Maxwell Zeff, Author at TechCrunch

The other election night winner: Perplexity

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:54:10 +0000

On Tuesday, two AI startups tried convincing the world their AI chatbots were good enough to be an accurate, real-time source of information during a high-stakes presidential election: xAI and Perplexity. Elon Musk’s Grok failed almost instantly, offering wrong answers about races’ outcomes before the polls had even closed. On the other hand, Perplexity offered […]

X reinstates SwapYourVote’s account after suspending it as spam

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:09:20 +0000

In the final days leading up to the U.S. presidential election, Elon Musk’s X suspended the official account of a progressive-donor-backed ballot initiative called SwapYourVote. The volunteer-run website tries to get third-party voters in swing states to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, matching them with Democrats in solidly blue states who agree to vote […]

Meta’s former hardware lead for Orion is joining OpenAI

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:30:47 +0000

The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses efforts announced on Monday she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware, according to a post on LinkedIn. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that Caitlin Kalinowski will be joining the startup. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta’s AR glasses team in March 2022. […]

Apple users can soon upgrade to ChatGPT Plus within the Settings app

Maxwell Zeff — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:18:02 +0000

Apple products are getting an integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in December when iOS 18.2 rolls out, which should supercharge Siri and a few other features with smarter AI. On Monday, iOS 18.2 beta testers got a taste of how OpenAI could profit off of its Apple partnership. Apple is including an option to upgrade to […]

ChatGPT Search is not OpenAI’s ‘Google killer’ yet

Maxwell Zeff — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 13:17:58 +0000

OpenAI's search offers a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But it's too impractical as a daily driver right now.

500 Amazon employees reportedly ask AWS CEO to reverse return-to-office policy

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 22:16:36 +0000

More than 500 Amazon employees sent a letter on Wednesday to AWS CEO Matt Garman, urging the executive to reverse the company’s full return-to-office policy, Reuters reports. In September, Amazon asked employees to come back to the office five days a week starting in 2025. The AWS CEO previously told employees that nine out of […]

Narada AI’s enterprise agent will use workplace tools for you

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 18:00:58 +0000

There’s no shortage of startups trying to create enterprise AI assistants. What’s less common is an AI assistant that can actually execute tasks across several of your work apps at once. That’s the promise of Narada AI, a startup building an AI assistant based on new research out of UC Berkeley. Narada has been operating […]

Brightwave’s AI agent helps asset managers find signal, and it’s fundraising fast

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The finance world is constantly looking for signal: indicators of a buying or selling opportunity in the markets. Brightwave says its AI agent can help.

This veteran couldn’t share 3D scans of a burnt naval ship, so he created a startup that can

Maxwell Zeff — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 22:06:47 +0000

In the summer of 2020, a fire broke out onboard a naval ship docked in San Diego Bay. For more than four days, the USS Bonhomme Richard burned as helicopters dropped buckets of water from above, boats spewed water from below, and firefighters rushed onboard to control the blaze. Before the embers had even cooled, […]

Vinod Khosla calls SB 1047 author ‘clueless’ and ‘not qualified’ to regulate the real dangers of AI

Maxwell Zeff — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 21:26:29 +0000

Vinod Khosla said the author of California’s recently vetoed AI bill, SB 1047, was clueless about the real dangers of AI, and not qualified to have an opinion on global national security issues. The comment about state Senator Scott Wiener was made during an onstage interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “He’s clueless about the real […]

McDonald’s broken ice cream machines could get fixed faster thanks to new federal rule

Maxwell Zeff — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 00:02:47 +0000

McDonald’s ice cream machines have developed a lousy reputation for being broken when you visit the restaurant, largely due to strict copyright laws that only permit specially licensed technicians to legally repair them. The manufacturers have to license each technician, and they put locks on the McFlurry machines to prevent others from repairing them. However, […]

OpenAI reportedly plans to release its Orion AI model by December

Maxwell Zeff — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 02:40:00 +0000

Update: An OpenAI spokesperson got back to us with more info after this was published. Read the latest here. OpenAI is reportedly planning to release its next frontier AI model, codenamed Orion inside the company, by December of this year, The Verge reported on Thursday. Unlike previous releases, the company reportedly plans to release the […]

‘They wish this technology didn’t exist’: Perplexity responds to News Corp’s lawsuit

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:08:43 +0000

Perplexity shot back at media companies skeptical of AI’s benefits in a blog post Thursday, responding to News Corp’s lawsuit filed against the startup earlier this week. The lawsuit alleged Perplexity engaged in large-scale copyright violations against Dow Jones and the NY Post. Several other media organizations — including Forbes, The New York Times, and […]

Google adds new disclosures for AI photos, but it’s still not obvious at first glance

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 19:15:06 +0000

Starting next week, the Google Photos app will add a new disclosure for when a photo has been edited with one of its AI features, such as Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, and Zoom Enhance. When you click into a photo in Google Photos, there will now be a disclosure when you scroll to the bottom […]

Finix raises $75M to take on Stripe as a payment processor

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

For years, Finix has been slowly chipping away at Stripe – which handles payments for millions of businesses. But after previously helping companies set up internal payment systems of their own, the startup officially became a payment processor in 2023, just like Stripe. Now Finix is gearing up for its biggest push against the fintech […]

Andreessen Horowitz is renting a bunch of Nvidia GPUs to its portfolio companies

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Andreessen Horowitz has a massive cluster of Nvidia H100 GPUs to help its portfolio of AI startups meet their compute needs, the venture capital firm confirmed for the first time on Wednesday. The program, called Oxygen, allows their portfolio companies to train or operate their AI models without negotiating market rates. a16z’s Oxygen cluster gives […]

Meta suspends accounts tracking private jets of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other celebrities

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 04:43:54 +0000

Instagram and Threads accounts that track the private jets of celebrities — including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Kylie Jenner — were suspended on Monday, according to the owner of many such accounts, Florida college student, Jack Sweeney. Meta tells TechCrunch these accounts violated its privacy policy, citing a […]

Meta’s smart glasses outsell traditional Ray-Bans in some stores, even before AI features roll out

Maxwell Zeff — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 21:45:05 +0000

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are the top selling product in 60% of all Ray-Ban stores throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to Upload VR. The detail came from EssilorLuxottica CFO Stefano Grassi, who revealed during the eyewear giant’s earnings call last week that Ray-Ban Meta proved to be a significant driver for […]

Amazon indicates employees can quit if they don’t like its return-to-office mandate

Maxwell Zeff — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 01:17:28 +0000

AWS CEO Matt Garman has harsh words for remote workers: return to the office or quit. The Amazon executive recently told employees who don’t like the new five-day in-person work policy that, “there are other companies around,” presumably companies they can work for remotely, Reuters reported on Thursday. Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, told employees […]

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin becomes World and shows new iris-scanning Orb to prove your humanity

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 20:10:40 +0000

Worldcoin, the Sam Altman co-founded “proof of personhood” crypto project that scans people’s eyeballs, announced on Thursday that it dropped the “coin” from its name and is now just “World.” The startup behind the World project, Tools for Humanity, also unveiled its next generation of iris-scanning “Orbs” and other tools at a live event in […]