Author: Naveed Ahmad

AI

Lucid Motors is shedding 12% of its workforce in a bid to “enhance operational effectiveness and optimize our sources as we proceed on our path towards profitability,” based on an inside memo that was obtained by TechCrunch. Hourly staff on the manufacturing, logistics, and high quality groups are usually not affected by the cuts, based on the memo, which was despatched to workers being spared by the layoffs. It’s unclear precisely what number of staff are being laid off, however it’s possible within the lots of. Lucid Motors reported having 6,800 full-time workers globally at the end of 2024. “Saying…

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Meta announced a serious replace for its immersive digital world, Horizon Worlds, on Thursday that may see it go away the metaverse behind. The tech large stated it’s shifting focus for Horizon Worlds to be “nearly solely cell” and that it’s “explicitly separating” its Quest VR platform from the digital world. Meta’s Actuality Labs division for VR and sensible glasses improvement has misplaced nearly $80 billion since 2020. The replace to Horizon Worlds, and different current strikes, alerts that Meta is considerably rethinking its VR ambitions. Final month, the corporate reportedly laid off roughly 1,500 staff from its Actuality Labs division — about…

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Threads already has over 400 million month-to-month customers, however Meta needs to push that quantity even greater. With the launch of a brand new Threads characteristic this week, the corporate is making it simpler for Threads customers to share posts on the app to their Instagram Tales — a transfer that might capitalize on Instagram’s bigger consumer base to carry extra folks to Meta’s X competitor. The corporate announced on Thursday a brand new characteristic that allows you to share a Threads put up to your Instagram Story with out having to go away the Threads app, as a substitute…

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A choose has denied Tesla’s request to overturn a $243 million jury verdict that held the automaker partially accountable for a deadly crash involving its Autopilot driver help system. “The grounds for aid that Tesla depends upon are nearly the identical as these Tesla put forth beforehand throughout the course of trial and of their briefings on abstract judgment — arguments that had been already thought-about and rejected,” Hon. Choose Beth Bloom’s choice reads. “Moreover, Tesla doesn’t current further arguments or controlling legislation that persuades this Court docket to change its earlier choices or the jury verdict.” Final August, a…

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A U.S. federal court docket has sentenced a Ukrainian man to 5 years in jail for his half in a long-running id theft operation that helped abroad North Korean employees acquire fraudulent employment at dozens of U.S. corporations. U.S. prosecutors brought charges in 2024 towards Oleksandr Didenko, 29, a resident of Kyiv, for establishing North Koreans with stolen identities of U.S. residents to get employed and earn a wage. Below this scheme, the employees’ earnings have been funneled again to Pyongyang, which the regime used to fund its internationally sanctioned nuclear weapons program. That is the newest in a string…

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Apple this week launched the latest version of its cellular working system, iOS 26.4, which introduces a number of new options, together with an AI-powered playlist-generation function in Apple Music, help for video content material within the Podcasts app, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for RCS messages, and extra.  The replace is presently accessible in pubic beta, with the general public launch anticipated someday in March or April.  Apple Music’s AI playlist One of the crucial noticeable enhancements arrives in Apple Music — iOS 26.4 introduces a brand new AI-powered “Playlist Playground” function that leverages Apple Intelligence. The function permits customers to…

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Sarvam, an Indian AI startup targeted on constructing fashions for native languages and customers, on Friday launched its Indus chat app for internet and cellular customers, coming into a fast-growing market dominated by international gamers together with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The launch comes as India has grow to be a key battleground for generative AI adoption. Not too long ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated ChatGPT has greater than 100 million weekly lively customers in India, whereas Anthropic stated India accounts for 5.8% of total Claude usage, second solely to the U.S. Indus serves as a chat interface for…

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On this tutorial, we design a sensible image-generation workflow utilizing the Diffusers library. We begin by stabilizing the surroundings, then generate high-quality photographs from textual content prompts utilizing Steady Diffusion with an optimized scheduler. We speed up inference with a LoRA-based latent consistency strategy, information composition with ControlNet underneath edge conditioning, and at last carry out localized edits by way of inpainting. Additionally, we concentrate on real-world strategies that steadiness picture high quality, velocity, and controllability. !pip -q uninstall -y pillow Pillow || true !pip -q set up –upgrade –force-reinstall “pillow<12.0” !pip -q set up –upgrade diffusers transformers speed up…

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Late final yr, New York Meeting member Alex Bores turned the goal of a marketing campaign by a pro-AI tremendous PAC to thwart his congressional bid. The group, Main the Future, is armed with greater than $100 million from backers together with Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, AI search startup Perplexity, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Bores’ response was easy: convey it on. Now, he’s bought the muscle to again that problem up. Public First Motion, a PAC backed by a $20 million donation from Anthropic, is spending $450,000 to spice up Bores within the race for New York’s twelfth…

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The creator economic system is evolving quick, and advert income alone isn’t chopping it anymore. YouTubers are launching product traces, buying startups, and constructing precise enterprise empires. In reality, MrBeast’s firm purchased fintech startup Step, and his chocolate enterprise is outearning his media arm. This isn’t simply one creator’s technique. For many, it’s the new playbook.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Fairness podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying past advertisements, whether or not their mannequin can scale past the highest 1%, the whole lot happing at India’s AI Influence Summit, and extra of the week’s headlines. Source link

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