Klarna’s CEO says it stopped hiring thanks to AI but still advertises many open positions
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski recently told Bloomberg TV that his company essentially stopped hiring a year ago and credited generative AI for enabling this massive workforce reduction.
However, despite Siemiatkowski’s bullishness on AI, the company is not relying entirely on AI to repl
OpenAI whistleblower found dead at 26 in San Francisco apartment
A former OpenAI employee, Suchir Balaji, was recently found dead in his San Francisco apartment, according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In October, the 26-year-old AI researcher raised concerns about OpenAI breaking copyright law when he was interviewed by The New York
The 51 most disruptive startups of 2024
All year long, technewss covers startups, everything from unicorns to tiny seed-stage launches. We are, in many ways, the startup experts.
To create this list, organized alphabetically, we looked back through our year’s worth of coverage for startups that stood out to us. They have fascina
ChatGPT and Sora experienced a major outage
OpenAI says ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API experienced a major outage starting at around 3pm PT on Wednesday, according to the company’s status page. The company says it’s largely back online as of 9pm PT.
“ChatGPT, API, and Sora were down today but we’ve recov
Meta apps experience global outage
Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads on Wednesday were all experiencing issues to varying degrees as a result of a global outage affecting Meta’s apps. The cause of the outage was not disclosed, but Meta acknowledged a “technical issue” in a post on X.
The compan
Google unveils Project Mariner: AI agents to use the web for you
Google unveiled on Wednesday its first-ever AI agent that can take actions on the web, a research prototype from the company’s DeepMind division called Project Mariner. The Gemini-powered agent takes control of your Chrome browser, moves the cursor on your screen, clicks buttons, and fills ou
Flare raises $30M to thwart info-stealers like those used on Snowflake customers
Cybercrime became easier in 2024 with the rise of info-stealer malware, or software that collects login credentials. Instead of breaking into target networks using vulnerabilities, hackers can just log in with those stolen credentials. They don't even have to steal them themselves, but can buy
The creator of ChatGPT’s voice wants to build the tech from ‘Her,’ minus the dystopia
Alexis Conneau thinks a lot about the movie “Her.” For the last several years, he’s obsessed over trying to turn the film’s fictional voice technology, Samantha, into a reality.
Conneau even uses a picture of Joaquin Phoenix’s character in the movie as his banner on
Paytm sells PayPay stake to SoftBank for $279.2 million
Paytm has agreed to sell its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2 million, as the Indian firm sheds non-core assets following a bruising regulatory clampdown earlier this year.
The sale of Paytm’s stake in PayPay, which it received through acquisition rights six year
OpenAI’s o1 model sure tries to deceive humans a lot
OpenAI finally released the full version of o1, which gives smarter answers than GPT-4o by using additional compute to “think” about questions. However, AI safety testers found that o1’s reasoning abilities also make it try to deceive human users at a higher rate than GPT-4o — o
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber isn’t ruling out advertising
Bluesky has blown up this year thanks to a vibrant community of posters, user customization choices, and a decentralized protocol that doesn’t lock users into the choices of a billionaire CEO. But one question mark hanging over Bluesky is how the platform will eventually make money, and wheth
Spotify users are disappointed by an underwhelming Wrapped this year
After weeks of anticipation, some Spotify users are left underwhelmed by the streamer’s personalized year-in-review feature, Spotify Wrapped — with many even going so far as to call it “boring” or a “flop.”
Chief among the complaints are that Spotify prioritized th
Spotify Wrapped 2024 adds an AI podcast powered by Google’s NotebookLM
Spotify Wrapped, the streamer’s highly anticipated annual listening recap, has arrived. In addition to its usual personalized summary detailing your favorite artists, songs, podcasts, and more, the company this year is introducing two new features, including most notably an AI-powered podcast
The abject weirdness of AI ads
“I’m trying to find holiday gifts for my sisters. I open a bunch of tabs, I want my wife’s advice.”
That’s Browser Company CEO, Josh Miller, in his company’s latest ad for its new AI browser, Dia. Consulting your spouse to find gifts for your siblings is a pure