Curated AI coverage from TechCrunch, MIT Technology Review, WIRED and other top global tech media. Please cite this site when republishing.
This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Hackers made death threats against this security researcher.
For a brief, incoherent moment, it seemed as though our robot overlords were about to take over. After the creation of Moltbook, a Reddit clone where AI agents using OpenClaw could communicate with one another, some were fooled into thinking that computers had begun to organize against us — the sel
There’s been a bunch of exciting research-focused AI labs popping up in recent months, and Flapping Airplanes is one of the most interesting. Propelled by its young and curious founders, Flapping Airplanes is focused on finding less data-hungry ways to train AI.
Neysa, an Indian AI infrastructure startup, has secured backing from U.S. private equity firm Blackstone as it scales domestic compute capacity amid India’s push to build homegrown AI capabilities. Blackstone and co-investors, including Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Asset, and Nexus
Power, rather than compute, is fast becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers. That shift has prompted Peak XV Partners to back C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup building plug-and-play, system-level power solutions designed to cut energy losses and improve the economics of large-sc
The Pentagon is pushing AI companies to allow the U.S. military to use their technology for “all lawful purposes,” but Anthropic is pushing back, according to a new report in Axios. The government is reportedly making the same demand to OpenAI, Google, and xAI.
David Greene, the longtime host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” is suing Google, alleging that the male podcast voice in the company’s NotebookLM tool is based on Greene, according to The Washington Post. Greene said that after friends, family members, and co-workers began emailing him about the resembl
Peter Steinberger, who created the AI personal assistant now known as OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI. Previously known as Clawdbot, then Moltbot, OpenClaw achieved viral popularity over the past few weeks with its promise to be the “AI that actually does things,” whether that’s managing your calendar,
The battle for enterprise AI is heating up. Microsoft is bundling Copilot into Office. Google is pushing Gemini into Workspace. OpenAI and Anthropic are selling directly to enterprises.
India has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making the country one of OpenAI’s largest markets globally, CEO Sam Altman said ahead of a government-hosted AI summit. On Sunday, Altman outlined ChatGPT’s growing adoption in India in an article published in the Indian English daily Times of Indi
Something strange happened at University of California campuses this fall. For the first time since the dot-com crash, computer science enrollment dropped. System-wide, it fell 6% last year after declining 3% in 2024, according to reporting this past week by the San Francisco Chronicle.
than showing you the traditional list of links when you run a search query, Google is intent on throwing up AI Overviews instead: synthesized summaries of information scraped off the web, with some word-prediction magic added, and packaged together in a way to sound as accurate and reliable as possi
Elon Musk is “actively” working to make xAI’s Grok chatbot “more unhinged,” according to a former employee who spoke to The Verge about recent departures from Musk’s AI company. This week, following the announcement that Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring xAI (which previously acquired his social media comp
India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors, doubling down on its effort to finance high-risk areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and other sectors broadly referred to by t
Hollywood organizations are pushing back against a new AI video model called Seedance 2.0, which they say has quickly become a tool for “blatant” copyright infringement. ByteDance, the Chinese company that recently finalized a deal to sell TikTok’s U.S.
Airbnb has taken its time to launch AI features within the app, but CEO Brian Chesky on Friday said the company is now planning to bake in features powered by large language models that would help users search for listings, plan their trips, and aid hosts in managing their properties. Speaking at th
Loading the player… AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a poli
2024, Esther Yan got married online. She set a reminder for the date, because her partner wouldn’t remember it was happening. She had planned every detail—dress, rings, background music, design theme—with her partner, Warmie, who she had started talking to just a few weeks prior.
Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it’s preparing to roll out the feature globally.
This spring, a Southern California beach town will become the first city in the country where municipal parking enforcement vehicles will use an AI system looking for potential bike lane violations. Beginning in April, the City of Santa Monica will bring Hayden AI’s scanning technology to seven cars
