI is the best computer programmer in the world

In episode 47 of The AI Fix, o3 becomes the best competitive programmer in the world, hacked California crosswalks speak with the voice of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Meta introduces a herd of Llamas, Graham explains what a “lollipop lady” is, and Google talks to some dolphins. Graham discovers an AI that’s just a…

Manychat taps $140M to boost its business messaging platform with AI

Chatbots and other kinds of AI agents may feel like a dime a dozen these days. But the truth is that, for both businesses and consumers, some may be infinitely more useful (and perhaps less dystopian) than others. Today, a startup that’s built a successful business around that concept is announcing a major growth round…

Rivian elects Cohere’s CEO to its board in latest signal the EV maker is bullish on AI

Aidan Gomez, the co-founder and CEO of generative AI startup Cohere, has joined the board of EV maker Rivian, according to a regulatory filing. The appointment is the latest sign that Rivian sees promises in applying AI to its own venture while positioning itself as a software leader — and even provider — within the…

Tomorrow: Join Ali Ghodsi and Dario Amodei for a fireside chat

Join this free virtual event, featuring Ali Ghodsi, the trailblazing co-founder and CEO of Databricks, alongside Dario Amodei, the pioneering co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Uncover how their revolutionary collaboration is poised to fast-track the advancement of domain-specific AI agents. Not only will you experience an engaging exchange between the visionary leaders of two AI…

Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3M to ‘cheat on everything’

On Sunday, 21-year-old Chungin ‘Roy’ Lee announced he’s raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for his startup, Cluely, that offers an AI tool to “cheat on everything.” The startup was born after Lee posted in a viral X thread that he was suspended by Columbia University after he and…

ChatGPT search is growing quickly in Europe, OpenAI data suggests

ChatGPT search, OpenAI’s feature within ChatGPT that allows the chatbot to access and incorporate up-to-date information from the web into its responses, is growing at a fast clip in Europe. A report filed by one of OpenAI’s EU corporate divisions, OpenAI Ireland Limited, reveals ChatGPT search had roughly 41.3 million average monthly active “recipients” for…

An AI doctoral candidate in California says they had their student visa revoked

An AI doctoral student in California had their SEVIS record — the digital proof of their valid student visa — terminated, putting their immigration status at risk. Speaking to TechCrunch, the student, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said they were notified via their college’s international student center that they’d been identified in a criminal records…

Put your brand at the center of the AI conversation — host a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI

This June, the most influential minds in artificial intelligence will converge at TC Sessions: AI — and your brand has a unique opportunity to be part of the action. From June 1–7, TechCrunch is curating a weeklong series of Side Events that orbit the main stage event on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall.…

Final weeks to secure your spot in the AI spotlight at TechCrunch Sessions: AI

The countdown is real! Exhibit tables for TechCrunch Sessions: AI are almost gone, and the May 9 deadline is closing in fast. If you’ve been meaning to showcase your AI innovation, this is your last window to make it happen. No more “maybe next year.” No more waiting for the perfect moment. This is it!…

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…

OpenAI’s o3 AI model scores lower on a benchmark than the company initially implied

A discrepancy between first- and third-party benchmark results for OpenAI’s o3 AI model is raising questions about the company’s transparency and model testing practices. When OpenAI unveiled o3 in December, the company claimed the model could answer just over a fourth of questions on FrontierMath, a challenging set of math problems. That score blew the…

Famed AI researcher launches controversial startup to replace all human workers everywhere

Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an “absurdly” described mission that it’s difficult to discern if the startup is for real or just satire. Such is the case with Mechanize, a startup whose founder – and the non-profit AI research organization he founded called Epoch – is being skewered on…

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…

ChatGPT is referring to users by their names unprompted, and some find it ‘creepy’

Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI…

ChatGPT will now use its ‘memory’ to personalize web searches

OpenAI is upgrading ChatGPT’s “memory” again. In a changelog and support pages on OpenAI’s website Thursday, the company quietly announced “Memory with Search,” a feature that lets ChatGPT draw on memories — details from past conversations, such as your favorite foods — to inform queries when the bot searches the web. ChatGPT release notes were…

OpenAI pursued Cursor maker before entering into talks to buy Windsurf for $3B

When news broke that OpenAI was in talks to acquire AI coding company Windsurf for $3 billion, one of the first questions on the mind of anyone following the space was likely: “Why not buy Cursor creator Anysphere instead?” After all, OpenAI Startup Fund has been an investor in Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, since the…

OpenAI launches Flex processing for cheaper, slower AI tasks

In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API option that provides lower AI model usage prices in exchange for slower response times and “occasional resource unavailability.” Flex processing, which is available in beta for OpenAI’s recently released o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, is…

As the trade war escalates, Hence launches an AI ‘advisor’ to help companies manage risk

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every…

Google’s latest AI model report lacks key safety details, experts say

On Thursday, weeks after launching its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety evaluations. However, the report is light on the details, experts say, making it difficult to determine which risks the model might pose. Technical reports provide useful — and unflattering,…

AI benchmarking platform Chatbot Arena forms a new company

Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.”…

House investigation into DeepSeek teases out funding, security realities around Chinese AI tool

A House panel has concluded that the U.S. government should double down on export controls and other tools to slow down the progress of Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek, while also preparing for a future where those efforts fail. In a report released Wednesday, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party further fleshes…

OpenAI’s Stargate project sets its sights on international expansion

Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report.  While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is…

The latest viral ChatGPT trend is doing ‘reverse location search’ from photos

There’s a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate and zoom in on photos — even blurry…

Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban

The Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips, and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The restrictions are part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after…

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Codeium for $3B, with news expected later this week

Codeium, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant tool Windsurf, is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported. If the deal happens, it would put OpenAI in direct competition with a number of other AI coding assistant providers, including Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, which OpenAI backed from…

OpenAI launches a pair of AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini

OpenAI announced on Thursday the launch of o3 and o4-mini, new AI reasoning models designed to pause and work through questions before responding. The company calls o3 its most advanced reasoning model ever, outperforming the company’s previous models on tests measuring math, coding, reasoning, science, and visual understanding capabilities. Meanwhile, o4-mini offers what OpenAI says…

Startup funding hit records in Q1. But the outlook for 2025 is still awful.

Startups attracted $91.5 billion in venture capital funding in Q1, according to the latest report from data provider PitchBook. This figure not only exceeds the previous quarter’s allocation by 18.5% but also represents the second-highest quarterly investment in the last decade. Despite this seemingly positive news, Kyle Stanford, lead U.S. venture capital analyst at PitchBook,…

Microsoft researchers say they’ve developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs

Microsoft researchers claim they’ve developed the largest-scale 1-bit AI model, also known as a “bitnet,” to date. Called BitNet b1.58 2B4T, it’s openly available under an MIT license and can run on CPUs, including Apple’s M2. Bitnets are essentially compressed models designed to run on lightweight hardware. In standard models, weights, the values that define…

Deck raises $12M to ‘Plaid-ify” any website using AI

Deck, a startup that claims to be building “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round — about nine months after closing its seed financing, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The new raise, led by Infinity Ventures, brings Montreal-based Deck’s total raised since its January 2024…

Less than a month left to claim your brand’s spotlight at TechCrunch Sessions: AI with an exhibit table

TechCrunch Sessions: AI is right around the corner — and the deadline to reserve your exhibit table is nearly gone. If you’ve got an AI innovation worth shouting about, now’s your moment. Don’t sit on the sidelines while others take the spotlight. Put your product where it belongs — in front of the leaders and…

Capsule captures $12M to build the next version of its AI video editor for brands

Capsule is upgrading its AI-powered video editing assistant for marketing, sales, and media teams following the close of a $12 million round of Series A funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The upgraded editor will include new features like AI suggestions and support for real-time collaboration. The new version of its studio software will feature…

A dev built a test to see how AI chatbots respond to controversial topics

A pseudonymous developer has created what they’re calling a “free speech eval,” SpeechMap, for the AI models powering chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and X’s Grok. The goal is to compare how different models treat sensitive and controversial subjects, the developer told TechCrunch, including political criticism and questions about civil rights and protest. AI companies have…

Hammerspace, an unstructured data wrangler used by Nvidia, Meta and Tesla, raises $100M at $500M+ valuation

Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: you need data — a lot of it — to build the models, and then the models need efficient ways to ingest and output data to work.  A company called Hammerspace has built a system to help AI and other organisations tap into data troves…

Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud

Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend…

US government imposes license requirement on Nvidia H20 exports

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government…

Nvidia H20 chip exports hit with license requirement by US government

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government…

Telli, a YC alum, raises pre-seed funding for its AI voice agents

Former Y Combinator startup telli is helping companies alleviate the bottleneck that occurs when a high-volume of customers try to, for example, book appointments. Its AI voice agents kick in and handle basic operations while handing off more-complex processes to human operators. The Berlin-based startup has now raised $3.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led…

OpenAI may ‘adjust’ its safeguards if rivals release ‘high-risk’ AI

In an update to its Preparedness Framework, the internal framework OpenAI uses to decide whether AI models are safe and what safeguards, if any, are needed during development and release, OpenAI said that it may “adjust” its requirements if a rival AI lab releases a “high-risk” system without comparable safeguards. The change reflects the increasing…

Figma sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lovable over the term ‘Dev Mode’

We may be witnessing the makings of a new tech industry feud between competitors. Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch.  The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term “Dev Mode” for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode,…

OpenAI hires team behind GV-backed AI eval platform Context.ai

Context.ai, a startup building evaluations and analytics for AI models, announced Tuesday that its co-founders will join OpenAI.  Context.ai plans to wind down its products following the acqui-hire, per a message on the company’s website. When reached for comment, OpenAI declined to reveal the terms of the deal. “Evals are a requirement to building high-performing…

Google’s Veo 2 video generating model comes to Gemini

Google is bringing its Veo 2 video-generating AI model to users who pay for Gemini Advanced, the company’s premium AI plan. The expansion comes as Google looks to deliver an answer to OpenAI’s Sora video generation platform, and as competition in the space grows fiercer. Two weeks ago, one of the more formidable synthetic media…

Witness a dynamic dialogue between two visionary CEOs

Step into an extraordinary fireside chat featuring Ali Ghodsi, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Databricks, alongside Dario Amodei, the innovative co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Discover how their groundbreaking partnership is set to accelerate the evolution of domain-specific AI agents. During this free, virtual event, you’ll also gain exclusive access to three additional sessions…

OpenAI is reportedly developing its own X-like social media platform

OpenAI is building its own X-like social media network, according to a new report from The Verge. The project is still in the early stages, but there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that contains a social feed. The report states that it’s unknown if OpenAI plans to launch the social network as a…

Former Tesla supply chain leaders create Atomic, an AI inventory solution

Tesla famously struggled to scale up production of the Model 3 sedan in 2018 — so much so that CEO Elon Musk said his company was weeks away from collapsing. That near-death experience helped spawn a whole new company called Atomic that’s built around using AI to streamline supply chains. Co-founded by former Tesla employees…

Reach 1,000+ AI leaders: Host a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI

Looking to position your brand in front of the brightest minds in artificial intelligence? Hosting a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week is your opportunity to do just that. Reach 1,200+ attendees and the surrounding Berkeley tech scene. From June 1 to June 7, TechCrunch invites startups, investors, and builders to bring unique and…