In the wake of the U.S. 2024 presidential election, one fact became clear: Disinformation proliferated online at a startling rate, shaping Americans’ views about each candidate as well as a diverse set of topics, including public health, climate change, and immigration. Generative AI – with its ability to produce deepfakes in seconds and its propensity to…
OpenAI was at one point considering acquiring Cerebras, an AI chipmaking company that’s in the process of going public, according to new legal filings. Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI has new exhibits that describe how OpenAI was contemplating snatching up Cerebras in or around 2017 — a year after Cerebras’ founding, and just a…
A startup is training an AI system that it claims will enable creators to generate cinematic worlds, with complete control over the scenery, characters, lighting, and motion. How? By having humans strap cameras to their backs and hike around the world. Odyssey, founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke (Cameron was previously the…
After a career as an incident investigator with risk management firms like Kroll and FTI Consulting, Aaron Narva (pictured above) was working with a big international bank client at compliance software maker Exiger. He was responsible for monitoring that client’s legal compliance after it had made headlines a decade earlier for a money-laundering scandal. “While…
There’s a big opportunity for generative AI in the world of translation, and a startup called Panjaya is taking the concept to the next level: a hyperrealistic, gen AI-based dubbing tool for videos that re-creates a person’s original voice speaking the new language, with the video and the speaker’s physical movements automatically modifying to match…
It’s hard to know where to focus when speaking to Christoph Kohstall. The contents of his packed Palo Alto garage compete for attention. To his immediate right stands a tower of electrical components, dotted with flashing lights. To his left is a workbench and the tops of machining tools. A red industrial girder runs along…
In January last year, German biotech company BioNTech acquired African AI startup Instadeep for over $550 million, a deal finalized in July of the same year. Instadeep, whose exit is currently the largest from Africa, has been operating under the German pharma umbrella for just over a year. Now is a good time to look…
Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez, and Enrique Rodriguez have been friends since they were five years old. As teenagers, they became volunteers helping indigenous communities — first in Mexico, then in other countries — and saw that many of the women were artisans. The trio came to realize that these artists “made very beautiful things in…
A startup funded by the cofounder of Yahoo and CTO of Intel is suing Nvidia and Microsoft for allegedly infringing on its patent for a key innovation in AI chips and being part of a buying cartel that allegedly sought to artificially fix lower prices for the technology. In a new lawsuit, Texas-based Xockets says…
Magic, an AI startup creating models to generate code and automate a range of software development tasks, has raised a large tranche of cash from investors including ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In a blog post on Thursday, Magic said that it closed a $320 million fundraising round with contributions from Schmidt, as well as Alphabet’s…