Techmeme
May 4, 2024, 6:15 AM

Top News

Wendy Lee / Los Angeles Times:
How the AI-generated music video for Washed Out's The Hardest Part was created entirely using OpenAI's Sora, a first from a major record label  —  “The Hardest Part,” a new song from indie pop artist Washed Out, is all about love lost, among the most human of themes.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
X launches Stories on X, with news curated and summarized by Grok AI, available for Premium subscribers in the Explore tab on iOS and on the web  —  X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to power a feature that summarizes the personalized trending stories in the app's Explore section.
Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Russian national Alexander Vinnik, one of the operators of crypto exchange BTC-e from 2011 to 2017, pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering  —  Vinnik was first arrested in 2017, but faced a lengthy extradition process that saw him spend time in Greece and France before being sent to the U.S.
C.C. Weiss / New Atlas:
Natron Energy starts production of sodium-ion batteries that it says charge and discharge 10x faster than lithium-ion, initially for use at data centers  —  Two years ago, sodium-ion battery pioneer Natron Energy was busy preparing its specially formulated sodium batteries for mass production.
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:
A look at AI companies gathering data from real people to create “digital twins”, to use as fashion models, focus group members, or clinical trial participants  —  AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants
Tim Stelloh / NBC News:
Defense lawyers question the accuracy and reliability of Cybercheck, an AI tool used in thousands of US cases to identify suspects' locations and other details  —  Cybercheck's founder has said the software tops 90% accuracy.  Defense lawyers have said he lied under oath about his expertise …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Synergy Research: cloud revenue grew 21% YoY in Q1 2024 to $76B; Altimeter: AWS now has 31% market share followed by Azure with 25% and Google with 11%  —  Last year's doldrums are in the rearview thanks to AI  —  If you were concerned about slowing cloud infrastructure growth for a time in 2023 …
Agence France-Presse:
Ukraine unveils an AI-generated foreign ministry spokesperson called Victoria Shi, who will make official statements “written and verified by real people”  —  Victoria Shi is modelled on Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine's version of the reality show The Bachelor
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are a simple, reliable, and smartly priced AI gadget, whereas Humane's AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 are more akin to science projects  —  There's a new WANTED poster in town... PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1: The smartphone ACCUSED OF: Stealing your attention, sanity and well-being REWARD …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Filing: CRM software maker Freshworks acquires Connecticut-based Device42, which helps companies manage their IT infrastructure and had raised $38.5M, for $230M  —  Freshworks, the publicly listed SaaS firm, is acquiring U.S.-based startup Device42 for $230 million, the company disclosed in an SEC filing.

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More News

Nico Grant / New York Times:
Alison Snyder / Axios:

Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Apple: