Author: Becky Anderson
Cancer ranks as one of the top causes of death worldwide. The National Cancer Institute reported nearly 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths globally in 2022, with projections showing a rise to 29.9 million new cases by 2040. Craif, spun off from Nagoya University in Japan in 2018, is using microRNA(miRNA) to develop an AI-powered early cancer detection software, and it has raised $22 million in Series C funding to expand further into the U.S. market and bolster its R&D. Ryuichi Onose, co-founder and CEO of Craif, told TechCrunch in an interview that the company completed…
Nestled between an elementary school and a public library in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood sits a new kind of “luxury” coworking space. Dubbed the Chat Haus, this space has many of the elements you’d find in a traditional coworking office: people hammering away at their computer keyboards, another person taking a phone call, someone else pausing by their computer to take a sip of coffee. There is, however, one key difference: Chat Haus is a coworking space for AI chatbots, and everything — including the people — is made out of cardboard. More specifically, the Chat Haus is an art exhibit…
AI chatbots available on Meta’s platforms like Facebook and Instagram can engage in sexually explicit conversations with underage users, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ says that after learning about internal concerns about whether the company was doing enough to protect minors, it spent months conducting hundreds of conversations with both the official Meta AI chatbot, as well as user-created chatbots available on Meta platforms. In one reported conversation, a chatbot using actor/wrestler John Cena’s voice described a graphic sexual scenario to a user identifying as a 14-year-girl. In another conversation, the chatbot imagined…
Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from its website. They’re also concerned about the company’s work with the Israeli military, including a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract that has prompted protests elsewhere at Google. One source told the FT that team members feel “duped,” and correspondence reportedly shows that at least five…
Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings is in talks to raise $20 billion in fresh funding, potentially valuing the AI and social media combo at over $120 billion, according to a new Bloomberg report that says talks are in the “early stages.” If successful, the deal would constitute the the second-largest startup funding round ever, behind only OpenAI’s $40 billion raise last month. The funding could help alleviate X’s substantial debt burden, which is costing the company a whopping $200 million monthly in servicing fees, per Bloomberg’s sources, with annual interest expenses exceeding $1.3 billion by the end of last year. A…
In the battle between two “agentic” coding tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter appears to be fostering more developer goodwill than the former. That’s at least partly because Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer trying to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is under a more restrictive usage license than Codex CLI. Claude Code and Codex CLI are dueling tools that accomplish much of the same thing: allow developers to tap into the power of AI models running in the cloud to complete various coding tasks. Anthropic and OpenAI released them within months of…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…
Kai Chen, a Canadian AI researcher working at OpenAI who’s lived in the U.S. for 12 years, was denied a green card, according to Noam Brown, a leading research scientist at the company. In a post on X, Brown said that Chen learned of the decision Friday and must soon leave the country. “It’s deeply concerning that one of the best AI researchers I’ve worked with […] was denied a U.S. green card,” wrote Brown. “A Canadian who’s lived and contributed here for 12 years now has to leave. We’re risking America’s AI leadership when we turn away talent like…
Google started testing AI-summarized results in Google Search, AI Overviews, two years ago, and continues to expand the feature to new regions and languages. By the company’s estimation, it’s been a big success. AI Overviews is now used by more than 1.5 billion users monthly across over 100 countries. AI Overviews compiles results from around the web to answer certain questions. When you search for something like “What is generative AI?” AI Overviews will show AI-generated text at the top of the Google Search results page. While the feature has dampened traffic to some publishers, Google sees it and other…
This is your last chance to put your brand at the center of the AI conversation during TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week — with applications to host a Side Event closing tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. From June 1-7, TechCrunch is curating a dynamic weeklong series of Side Events leading up to and following the main event — TC Sessions: AI, taking place June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. These are the gatherings where off-stage magic happens — and you still have a chance to lead one. Whether it’s a roundtable, workshop, happy hour, or meetup, your Side Event can…