Three things we learned about Apple’s AI plans from its earnings

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t give much away about the company’s AI plans on Thursday’s Q2 earnings call with investors, but he did confirm a few tidbits about how the tech giant plans to move forward with artificial intelligence. Notably, his comments suggested that despite spending

How Y Combinator's founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup Hona land $3M

Y Combinator is renowned in Silicon Valley for a lot of reasons, but there's one service that has quietly become one of its most powerful: an online founder-matching tool. “I think this is the most valuable digital product that YC has built (i.e. more valuable than Bookface, etc.). It’s

Airbnb releases group booking features as it taps into AI for customer service

Airbnb’s summer release is usually a grand affair with tons of updates for guests and a few for hosts. This time, however, the company is introducing just a few updates for group booking along with a new category called “Icons,” which are experiences hosted by celebrated names in

Amazon CodeWhisperer is now called Q Developer and is expanding its functions

Pour one out for CodeWhisperer, Amazon’s AI-powered assistive coding tool. As of today, it’s kaput — sort of. CodeWhisperer is now Q Developer, a part of Amazon’s Q family of business-oriented generative AI chatbots that also extends to the newly announced Q Business. Availa

Sam’s Club’s AI-powered exit tech reaches 20% of stores

Amazon may be scaling back its AI-powered Just Walk Out checkout-free tech in its stores in favor of smart shopping carts, but Walmart-owned Sam’s Club says it’s turning to AI to speed up its own exit technology. Instead of requiring store staff to check members’ purchases against

Yelp is launching a new AI assistant to help you connect with businesses

Yelp announced a new AI-powered chatbot today for consumers that helps them connect with relevant businesses for their tasks. The company joins a long list of organizations leaning into AI chatbots as an assistive medium. The company is rolling out the AI assistant on its iOS app under the “P

Devastated by his videos being posted to a porn site, this founder hit on an AI startup idea

Dan Purcell, the founder and CEO of Ceartas, recalls feeling devastated when he realized that a former partner had, unbeknownst to him, uploaded private, intimate videos of them onto a porn site. Over a call, Purcell told me, “I was dating a girl who was in the tech industry, and she asked me if

NIST launches a new platform to assess generative AI

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests tech for the U.S. government, companies and the broader public, on Monday announced the launch of NIST GenAI, a new program spearheaded by NIST to assess generative AI technologies

OpenAI inks strategic tie-up with UK’s Financial Times, including content use

OpenAI, maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has netted another news licensing deal in Europe, adding London’s Financial Times to a growing list of publishers it’s paying for content access. As with OpenAI’s earlier publisher licensing deals, financial terms of the arrangement a

Photo-sharing community EyeEm will license users’ photos to train AI if they don’t delete them

EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users’ photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the company informed users via email that it was adding a new clause to its Terms & Conditions

Meta AI tested: Doesn’t quite justify its own existence, but free is free

Meta’s new large language model, Llama 3, powers the imaginatively named “Meta AI,” a newish chatbot that the social media and advertising company has installed in as many of its apps and interfaces as possible. How does this model stack up against other all-purpose conversational

xAI, Elon Musk's OpenAI rival, is closing on $6B in funding and X, his social network, is already one of its shareholders

xAI, Elon Musk's 10-month-old competitor to the AI phenom OpenAI, is raising $6 billion on a pre-money valuation of $18 billion, according to one trusted source close to the deal. The deal — which would give investors one quarter of the company — is expected to close in the next few

Y Combinator alum Matterport is being bought by real estate juggernaut CoStar at a 212% premium

Digital twin platform Matterport has agreed to be acquired by one of its customers, CoStar, in a cash-and-stock deal of $5.50 per share that gives it an enterprise valuation of about $1.6 billion. Matterport’s tech helps companies create digital replicas of physical spaces. CoStar’s off

Women in AI: Anna Korhonen studies the intersection between linguistics and AI

"">To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, technewss has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who've contributed to the AI revolution. We're publishing these pieces throughout the year as the