AP Top Technology News at 11:20 p.m. EDT
Parkland school shooting survivor develops Joy, an app built on AI that helps people heal
Parkland school shooting survivor develops Joy, an app built on AI that helps people heal
Apple’s macOS Sonoma is officially out of beta and available for anyone (with compatible devices) to install now.
This is something all iPhone users should know about.
In partnership with Google Cloud, Google DeepMind (Google's AI research division) is launching a tool for watermarking and identifying AI-generated images — but only images created by Google's image-generating model. The tool, called SynthID and available in beta for select users of Vertex AI (Google's platform for building AI apps and models) embeds a digital watermark directly into the pixels of an image -- making it ostensibly imperceptible to the human eye but detectable by an algorithm. SynthID only supports Imagen, Google's text-to-image model, which is exclusively available in Vertex AI.
Artifact, a platform built by Instagram’s co-founders, is launching the ability for users to make posts. Up until now, the platform has been an aggregator for news and links, but is now becoming more of a social network by allowing users to create posts. Artifact co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger announced the launch of the new feature at today's Code Conference.
Android 14 is fast approaching. But before Google publicly releases the next big version of the mobile operating system alongside its latest Pixel devices, the company has revealed a refreshed Android logo.
Google is rolling out a new feature that allows Workspace users to lock files. This prevents others from making unwanted changes.
Google has announced the launch of its earthquake alert system for Android devices in India. The company on Wednesday said the system, developed with consultation from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the National Seismology Center (NSC), will provide early earthquake alerts for Android users in an area that's likely to be impacted. Google said that the alerts are sent to users experiencing MMI 5+ shaking during an earthquake of 4.5 magnitude.
Apple officially released iOS 17 into the wild on September 18. The new feature, Contact Posters, allows you to create your own digital calling card that pops up on other people’s iPhones when you call them.
Microsoft has announced new features coming to its Paint app. The new features are currently available for Microsoft Insiders and will likely be available to all users soon.
According to a new analysis of Bluesky's web traffic and mobile app usage, the would-be X competitor hit a daily active user record just after Musk announced he would begin charging all X users a small monthly fee to use its services. Musk's announcement was made during a livestreamed event on September 18, where the X owner explained that a subscription payment would be necessary in order to combat the "vast armies of bots" on the platform. X users, meanwhile, didn't seem to like that news, as they sent rival Bluesky's numbers soaring.
The Iconfactory, home to a number of popular apps like wallpaper app Wallaroo, puzzle game Frenzic and the unfortunately shuttered Twitterific, among others, is out today with its latest creation: Ollie's Arcade. Included in the debut lineup are "Ollie Soars," a Flappy Bird-like game where you fly around the world collecting gems while also soaring past obstacles; "Snake," a familiar game where you try to gobble up apples while avoiding running into your snake's own twists and turns; and "Tranquility Touchdown," a space exploration game where you pilot your lander to the surface of six different planets. The team says they wanted to recapture the magic of the classic games they played in their youth, citing favorite titles like "Asteroids," "Moon Patrol," "Battlezone" and handheld games like "Mattel Football," "Simon" and "Merlin."
Few VCs are experts in machine learning or building deep learning frameworks, but most of them are pretty good with unit economics. Which is why they're laser-focused on generative AI's tech stack. Whether it's infrastructure, middleware, applications or something else, investors are looking for founders who can dig defensible moats and dominate.
For years, Forethought and other vendors have been selling chatbots to help answer common customer service questions without a human agent. With the growing popularity of generative AI, the company sees even more potential to expand that capability. Today, Forethought introduced the next logical step in that journey called Autoflows.
BMW is backtracking on a controversial tactic it had in place — charging a monthly fee or subscription to activate hardware-based features in its cars — like heated seats.
As companies grow, they create legal entities and organizational structures to support their lines of business -- each with their respective governance and compliance needs. Seeking to solve the seemingly intractable problem, three entrepreneurs -- Brexton Pham, Daniel Lai and Tamby Kojak -- co-founded Series, a startup launching its platform widely today. Backed by $25 million in funding across seed and Series A rounds led by 776 and Basis Set Ventures, with participation from Pear VC, Kleiner Perkins, Day One Ventures, Hustle Fund, Caffeinated Capital, Wischoff Ventures and several angels, Series is developing software that attempts to centralize -- and automate -- businesses' finance and operations stacks.
The A17 Pro is Apple's most powerful mobile silicon yet.
Epic Games has asked the US Supreme Court to review a ruling from 2021 that found Apple did not violate antitrust laws. Should Epic win its appeal, Apple could stand to lose a substantial source of revenue.
Hyperproof, a software-as-a-service risk and compliance management company, today announced that it raised $40 million in a funding round led by Riverwood Capital with participation from Toba Capital, an early-stage VC firm. The tranche brings Hyperproof's total raised to $66.5 million and "doubles" the company's valuation from nine months ago, according to co-founder and CEO Craig Unger. "Although there's been an economic slowdown, the pace of regulatory agencies passing new laws and ratifying new compliance regimes has only accelerated," Unger told TechCrunch in an email interview.
Character.ai, the AI app maker that lets users design their own AI characters, is catching up to ChatGPT in terms of mobile app usage. According to a recent analysis by market intelligence firm Similarweb, the iOS and Android apps for the a16z-backed Character.ai are now seeing 4.2 million monthly active users in the U.S., compared with nearly 6 million monthly U.S. actives for ChatGPT's mobile apps. In fact, the average mobile app has a 30-day retention rate of 3% to 4%, and uninstall rates are above 40% after 30 days, per data from mobile marketing firm Appsflyer.