Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the company will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram. The tests will begin in the U.S. The social media company’s announcement comes on the same day as a16z-backed chatbot company Character.ai is rolling out the ability for users to […]
Reddit is taking a stand against AI companies — or at least asking them to pay up. Earlier this week, Reddit announced that it’s changing its Robots Exclusion Protocol, also known as its robots.txt file. This dry-sounding edit is part of a larger negotiation/battle between the AI companies that are hungry for content they can […]
Outside of AI, few startups have drawn venture investments like climate tech. And like AI, companies in the sector need large infusions of cash, sometimes well beyond what a typical venture investor might offer, to reach a size where they’ll be able to make a mark. A new deal involving Rondo Energy, which makes thermal energy […]
Amazon is folding its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into its primary care business One Medical, the company announced on Thursday. The company explained in today’s blog post that, to simplify Amazon’s primary care offering for customers, the service has now been rebranded to Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit, and now offers more affordable per-visit pricing. Customers […]
Meta has fixed the bug that caused people to believe the company had adjusted their selections in a political content settings tool without their consent. The issue had impacted users on both Instagram and Threads, seemingly resetting users’ content settings back to the default, which limits the amount of political content users see from people […]
YouTube is adding several new features for Premium users, including smart downloads and support for picture-in-picture mode for Shorts, as well as a wider rollout of its “Jump Ahead” feature for navigating through videos. The Google-owned video streaming platform already allows background play and picture-in-picture mode for long-form videos so you can consume content while […]
TechCrunch is joining forces with Google Cloud as its lead partner for Startup Battlefield 200. This event will highlight and support the most promising startups from around the globe at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, which will take place in San Francisco from October 28-30. At the heart of this collaboration is a shared vision of fostering […]
a16z-backed Character.AI said today that it is now allowing users to talk to AI characters over calls. The feature currently supports multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. The startup tested the calling feature ahead of today’s public launch. During that time, it said that more than 3 million users had […]
TikTok is gearing up to challenge Amazon’s Prime Day event in the July. The social network announced on Thursday that TikTok Shop is holding a “Deals For You Days” sales event in the U.S. starting on July 9. The announcement comes a few days after Amazon revealed that its annual Prime Day sales will take […]
Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecoms operator, has initiated what analysts expect to be an industry-wide increase in tariffs in the world’s second largest wireless market, raising some of its plans by more than 20%. Jio’s revised pricing structure, effective July 3, sees its entry-level Rs 155 ($1.87) plan, offering 2GB of data and unlimited calls, […]