In 2023, after practically three a long time as CEO of the corporate he based, Robert LoCascio stepped down as CEO of LivePerson, the general public agency credited with pioneering net chat in 1997. Generative AI advances impressed his subsequent challenge, which he calls “the best bar” for the expertise: replicating human beings with their life tales and character. In 2024, he based and self-funded, Eternos, a legacy service that permits folks to protect their voice and tales for family members after they go away. Now, it’s acquired a brand new title and modified mission. The startup gained vital media…
Author: Naveed Ahmad
Masayoshi Son isn’t recognized for half measures. The SoftBank founder’s profession has been studded with brow-raising bets, each seemingly extra outrageous than the final. His newest transfer is to money out his complete $5.8 billion NVIDIA stake to go all-in on AI, and whereas it stunned the enterprise world on Tuesday, it perhaps mustn’t. At this level, it’s nearly extra shocking when the 68-year-old Son doesn’t push his chips to the middle of the desk. Think about that throughout the late Nineties dot-com bubble, Son’s internet value soared to roughly $78 billion by February 2000, briefly making him the richest…
Google introduced its November software program replace for Pixel telephones, known as Pixel Drop — a quarterly characteristic launch that brings new capabilities to present units — with options together with notification summaries, a power-saving mode for the Maps app, prompt-based edits for Pictures, and Gemini Nano-powered picture edits in Messages. Apple launched notification summaries with its Apple Intelligence suite of options final yr. Now, Google is catching up with its personal notification summaries for longer chats and conversations on Pixel 9 and later units. The corporate stated that in December, it can roll out a characteristic that may silence…
Threads, Meta’s competitor to X, will now start focusing on a particular sort of creator: podcasters. The corporate mentioned on Tuesday that Threads will give attention to bringing extra discussions round podcasts to its app and serving to creators promote their reveals. Initially, Threads will roll out a few new options to assist on this entrance. For one, it’s going to give podcast hyperlinks within the feed a novel and extra pronounced look, with colourful backgrounds and picture thumbnails, making them simpler to identify. Creators, in the meantime, will get a devoted spot of their person profile so as to…
Google Images has rolled out a collection of latest AI-powered options, together with a option to edit objects and folks in photographs, a brand new Ask button for AI-powered solutions in regards to the picture or edit requests, AI templates to create new images, and the enlargement of pure language search. The corporate first launched prompt-based modifying for Pixel 10 collection telephones in August. Now, iOS customers within the U.S. can describe their edits utilizing voice or textual content to switch photographs, Google introduced Tuesday. The corporate can also be bringing its redesigned picture editor with simple modifying choices to…
Elevating a $250 million Sequence D spherical might seem to be a distant and pointless distraction to startup founders pitching traders for that first $1 million in seed cash. But it surely shouldn’t be, in response to a number of founders and enterprise capitalists. Of their view, founders needs to be charting out a technique for these later stage fundraises from the start. Aven co-founder and CEO Sadi Khan mentioned, whereas on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, startup founders ought to begin desirous about their later rounds earlier than they elevate their first financing. This technique permits founders to find out…
Jenny Shao was a training doctor and was in residency at Harvard. Throughout the pandemic, Shao noticed that individuals in isolation had a neurological influence, and so they wanted assist. This drove her to depart her medical profession, the Harvard residency, to launch a begin providing an AI assistant known as Robyn. Robyn is meant to be an empathic, emotionally clever AI for individuals. Navigating human relationships with AI assistants is a difficult house. On the one hand, there are general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT; on the opposite, there are companion/friendship/avatar apps like Character.AI, Replika, and Buddy, and even remedy apps…
Practically seven years after saying its first fund, Sapphire Sport — the enterprise fund centered on sports activities, media, and leisure — is spinning out from Sapphire Ventures. The fund will rebrand as an unbiased enterprise agency, 359 Capital. The agency’s new identify is a tribute to the sub-four-minute mile, a feat as soon as deemed humanly inconceivable however in the end achieved by way of rigorous dedication and perseverance. 359 Capital co-founder and managing accomplice Michael Spirito stated that the identify displays the agency’s core precept of serving to its portfolio founders obtain the inconceivable. The separation from Sapphire…
When the historical past of AI is written, Steven Adler could find yourself being its Paul Revere—or at the very least, certainly one of them—in relation to security.Final month Adler, who spent 4 years in numerous security roles at OpenAI, wrote a piece for The New York Occasions with a moderately alarming title: “I Led Product Security at OpenAI. Don’t Belief Its Claims About ‘Erotica.’” In it, he laid out the issues OpenAI confronted when it got here to permitting customers to have erotic conversations with chatbots whereas additionally defending them from any impacts these interactions might have on their…
Amazon Music introduced on Monday the launch of “Fan Teams,” a brand new beta function that lets customers create and be a part of teams primarily based on their favourite genres and artists. The function permits followers to speak, submit, and take heed to songs shared inside these teams. The function is at present being examined in Canada on iOS and Android units. Customers can entry Fan Teams by means of the “Discover” tab situated beneath the search bar on the high of the app. From there, they will discover over 30 completely different teams devoted to varied musical pursuits,…