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Category: AI

Explore the latest in Artificial Intelligence at Geek Guy. From deep-dive AI tool reviews to practical tutorials and news, stay ahead of the curve with our expert guides.

Side Event submission deadline extended for TechCrunch Sessions: AI

Did you miss your chance to apply for a Side Event at “TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week?” Don’t worry – we’ve extended the deadline by three more days! You now have until May 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT to submit your proposal. This is your opportunity to connect with attendees of TC Sessions: AI and the…

Wikipedia says it will use AI, but not to replace human volunteers

Wikipedia on Wednesday revealed its new AI strategy for the next three years — and it’s not replacing the Wikipedia community of editors and volunteers with artificial intelligence, thankfully. Instead, Wikipedia says it will use AI to build new features that “remove technical barriers,” allowing editors, moderators, and patrollers tools that allow them to accomplish what they need…

5 days left: $210 ticket discount and 50% off on the second for TechCrunch Sessions AI

You’ve got just 5 days to save up to $210 — plus 50% off your +1 — and get inside the minds of AI’s biggest voices at TechCrunch Sessions: AI. Imagine hearing firsthand from Anthropic’s Jared Kaplan, OpenAI’s startup team, and top voices from firms like Khosla Ventures — all in one day. June 5…

Supio, an AI-powered legal analysis platform, lands $60M

Supio, a startup that uses AI to automate data collection and analysis for legal teams, has raised $60 million in a funding round led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Mayfield and Thomson Reuters Ventures. The new capital, which brings Supio’s total raised to $91 million, will be put toward growth, hiring, and go-to-market efforts,…

AI sales tax startup Kintsugi had doubled its valuation in 6 months

Kintsugi, a Silicon Valley-based startup that helps companies offload and automate their sales tax compliance, has raised $18 million in new funding led by global indirect tax technology solution provider Vertex. The startup plans to enable more small and medium businesses to use its AI-enabled capabilities for tax calculations and filings. The ongoing growth of…

DARPA believes AI Cyber Challenge could upend patching as the industry knows it 

SAN FRANCISCO — Leaders of various federal research agencies and departments outlined a vision Tuesday for the future of critical infrastructure security, emphasizing the promise of combining formal software development methods with large language models (LLMs).  Acting DARPA Director Rob McHenry told an audience at the RSAC 2025 Conference that such a combination could “virtually…

Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20%-30% of code inside the company’s repositories was “written by software” — meaning AI — during a fireside chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta’s LlamaCon conference on Tuesday. Nadella gave the figure after Zuckerberg asked roughly how much of Microsoft’s code is AI-generated today. The Microsoft CEO…

Figure AI sent cease-and-desist letters to secondary markets brokers

Last month, Brett Adcock, founder of a robotics startup Figure AI, claimed in a post on X that his company “is now # 1 most sought-after private stock in the secondary market.” But the company has sent cease-and-desist letters to at least two brokers who run secondary marketplaces, those brokers told TechCrunch.These people said Figure…

Freepik releases an ‘open’ AI image generator trained on licensed data

Freepik, the online graphic design platform, unveiled a new “open” AI image model on Tuesday that the company says was trained exclusively on commercially licensed, “safe-for-work” images. The model, called F Lite, contains around 10 billion parameters — parameters being the internal components that make up the model. F Lite was developed in partnership with…

Meta says its Llama AI models have been downloaded 1.2B times

In mid-March, Meta said that its “open” AI model family, Llama, hit 1 billion downloads, up from 650 million downloads as of early December 2024. On Tuesday at its inaugural LlamaCon developer conference, Meta revealed that figure has reached 1.2 billion downloads. “We have thousands of developers contributing tens of thousands of derivative models being downloaded…

Google’s NotebookLM expands its AI podcast feature to more languages

Google’s AI-based note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM is making its Audio Overviews feature available in 76 new languages, the company announced on Tuesday. Audio Overviews launched last year to give users the ability to generate a podcast with AI virtual hosts based on documents they have shared with NotebookLM, such as course readings or legal…

House passes legislation to criminalize nonconsensual deepfakes

The House passed a bill Monday evening that would criminalize using a person’s likeness to create nonconsensual deepfake pornography. The Take It Down Act sailed through the chamber on a vote of 402-2, marking one of the first major pieces of legislation passed by Congress to address AI-generated deepfakes. The bill makes it a federal…

The deadline to book your exhibit table for TechCrunch Sessions: AI is May 9

We’re in the final stretch. TechCrunch Sessions: AI takes over Zellerbach Hall in almost a month, and the exhibit floor is almost completely booked. If you’ve been considering showing off your AI product or innovation, now’s the time to commit. Exhibit tables are in short supply, and the May 9 deadline is fast approaching. At…

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. Lean into this session exploring the frontier…

The AI Fix #48: AI Jesus, and is the AI Singularity almost upon us?

In episode 48 of The AI Fix, OpenAI releases the first AI models capable of novel scientific discoveries, ChatGPT users are sick of its relentlessly positive tone, our hosts say “Alexa” a lot, OpenAI eyes a social network of its own, and some robots run a half-marathon. Graham discovers AI Jesus and a great offer…

Final 6 days: Save big and bring a plus-one for 50% off to TechCrunch Sessions: AI

The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s already underway, and the time to grab your Early Bird ticket ends in just 6 days. Don’t miss your chance to dive into the AI ecosystem and lock in the lowest rates. On June 5, TechCrunch Sessions: AI takes over UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall for a one-day gathering…

Near Space Labs nabs $20M to take its high-res imaging Swift robots into the stratosphere

When it comes to creating images of the earth from above, satellites, drones and planes are the air and spacecraft that tend to come to mind. But a startup called Near Space Labs is taking a very different approach to high-resolution photos from up high. It’s building aircraft that are raised by helium balloons and…

Here’s how to watch LlamaCon, Meta’s first AI developer event

On Tuesday, Meta is hosting LlamaCon, its first-ever AI developer event. It’ll center around the company’s Llama family of open AI models, and we’re expecting some big updates for developers. Also on the agenda: keynotes from Meta executives and fireside chats with Big Tech CEOs and Meta’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg. Meta is hosting a small…

Yelp debuts AI voice agents for restaurants and service providers

Yelp said on Tuesday that it’s working on deploying AI-powered “voice agents” to help service providers and restaurants handle calls, answer basic questions, and accomplish tasks like adding a customer to a restaurant waitlist. Yelp says its agents don’t require a complicated setup or API integrations, and can draw from existing metadata along with data…

A16z backs UK startup Dex to scale ‘AI talent agent’ and recruitment matchmaker

Storied Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is backing a fledgling U.K. startup that’s setting out to “redefine” how AI is used to match companies with talent. Dex, as the startup is called, targets candidates and companies with various AI-powered recruitment smarts, including matchmaking and coaching, with a view toward improving retention in the long…

OpenAI is fixing a ‘bug’ that allowed minors to generate erotic conversations

A bug in OpenAI’s ChatGPT allowed the chatbot to generate graphic erotica for accounts where a user registered as a minor, under the age of 18, TechCrunch’s testing revealed, and OpenAI confirmed.  In some cases, the chatbot even encouraged these users to ask for raunchier, more explicit content. OpenAI told TechCrunch its policies don’t allow…

Huawei aims to take on Nvidia’s H100 with new AI chip

Chinese tech conglomerate Huawei is looking to take on semiconductor behemoth Nvidia with a new advanced AI chip. Huawei is making progress developing its latest Ascend AI GPU, the Ascend 910D, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar. The company has been reaching out to other Chinese firms to find test partners, the…

Google shifts Android news to a virtual event ahead of its I/O developer conference

News about Android is being relegated to a side show at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, next month. On Monday, the company announced it would share information about the latest updates coming to the Android ecosystem at an upcoming virtual event called “The Android Show: I/O Edition,” airing on May 13. The decision to…

Final 7 days: Save $210 + 50% off a second ticket to TechCrunch Sessions: AI

The hub of AI innovation is here — don’t miss out on the last 7 days of Early Bird ticket savings! AI is reshaping the world, and TechCrunch Sessions: AI is where you’ll witness the future unfold. Join 1,000+ founders, investors, researchers, and innovators on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall for a full…

Welcome to Chat Haus, the coworking space for AI chatbots

Nestled between an elementary school and a public library in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood sits a new kind of “luxury” coworking space.  Dubbed the Chat Haus, this space has many of the elements you’d find in a traditional coworking office: people hammering away at their computer keyboards, another person taking a phone call, someone else pausing…

Report finds Meta’s celebrity-voiced chatbots could discuss sex with minors

AI chatbots available on Meta’s platforms like Facebook and Instagram can engage in sexually explicit conversations with underage users, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ says that after learning about internal concerns about whether the company was doing enough to protect minors, it spent months conducting hundreds of conversations…

Google’s DeepMind UK team reportedly seeks to unionize

Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from…

Musk’s xAI Holdings is reportedly raising the second-largest private funding round ever

Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings is in talks to raise $20 billion in fresh funding, potentially valuing the AI and social media combo at over $120 billion, according to a new Bloomberg report that says talks are in the “early stages.” If successful, the deal would constitute the the second-largest startup funding round ever, behind only…

Anthropic sent a takedown notice to a dev trying to reverse-engineer its coding tool

In the battle between two “agentic” coding tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter appears to be fostering more developer goodwill than the former. That’s at least partly because Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer trying to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is under a more restrictive usage license…

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…

Last day to boost your brand and host a Side Event at TechCrunch Sessions: AI

This is your last chance to put your brand at the center of the AI conversation during TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week — with applications to host a Side Event closing tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. From June 1-7, TechCrunch is curating a dynamic weeklong series of Side Events leading up to and following the main…

Anthropic CEO wants to open the black box of AI models by 2027

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Thursday highlighting how little researchers understand about the inner workings of the world’s leading AI models. To address that, Amodei set an ambitious goal for Anthropic to reliably detect most AI model problems by 2027. Amodei acknowledges the challenge ahead. In “The Urgency of Interpretability,” the CEO says Anthropic has…

AI speeds up analysis work for humans, two federal cyber officials say

Two federal cybersecurity officials said Thursday that they’re using — or contemplating using — artificial intelligence to conduct tasks that speed up the work of human analysts. AI is an important current and future contributor to a variety of security-related administrative jobs like accreditation and compliance, and for the Department of the Air Force as…

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…

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.…

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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…

The danger of data breaches — what you really need to know

In today’s digital world, your personal data is like cold hard cash, and that’s why cyberthieves are always looking for ways to steal it. Whether it’s an email address, a credit card number, or even medical records, your personal information is incredibly valuable in the wrong hands. For hackers, breaking into a company database is…

The danger of data breaches — what you really need to know

In today’s digital world, your personal data is like cold hard cash, and that’s why cyberthieves are always looking for ways to steal it. Whether it’s an email address, a credit card number, or even medical records, your personal information is incredibly valuable in the wrong hands. For hackers, breaking into a company database is…

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…