Media & Entertainment News | TechCrunch

TikTok partners with Warner Bros. to become a discovery engine for TV and movies

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 13:00:22 +0000

TikTok’s latest offering is capitalizing on the app’s ability to serve as a discovery engine for other media — something its users already take advantage of by sharing short clips of movies and TV shows. Today, the company is partnering with studios like Warner Bros. to launch a feature that lets users discover movies and […]

Automattic launches AI writing tool that aims to make WordPress blogs more readable and succinct

Paul Sawers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 09:32:01 +0000

Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has launched a new AI tool designed to help bloggers write more clearly and succinctly.

Amazon Music’s new AI feature lets you browse podcast episodes by topic

Lauren Forristal — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 16:24:55 +0000

Amazon Music announced Tuesday the launch of its new AI-powered feature, “Topics,” which allows users to explore podcast episodes by specific topics discussed in the episode. When you visit the page of a podcast episode, look for new Topic tags below the episode description. You can tap on a tag to see a list of […]

TechCrunch Minute: With Venu Sports, streaming gets serious about live sports

Anthony Ha — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Live sports are finally moving onto streaming in a serious way, with a new service called Venu Sports set to launch this fall. This is a joint venture between Disney and Fox (which are part of the same company), as well as Warner Bros. Discovery. It will include 14 live sports channels, including the various […]

AI music startup Suno claims training model on copyrighted music is ‘fair use’

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 21:50:57 +0000

Following the recent lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against music generation startups Udio and Suno, Suno admitted in a court filing on Thursday that it did, in fact, train its AI model using copyrighted songs. But it claimed that doing so was legal under the fair-use doctrine. The RIAA filed the lawsuit […]

Heeyo built an AI chatbot to be a billion kids’ interactive tutor and friend

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

When Xiaoyin Qu was growing up in China, she was obsessed with learning how to build paper airplanes that could do flips in the air. Her parents, though, didn’t have the aerodynamic expertise to support her newfound passion, and her teachers were too overwhelmed to give her dedicated attention. “That’s why I wanted to build […]

Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Perplexity AI will soon start sharing advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a user query, a move that appears designed to assuage critics that have accused the startup of plagiarism and unethical web scraping. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s head of business, told TechCrunch that the company was actually […]

Huang and Zuckerberg swapped jackets at SIGGRAPH 2024 and things got weird

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:03:14 +0000

A fireside chat on Monday between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the SIGGRAPH 2024 conference in Colorado took a few unexpected turns. It started innocently enough, with Huang waxing positive about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg speaking about his vision of an AI chatbot future. But by the […]

Dear Google, who wants an AI-written fan letter?

Anthony Ha — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 19:09:27 +0000

The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d stopped wondering. It starts innocuously enough, with a father talking about how much his daughter loves Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (she “might even be the world’s number […]

A new Chinese video-generating model appears to be censoring politically sensitive topics

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 23:07:39 +0000

A powerful new video-generating AI model became widely available today — but there’s a catch: The model appears to be censoring topics deemed too politically sensitive by the government in its country of origin, China. The model, Kling, developed by Beijing-based company Kuaishou, launched in waitlisted access earlier in the year for users with a […]

Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 15:48:55 +0000

Thousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two about losing control of your own narrative, it’s him. Now Kaepernick is launching an AI storytelling platform, Lumi, to help creators tell and own their stories. If you said, “Huh?” when reading […]

Google Play gets ‘Comics’ feature for manga readers in Japan

Lauren Forristal — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:05:00 +0000

Alongside a slew of announcements for Play — such as AI-powered app comparisons and a feature that bundles similar apps — Google has introduced new “Curated Spaces,” hubs dedicated to specific topics. Announced Wednesday, “Comics” is designed to appeal to manga fans. Positioned at the top of the screen in between “For You” and “Top […]

Mark Zuckerberg imagines content creators making AI clones of themselves

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 02:22:00 +0000

Content creators are busy people. Most spend more than 20 hours a week creating new content for their respective corners of the web. That doesn’t leave much time for audience engagement. But Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, thinks that AI could solve this problem. In an interview with internet personality Rowan Cheung, Zuckerberg laid out his […]

Kakao founder issued arrest warrant by Seoul court

Kate Park — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 04:48:14 +0000

A Seoul court issued an arrest warrant for Brian Kim, the founder of South Korean internet giant Kakao, on allegations of stock price manipulation related to the company’s takeover of K-pop agency SM Entertainment in 2023. The Seoul Southern District Court said on Tuesday that it had issued a warrant for Kim’s arrest after a […]

Apple Vision Pro debuts immersive content featuring NBA players, The Weeknd and more

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 20:14:59 +0000

Apple on Thursday announced its upcoming lineup of immersive video content for the Vision Pro. The list includes behind-the-scenes footage of the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, an immersive performance by The Weeknd, new series, films, concerts and more. The headset launched in February with more than 150 3D movies and immersive titles. Apple is adding […]

TechCrunch Minute: Over 100K YouTube videos have been scraped to train AI for Apple, Nvidia

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

What do MrBeast, John Oliver and The Wall Street Journal have in common? The transcripts of their YouTube videos have been scraped to train the AI used by companies like Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple and Salesforce. An investigation from Wired and Proof News found that this dataset, which is called YouTube Subtitles, contains transcripts from more […]

TikTok fast-tracks artist account creation for DistroKid members

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

TikTok is partnering with the music distribution service DistroKid to fast-track the creation of artist accounts for members. The ByteDance-owned short video platform introduced an Artist Account feature last year to let musicians showcase their new music along with their music catalog on the platform and behind-the-scenes footage. Typically, it takes up to 30 days […]

Spotify adds a Spanish-speaking AI DJ, ‘Livi’

Sarah Perez — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Spotify's AI DJ, which first launched last year, is meant to serve as a smart audio guide that introduces music using a convincingly realistic voice.

Korean prosecutors file warrant to arrest Kakao founder for stock manipulation

Kate Park — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:13:00 +0000

The warrant is part of an investigation into alleged stock market manipulation related to a high-profile bidding war for music label, SM Entertainment.

Meta removes special restrictions for Trump’s account ahead of 2024 elections

Maxwell Zeff — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 22:49:09 +0000

Meta announced former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will no longer be subject to heightened suspension penalties, according to an updated blog post on Friday. The company says it made the decision to ensure all Presidential nominees were on equal footing on their platform ahead of the 2024 Presidential election. When Meta reinstated […]