Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Site News
Techmeme
May 22, 2024, 4:05 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Sponsor Events Newsletter

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft will soon let businesses build custom Copilot AI agents to automate tasks, and unveils Team Copilot to help with tasks in Teams, Loop, and Planner  —  Microsoft will soon allow businesses and developers to build AI-powered Copilots that can work like virtual employees and perform tasks automatically.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils the developer preview of Windows Volumetric Apps, letting developers access an API to put Windows apps in 3D space on Meta Quest headsets  —  You can already beam your flat Windows desktop and its VR games onto your Meta Quest headset — but what if Windows could send HoloLens …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft launches Copilot Extension for GitHub, letting developers build third-party skills into Copilot, starting with DataStax, Stripe, MongoDB, and more
Bloomberg:
Sources: Humane is seeking a buyer for its business, after the rocky launch of its Ai Pin; a source says the startup is seeking a price between $750M and $1B  —  - Humane's AI pin was billed as an alternative to smartphones  — AI hardware product received poor reviews after its launch
Glenn Rifkin / New York Times:
Gordon Bell, who helped design several influential minicomputers at Digital Equipment Corporation, including the 12-bit PDP-8, died on May 17 at age 89  —  It cost $18,000 when it was introduced in 1965, but it bridged the world between room-size mainframes and the modern desktop.
Imran Rahman-Jones / BBC:
The UK ICO is “making enquiries with Microsoft” over the company's Recall feature, which some privacy campaigners have called a potential “privacy nightmare”  —  The UK data watchdog says it is “making enquiries with Microsoft” over a new feature that can take screenshots of your laptop every few seconds.
Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic:
OpenAI's Scarlett Johansson debacle is merely a reminder of AI's manifest destiny philosophy: “This is happening, whether you like it or not”, consent be damned  —  The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI's raw deal: It's happening, and you can't stop it.
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
Google is rolling out a new AI-powered ad format that shows shoppers how items of clothing would look on different skin tones and body types  —  A new breed of online ad allows brands to pay Google to offer shoppers AI-generated images that show how items of clothing would look on different skin tones and body types.
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Google plans to test search and shopping ads in its AI Overviews, drawing from advertisers' existing campaigns; AI Overviews rolled out to US users last week
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces the general availability of its Phi-3 models, including Phi-3-Silica, a 3.3B parameter model that will be embedded on all Copilot+ PCs  —  Microsoft is making more investments in the development of small language models.  At its Build developer conference …
Kevin Okemwa / Windows Central:
Microsoft ships Azure AI Studio in broad availability, adds support for OpenAI's GPT-4o, and announces a new multimodal model in its lightweight Phi-3 family
Steven Levy / Wired:
Anthropic researchers detail attempts to peer inside the “black box” of LLMs, learning which combinations of neurons evoke specific concepts  —  What goes on in artificial neural networks work is largely a mystery, even to their creators.  But researchers from Anthropic have caught a glimpse.
Bradley Keoun / CoinDesk:
Farcaster, an Ethereum-based social media project, raised $150M led by Paradigm, with participation from a16z and others, and reports “350,000 paid sign-ups”  —  Dan Romero's Farcaster made waves earlier this year with the introduction of “Frames,” a feature allowing apps to run within posts …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Generative AI music startup Suno raised $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix, Founder Collective, and others  —  Suno, a trailblazing music AI startup, announced today that it has raised a staggering $125 million in its latest funding round …
Christopher Barnard / New York Times:
A look at Paperless Post, a New York-based software company for sending online invitations and events that launched in 2009 and has sent ~650M invitations  —  James Hirschfeld and his sister, Alexa Hirschfeld, at the Paperless Post office in Manhattan's Financial District.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times
Bloomberg:
Sources: Snowflake's talks to acquire Reka AI, which builds LLMs for businesses, for more than $1B have broken down  —  Snowflake Inc.'s talks to acquire startup Reka AI for more than $1 billion have broken down, dashing an effort by the software company to bring more generative AI muscle in-house.
More: Tech in Asia
Mimi Billing / Sifted:
London-based LabGenius, which uses ML to find and design antibody therapies to treat cancer, raised a £35M Series B led by Merck's VC arm, M Ventures  —  It's robotic platform is using machine learning to create new molecules to tackle cancer  —  UK drug discovery startup LabGenius …
Wired:
An investigation into online ticketing service Eventbrite found 7.4K+ illicit listings, including illegal drug sales, some of which its algorithm recommended  —  A WIRED investigation found thousands of Eventbrite posts selling escort services and drugs like Xanax and oxycodone …
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs as a new class of AI-capable Windows PCs that have at least 40 TOPs of NPU performance, with several OEMs and chipmakers on board  —  The aim is to handle more AI processing locally rather than in the cloud.  —  We've been hearing rumblings for months …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs event was compelling, the culmination of years of work, and Windows feels revitalized while its hardware is meaningfully differentiated

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
How you can grow your business with Zoho One  —  Zoho One is a comprehensive business suite, giving businesses the scalability, stability, security, and features they need for smooth operations.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Sponsor Techmeme
Techmeme Ride Home:
 Thu. 11/14 - The FBI (!) Investigating Polymarket
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
Sponsor this podcast
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:05 AM ET, May 22, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
The Onion, backed by some Sandy Hook families and Everytown for Gun Safety, buys Infowars in a bankruptcy auction, and plans a January 2025 relaunch as a parody

Liam Scott / Voice of America:
Reporters Without Borders sues X in France for “complicity in disseminating false information”, after X failed to block a fake video with RSF's logo

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
Disney said Disney+ Q4 ARPU in the US and Canada, down 1% QoQ to $7.70, was affected partly by new wholesale arrangements with some distributors

More News

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Paytm parent One 97 Communications reports a $66.1M net loss in Q4, up from $20.11M in Q4 2023, on $272.3M revenue, as it grapples with a regulatory clampdown
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Microsoft partners with Khan Academy, moving the Khanmigo agent, used by 65K+ students, to its Azure OpenAI Service and making it free for US K-12 teachers
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Microsoft debuts a new AI feature for Edge to translate spoken content via dubbing and subtitles live, on YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, news sites, and more

Earlier Picks

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Tech Against Scams, a coalition to fight “pig butchering” ploys with better industry coordination, launches with Meta, Coinbase, Match, Kraken, others on board
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe adds generative AI tools to Lightroom, including Firefly-powered Generative Remove to let users “paint” over unwanted objects, available in early access
Joyce Lee / Reuters:
Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, IBM, and 10 other companies commit to safe AI development at the AI Seoul Summit 2024, hosted by South Korea and the UK
Financial Times:
AI data labeling startup Scale AI raised $1B led by Accel at a ~$14B valuation, up from $7.3B in April 2021; a source says Scale AI had ~$700M in 2023 revenue
Bloomberg:
Sources: ASML and TSMC have ways to disable their machines if China invades Taiwan; ASML reassured Dutch officials about its ability to remotely disable them
Reuters:
EU countries vote to approve the landmark EU AI Act, agreed in December 2023, to ensure “trust, transparency, and accountability”, taking effect in June 2024
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Sponsor Events Newsletter