Celeb greetings app Cameo pivots to creators. The company became a pandemic hit, as people stuck at home marked various celebrations, like birthdays and graduations, with celebrity shout-outs. It became a tech unicorn valued at $1 billion, but as life returned to normal, Cameo was hit with multiple rounds of layoffs, saw its valuation tank as it took on additional funding, and found itself unable to pay an FTC fine over undisclosed celebrity endorsements. Cameo’s struggles to attract A-list celebrities were only part of the problem; its business model relied on video messages, and it couldn’t make other potential revenue-generating…
Author: Olsi
Clarifai, once known as the young computer vision startup working with the Pentagon on its controversial Project Maven, has distanced itself from its early years of espousing questionable ideas on AI ethics, its interest in building autonomous weapons — years before Silicon Valley warmed up to defense tech — and its potential cyberbreach from Russia. For the past few years, the company has focused on building AI tools for enterprise and government customers. Now the company is unveiling the latest chapter in that trajectory: the ability for users to orchestrate, or coordinate, compute and resources across all their compute sources…
Volkswagen employees in Germany today went on the biggest strike against the company since 2018. In an unprecedented strike, Volkswagen workers in Germany today went ahead with the biggest strike the company has seen since 2018. The IG Metall union, which represents about 120,000 VW workers, approved the strike on November 22, describing it as ” The toughest collective bargaining battle Volkswagen has ever seen. The strike comes in response to VW’s plans to cut production costs in Europe, at a time when the company faces significant challenges in the Chinese market due to domestic competition, while at the same…
When Valve released the Steam Deck, PC manufacturers realized there could be a new market for small, handheld computers that are capable of running games. Lenovo released the Legion Go and Asus released the ROG Ally. Windows Central managed to get hold of the first official renders of Lenovo’s upcoming gaming handheld, the Legion Go S. And it looks like Asus may have found the right form-factor as Lenovo’s new device looks similar to the Asus ROG Ally (and its successor the ROG Ally X — which TechCrunch reviewed earlier). Lenovo appears to be going back to basics with the…
There are plenty of services that let you build lists to track and discover new books, movies, and songs, but often, these lists end up getting siloed. Former Squarespace employee Alfonso Cobo wanted to bring all kinds of lists together, and he’s trying to do that with Hypelist. “People on social media were asking for all kinds of recommendations, but it was hard to keep track of suggestions, and there was no way to share or create different kinds of lists in one place,” Cobo said in an interview. “They used different makeshift solutions like WhatsApp, spreadsheets, or notes apps.…
Google’s video generator is coming to a few more customers—Google Cloud customers, to be precise. On Tuesday, Google announced that Veo, its AI model that can generate short video clips from images and prompts, will be available in private preview for customers using Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s AI development platform. Google says that the launch will enable one customer, Quora, to bring Veo to its Poe chatbot platform, and another, Oreo owner Mondelez International, to create marketing content with its agency partners. “We created Poe to democratize access to the world’s best generative AI models,” Poe product lead Spencer Chan…
Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is gaining an improved search interface, the company announced on Monday. The app, which offers a Meta-run alternative to Elon Musk’s X but is built on top of Instagram’s social graph, is rolling out a new way to search for specific posts, allowing users to filter searches by user profiles and date ranges. This is not as comprehensive as X’s advanced search, which today lets users narrow queries by language, keywords, exact phrases, excluded words, hashtags, and more. But it does make it easier for Threads users to locate specific posts. It will also bring…
General Motors is selling its stake in the nearly completed Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Lansing, Michigan, to its joint venture partner LG Energy Solution (LGES). GM’s step back from the factory comes amid weakening electric vehicle demand and the potential rollback of Biden administration incentives to produce clean energy domestically. General Motors and LGES initially teamed up in 2019 to form a joint venture to mass-produce battery cells for electric vehicles. Since then, the two have poured billions into three factories:. The Lansing facility that LGES is acquiring; a Spring Hill, Tennessee, facility that started production in 2024;…
Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if asked about a “David Mayer.” Asking it to do so causes it to freeze up instantly. Conspiracy theories have ensued — but a more ordinary reason may be at the heart of this strange behavior. Word spread quickly this last weekend that the name was poison to the chatbot, with more and more people trying to trick the service into merely acknowledging the name. No luck: Every attempt to make ChatGPT spell out that specific name causes it…
Coinbase announced an integration with Apple Pay on Monday, allowing app makers to build the ability to buy crypto with Apple Pay directly into their apps. The integration is part of Coinbase Onramp, which gives app makers a way for customers to turn their traditional currencies, such as USD, into cryptocurrencies. That process has historically been difficult, requiring users to pay added fees and visit multiple websites or apps. With the integration of Apple Pay, Coinbase is continuing to push its products toward the average consumer by making crypto purchases more accessible. Apple seems to be embracing crypto with this…
