AI Heap

Tech News

  • Published on
    A federal judge in California has agreed with WhatsApp that the NSO Group, the Israeli cybersurveillance firm behind the Pegasus spyware, had hacked into its systems by sending malware through its servers to thousands of its users’ phones. WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, sued the NSO Group back in 2019 and accused it of spreading malware to 1,400 mobile devices across 20 countries with surveillance as its purpose. They revealed back then some of the targeted phones were owned by...
  • Published on
    Struggling electric van startup Canoo has placed its remaining employees on what it’s calling a “mandatory unpaid break” through at least the end of the year, according to an email obtained by TechCrunch. The company told employees they are being locked out of Canoo’s systems at the end of the day Friday, according to the […]
  • Published on
    There is a new venture fund in town. Swizzle Ventures, founded by Jessica Kamada, former COO of the marketing agency Bamboo, has raised just over $5 million for its Fund I, according to an SEC filing. There was no target raise amount.  The firm, which quietly opened in 2023, is an early-stage firm looking to […]
  • Published on
    Another day, another Tesla recall. This time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) informed the owners of almost 700,000 Tesla vehicles warning them of a problem with a warning light for the tire pressure monitoring system as reported by the Associated Press. The recall affects the 2024 Cybertruck, 2017-2025 Model 3 and 2020-2025 Model Y Vehicles. The NHTSA says the warning light for the tire pressure monitoring system may not stay illuminated between drives. Tesla says it...
  • Published on
    Movie icon and super spy James Bond seemed to be on another rise to the top of the box office just a few years ago, but things have been almost as quiet as a shot from a Walther PPK with a silencer ever since then. Daniel Craig took on the role in 2006 with Casino Royale and passed the baton with 2021’s No Time to Die in one of the most heart-wrenching endings in Bond’s cinematic history (you cried, just admit it). The only thing sadder is the reason why we haven’t seen a new Bond movie since...
  • Published on
    A little more than a week after announcing Gemini Deep Research, Google is making the tool available to more people. As of today, the feature, part of the company’s paid Gemini Advanced suite, is available in every country and language where Google offers Gemini. In practice, that means Gemini Advanced users in more than 100 countries globally can start using Deep Research right now. Previously, it was only available in English. As a refresher, Deep Research takes advantage of Gemini 1.5 Pro’s...
  • Published on
    Instagram is still thought of as a feed of algorithmically-suggested photos first and foremost, but the app is also pretty popular for messaging, too. If you want to take some of the stress out of remembering to send a birthday message to a friend, as part of a recent update, you can now schedule Instagram messages in advance. Scheduled messages can’t contain media like GIFs, photos or videos, but you can schedule them up to 29 days in advance on both the Android and iOS versions of the app. What...
  • Published on
    Helm.ai said the new model enables automakers to generate diverse, realistic video data tailored to specific requirements. The post Helm.ai upgrades generative AI model to enrich autonomous driving data appeared first on The Robot Report.
  • Published on
    Waymo shared research with Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurance providers, analyzing liability claims related to collisions from 25.3 million fully autonomous miles driven. The post New research analyzes safety of Waymo robotaxis appeared first on The Robot Report.
  • Published on
    Networks programmed directly into computer chip hardware can identify images faster, and use much less energy, than the traditional neural networks that underpin most modern AI systems. That’s according to work presented at a leading machine learning conference in Vancouver last week. Neural networks, from GPT-4 to Stable Diffusion, are built by wiring together perceptrons,…
  • Published on
    Chatbots aren’t very good at picking gifts, but that didn’t stop me from burning the planet in a quest for the perfect baking equipment.
  • Published on
    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday proposed a new national framework that could make it easier for companies to deploy at scale autonomous vehicles without traditional manual driving controls – like steering wheels, pedals, and sideview mirrors.  The guidelines also require AV companies to share a whole lot more safety data with the […]
  • Published on
    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 has been a big year for OpenAI, from its […]
  • Published on
    Chip company Nvidia gets the green light from the European Union to complete its acquisition of Run:ai. The EU came to a unanimous decision today that Nvidia could go ahead with its acquisition of Israeli GPU orchestration platform Run:ai, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The European Commission determined that if the merger went through, other […]
  • Published on
    Google said Friday that the company is expanding Gemini’s latest in-depth research mode to 40 more languages. The company launched the in-depth research mode earlier this month, allowing Google One AI premium plan users to unlock an AI-powered research assistant of sorts. The in-depth function works in a multi-step method, from creating a research plan […]
  • Published on
    OpenAI saved its biggest announcement for the last day of its 12-day “shipmas” event. On Friday, the company unveiled o3, the successor to the o1 “reasoning” model it released earlier in the year. o3 is a model family, to be more precise — as was the case with o1. There’s o3 and o3-mini, a smaller, […]
  • Published on
    OpenAI is in the holiday spirit, it seems. The ChatGPT series of reveals, called “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be streamed live at 10 a.m. PT each weekday through December 20. So far, we’ve seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI’s $200 per month subscription plan; the full version of its “reasoning” o1 model; the […]
  • Published on
    There is a new venture fund in town. Swizzle Fund, founded by Jessica Kamada, former COO of the marketing agency Bamboo, has raised just a little more than $5 million for its Fund I, according to an SEC filing. There was no target raise amount.  The firm, which quietly opened in 2023, is an early-stage […]
  • Published on
    Lerer Hippeau, one of New York’s most prolific and A-list VC firms, has filed to raise its ninth fund, according to an SEC filing made Wednesday.
  • Published on
    The newest online-only school greenlighted by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: The academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools — independently operated but publicly funded — typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy’s […]
  • Published on
    Four employees have sued Rivian in separate lawsuits this year over allegations they were harassed, in some cases by top executives, and that the company’s leadership did little to address their concerns, according to a TechCrunch review of court records. Rivian has also reached settlements in three other harassment and discrimination cases, TechCrunch has learned.  […]
  • Published on
    As the year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on some of the greatest accomplishments from across the science and technology sectors. Read more: Hall of fame: 10 sci-tech award winners of 2024