Ivan Mehta, Author at TechCrunch

How to enable Wikipedia’s dark mode

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 14:37:00 +0000

If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile this week, you might have seen a pop-up indicating that dark mode is ready for prime time.

Feeling Great’s new therapy app translates its psychiatrist co-founder’s experience into AI

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Seeking mental health support is a complex process, but some founders believe that using AI to formalize techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help folks who might not have access to professionals. Dr. David Burns, who has over 40 years of experience in the field of psychiatry, has now built an app, Feeling Great, […]

Apple Intelligence’s writing tools stumble on swears and controversial topics

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 16:00:09 +0000

Apple's Writing Tools feature will show a message notifying you that AI-generated suggestions might not be of the highest quality when tackling certain topics.

PayPal makes quick guest-checkout solution Fastlane available to US businesses

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

PayPal said on Tuesday that it is making its quick guest-checkout solution, Fastlane, available to all U.S. merchants after testing it with select businesses for a few months. Businesses will initially have to use the company’s payment processing services, such as PayPal Braintree or PayPal Complete Payments, to use Fastlane. The company started testing Fastlane […]

Apple’s new Safari feature removes distracting items from websites

Ivan Mehta — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 17:24:22 +0000

Safari’s newest feature, Distraction Control, can remove distracting elements from a website. The feature follows Arc Browser’s addition of Boosts last year, which similarly lets users remove features from a site and further customize its appearance. Apple is rolling out the early version of the feature this week through new developer betas of iOS 18, […]

Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer returns to Google

Ivan Mehta — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 17:52:09 +0000

In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed chatbot startup. In his previous stint, Shazeer spearheaded the team of researchers that built LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a language model that was used for conversational AI tools. Character.AI co-founder Daniel […]

Yelp’s lack of transparency around API charges angers developers

Ivan Mehta — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 17:19:54 +0000

When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day.

Meta’s Threads crosses 200 million active users

Ivan Mehta — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 08:40:50 +0000

A day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about his newest social media experiment Threads reaching “almost” 200 million users on the company’s Q2 2024 earnings call, the platform has touched the milestone. Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that the Twitter rival has reached 200 million active users in a post on Threads. Meta has […]

Google brings Gemini-powered search history and Lens to Chrome desktop

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Google Thursday said that it is introducing new Gemini-powered features for Chrome’s desktop version, including Lens for desktop, tab compare for shopping assistance, and natural language integration for search history. Years after introducing and evolving Google Lens on mobile, the feature is finally coming to desktop. Rolling out to users across the world in the […]

Zuckerberg says Meta will need 10x more computing power to train Llama 4 than Llama 3

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 07:53:29 +0000

Meta, which develops one of the biggest foundational open source large language models, Llama, believes it will need significantly more computing power to train models in the future. Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta’s second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that to train Llama 4, the company will need 10x more compute than what was needed to […]

Meta says India is the largest market for Meta AI usage

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:12:44 +0000

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 call that people have used […]

How to enable Apple Intelligence on your iPhone

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 17:32:40 +0000

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.

Bending Spoons acquires file transfer service WeTransfer

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:45:03 +0000

Bending Spoons said that it will continue reserving 30% of WeTransfer’s advertising space to give back campaigns and editorial content.

Travel startup Mindtrip’s new feature lets you build an itinerary from a screenshot, YouTube or TikTok video

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

You can even upload a screenshot of a ticket, or a list of cities you are visiting and ask Mindtrip's assistant to suggest places to visit, bars and restaurants.

Threads now highlights relevant trending topics above posts

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 11:04:16 +0000

Threads users in the U.S. can now see a label that highlights related trending topics above posts.

Friend’s $99 necklace uses AI to help combat loneliness

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

AI hardware is all the rage in startup land — though receptions have thus far been mixed. Two notable examples, Rabbit and Humane, released devices to disappointing results. a16z-backed Limitless and Exor-backed Bee AI, meanwhile, are working on their own screenless AI wearables. Avi Schiffmann, a Harvard dropout who built a Webby Award-winning website that […]

Meta is rolling out its AI Studio in the US for creators to build AI chatbots

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 12:36:25 +0000

Meta said Monday that it is rolling out its AI studio to all creators in the U.S. to let them make personalized AI-powered chatbots. The company first announced the AI Studio last year and started testing it with select creators in June this year. Meta is making the tool available to all creators, who can […]

Apple brings Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 dev beta, but there are a lot of limitations

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 05:10:56 +0000

Users who have signed up for iOS 18’s developer beta can now get the first taste of Apple Intelligence as the company has released some features of its AI suite via an update released on Monday. The company revealed Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, but the first set of developer […]

Bee raises $7M for its wearable AI assistant that learns from your conversations

Ivan Mehta — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 17:10:00 +0000

The promise of AI and large language models (LLMs) is the ability to understand increasingly wider amounts of context and make sense of that information easily, so it makes sense that we’re seeing a bunch of companies trying to make wearable hardware so that people can use AI in their day-to-day lives. The latest entrant […]

Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp has 100M monthly active users in the US

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0000

WhatsApp has recently ramped up its marketing push in the U.S.