Newsletters Archive | TechCrunch

TechCrunch Minute: Is AI actually making workers more productive?

Anthony Ha — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Is AI going to make us all more productive at work? Executives are feeling optimistic, but workers aren’t quite as convinced. That’s according to a new study from freelancing marketplace Upwork. The company says it surveyed 2,500 executives, full-time employees, and freelancers across the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada and asked them about their views […]

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 […]

TechCrunch Minute: The iPad was the surprising star of Apple’s sales numbers

Anthony Ha — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

For once, the iPad was the highlight of Apple’s latest sales numbers. The company said in its third-quarter earnings report that iPad sales increased year-over-year, from $5.8 billion to $7.2 billion. The reason for that growth is probably new versions of the iPad Air and iPad Pro, which were announced in May. Turns out that […]

TechCrunch Minute: Why did Wiz walk away from $23 billion?

Anthony Ha — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

As widely reported, Wiz recently said no to a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google. At that price, it would have been Google’s biggest acquisition ever. It’s possible the Google team got cold feet during due diligence, or there may have been concerns that regulators would have challenged an acquisition of this size. But all […]

TechCrunch Minute: Investors pour money into non-alcoholic beverages

Anthony Ha — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Startups are attracting serious funding to provide fun, alcohol-free drink options at the bar and in other social contexts. Earlier this year, canned water company Liquid Death announced that it has raised $67 million in new funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. And Athletic Brewing Company, which describes itself as America’s largest non-alcoholic brewery, said […]

TechCrunch Minute: Will AI get dumber?

Anthony Ha — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Although AI models have made big breakthroughs in the last few years, there’s now a risk that they could get dumber and even collapse, according to a new research paper published in Nature. The phenomenon is described by researchers as “model collapse.” Think of it as a snake eating its own tail — or a […]

TechCrunch Minute: Doomscrolling probably isn’t great for your mental health

Anthony Ha — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:05:00 +0000

It turns out that maybe, just maybe, spending a lot of time staring at your phone and reading bad news isn’t great for your outlook on life or humanity. That’s the finding of a recent study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, which linked doomscrolling to existential anxiety, despair, distrust and suspicion of others. […]

TechCrunch Minute: Microsoft brings more generative AI to Bing

Anthony Ha — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Bing is the latest search engine to introduce generative AI into its results, with Microsoft announcing that it’s making Bing generative search available to a small percentage of users. The goal is to give those users the answers they want right in their search results, potentially synthesizing information that they’d otherwise have to click through […]

TechCrunch Minute: Meta’s new ‘Imagine me’ feature lets you generate AI selfies

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Meta’s AI integrations into apps like Instagram and Facebook have felt pretty useless so far. If I’m just trying to find my friend’s Instagram, why do I have to navigate around a Meta AI interface that is desperately trying to tell me the top five vegetarian protein sources? But with the release of Meta’s new […]

TechCrunch Minute: A UK school was reprimanded for unlawful use of facial-recognition technology

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Today’s story takes us to a high school on the outskirts of Essex, which has ended up on the wrong side of the U.K.’s GDPR laws. This may alarm you if you used to carry lunch money to school, but kids these days can do biometric facial scans to pay for their meals. But as […]

TechCrunch Minute: Where Kamala Harris stands on tech issues

Amanda Silberling — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

This weekend, President Biden announced that he would suspend his campaign for president, and he endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. We still don’t know if she will ultimately be the candidate that goes toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in November, but we do know that Silicon Valley has opinions. Like Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance, […]

TechCrunch Minute: What caused last week’s major tech outage?

Anthony Ha — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Late last week, there was a worldwide tech outage that affected everything from airports to banks to healthcare. Flights were grounded across the United States. So, what actually happened? The source of all those problems seems to be a popular cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike and its flagship software product Falcon Sensor. Apparently a “defect” in […]

TechCrunch Minute: OpenAI shrinks its flagship model

Anthony Ha — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

OpenAI is launching a mini version of its latest AI model. These small AI models are meant to be faster and more affordable than the full version — making them particularly useful for simple, high-volume tasks. That should appeal to smaller developers who don’t necessarily have a lot of money for AI costs but want […]

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 […]

TechCrunch Minute: This startup wants to make Wordle for chess

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

If you play Wordle every day but also happen to enjoy chess, we’ve got great news for you. Echo Chess, a game built by a company called Echo Chunk, is trying to become Wordle for Chess. No, you’re not playing Wordle and only guessing words like “QUEEN” or “CHECK.” Echo Chess is a daily puzzle […]

TechCrunch Minute: Whistleblowers say OpenAI employs ‘illegally restrictive’ NDAs

Amanda Silberling — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Trouble could be on the horizon for OpenAI. A group of whistleblowers accused OpenAI of requiring its employees to sign illegally restrictive non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs. The lawyers representing these whistleblowers sent a letter to SEC chair Gary Gensler, alleging that OpenAI’s contracts with current and former employees could illegally prevent them from alerting government […]

TechCrunch Minute: A Google robot shows off what Gemini can do

Anthony Ha — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Google found a new way to demonstrate what its Gemini AI model can do, with help from a robot. This was a robot from Google’s Everybody Robots Division, which was shut down last year. But apparently the robots are still around, so Google put a yellow bowtie on one of them then used Gemini to […]

TechCrunch Minute: FTC finds ‘dark patterns’ in subscription apps

Anthony Ha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

A new study from the Federal Trade Commission looks at the “dark patterns” that subscription apps and websites use to get more money or data from their users. “Dark pattern” is actually the term used in the FTC report, and it refers to manipulative design techniques that are supposed to make users do something they […]

TechCrunch Minute: Unpacking Samsung Unpacked

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

It’s a big day in the Samsung universe. At Samsung’s Unpacked 2024 event, the company debuted new phones, headphones and even a wearable ring. As expected, Samsung is emphasizing its Google-enabled AI features in these new phone models: the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Not only are these phones thinner […]

TechCrunch Minute: The FTC bans anonymous social app NGL from serving minors

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Not gonna lie, things aren’t looking great for NGL. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is banning NGL from serving minors or advertising to them, marking the first time that the government agency has taken this sort of action against an app. You might recognize the app from your friends’ Instagram stories, when people post links […]