Rivian uses custom silicon, LIDAR, and robotaxi tips to significantly enhance autonomy
Rivian on Thursday detailed how it plans to make its electric vehicles self-driving. CEO RJ Scaringe said it’s an ambitious effort that includes new hardware, including lidar and custom silicon, with the company ultimately looking to enter the self-driving ride-hailing market. The announcement, made at the company’s first Autonomy & AI Day event in Palo […]
Disney signs deal with OpenAI to allow Sora to generate AI videos featuring characters
The Walt Disney Company announced Thursday a three-year partnership with OpenAI to bring the company’s iconic characters to its Sora AI video generator. Disney has also made a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI. Released in September, Sora allows users to create short videos using simple prompts. The new deal gives users access to more […]
Security flaw in Freedom Chat app exposes users’ phone numbers and PINs
Messaging app Freedom Chat has fixed two security flaws. One allowed security researchers to guess registered users’ phone numbers, and the other allowed users to set a PIN and make it available to other users on the app. Released in June, Freedom Chat advertises itself as a secure messaging app, and its website claims that […]
Opera wants you to pay $20 a month to use its AI-powered browser Neon
Norway-based browser company Opera has finally released its AI-powered browser Neon to the public after months of testing. However, you have to pay $19.90 per month to use it. Opera first announced Neon in May of this year and opened early access to some users in October. Like other AI-first browsers like Perplexity’s Comet, OpenAI’s […]
Interest in Spoor’s bird monitoring AI software is growing
Spoor was founded in 2021 with the goal of using computer vision to reduce the impact of wind turbines on local bird populations. Now, the startup has proven its technology works and is also seeing demand from wind farms and other sectors. Spoor, based in Oslo, Norway, has built software that uses computer vision to […]
Port raises $100M at $800M valuation to take on Spotify’s Backstage
Spotify may be synonymous with music streaming, but it also has a sideline in a hugely popular developer tool called “Backstage.” Backstage is an open source project that helps companies build their own internal developer portals. A catalog of developer tools and an easy visualization of the work they did and other metrics. However, like […]
Continuing the proud tradition that babies born with Waymo cannot go to the hospital.
A pregnant woman in San Francisco gave birth Monday night in a Waymo robotaxis en route to UCSF Medical Center. It was the latest milestone in the self-driving car saga that no one expected, except for those who have been driving a rideshare vehicle for more than six months. According to SF Standard, Waymo’s remote […]
Google’s answer to the AI arms race — Promote the man behind data center technology
In a big move in the AI infrastructure arms race, Google just promoted Amin Vahdat to chief engineer for AI infrastructure, a newly created position that reports directly to CEO Sundar Pichai, according to a memo first reported by Semafor and later seen by TechCrunch. That’s a sign of how important the effort has become […]
State attorneys general warns Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and other AI giants to correct ‘delusional’ output
Following a series of disturbing mental health incidents related to AI chatbots, a group of state attorneys general has written to top companies in the AI industry, warning them that they risk violating state law if they don’t fix their “delusional output.” The letter, signed by dozens of auditors from U.S. states and territories with […]
Overview Energy wants to beam energy from space to existing solar power plants
Overview Energy has emerged from stealth today with plans to use solar panels around the world as nighttime power harvesters sent from space. The startup plans to collect sunlight using a large solar array in geostationary orbit (about 32,000 miles above Earth, where the satellite coincides with the planet’s rotation). It then uses an infrared […]