Media & Entertainment News | TechCrunch

As generative AI gets better, what will happen to artists?

Amanda Silberling — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 20:22:00 +0000

Suno CEO Mikey Shulman found himself in an unlikely place for the founder of a generative AI music company: a songwriting class at Berklee College of Music. “It sounds like walking into the lion’s den,” Shulman said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “The approach of just walking in there and saying, ‘don’t worry, there’s no […]

Elon Musk’s false and misleading election claims have been viewed 2 billion times on X

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:08:40 +0000

The world’s richest man buys out one of the most popular social media platforms and uses it as a propaganda and disinformation machine in support of a presidential candidate. What could go wrong? An analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks misinformation, found that Elon Musk posted at least […]

Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:43:30 +0000

The CEO of AI search company Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, has offered to cross picket lines and provide services to mitigate the effect of a strike by New York Times tech workers. The NYT Tech Guild announced its strike Monday, after setting November 4 as its deadline months earlier. The workers represented provide software support and […]

Amazon brings generative AI-powered recaps to Prime Video

Lauren Forristal — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:07:09 +0000

Instead of scouring the internet for a summary of a TV show, which often risks unintentionally revealing major plot points, Prime Video’s latest feature aims to save viewers from encountering any spoilers. Amazon announced on Monday the launch of “X-Ray Recaps,” a generative AI-powered feature that creates concise summaries of entire seasons, single episodes, and […]

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid hot dogs for the camera

Brian Heater — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 14:55:04 +0000

Automation skeptics ask: Why humanoids? There are many benefits and drawbacks of the robotics form factor, but Boston Dynamics’ latest electric Atlas video showcases one of the most underdiscussed factors: costumes. “Why build a humanoid robot?” the company rhetorically posits. “Because the world is designed for humans, including all the best Halloween costumes.” A day […]

NFL quarterback turned-founder Colin Kaepernick on the challenges facing disrupters

Aisha Malik — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:04:44 +0000

Former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday to talk about the challenges facing people who want to disrupt something — both inside and outside of the tech world. “One of the biggest challenges that you will likely face when you try to disrupt something […]

Wonder Dynamics now lets you go straight from multi-camera video to fully animated 3D scene

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Wonder Dynamics made a strong opening play in AI-enhanced visual effects, providing tools animators and filmmakers actually find useful — and earning the startup a prompt acquisition by Autodesk. Their latest tool further automates the animation process, letting you put in practically any video and get a fully editable 3D scene, characters and all. The […]

ForceField helps detect deepfakes and digital deception by verifying source data

Paul Sawers — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:33:03 +0000

A new startup setting out to combat the scourge of deepfakes and spoofed evidence in the age of AI is showing off its wares on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 this week. ForceField is building a set of “patent-pending” APIs dubbed MARQ, the first of which is designed to authenticate content. For […]

Foster sisters explain why they haven’t invested in AI

Amanda Silberling — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:20:28 +0000

Oversubscribed Ventures co-founder Sara Foster (above right) made a confession onstage on Monday at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “I don’t even have ChatGPT on my phone,” she said. It’s an unexpected comment from an investor, given that ChatGPT is arguably the most influential product to launch this decade. But what makes the Foster sisters different from […]

Erin and Sara Foster from Oversubscribed Ventures talk consumer, culture and creators

Yashad Kulkarni — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 22:15:00 +0000

Erin and Sara Foster, two of the venture industry’s most famous sisters, sit down alongside business partner Phil Schwarz at Disrupt 2024 to talk about their VC firm Oversubscribed Ventures, consumer investing, culture curation, and what it means to be a creator in the modern age. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on […]

2024 Startup Battlefield Top 20 Finalists: VRTL

Yashad Kulkarni — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 21:00:00 +0000

A virtual venue for entertainment organizations to deliver and scale in-person fan experiences to a remote, global audience, for greater lifetime values and data collection. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on Instagram: http://tcrn.ch/instagram TikTok: https://tcrn.ch/tiktok X: tcrn.ch/x Threads: https://tcrn.ch/threads Facebook: https://tcrn.ch/facebook Bluesky: https://tcrn.ch/bluesky Mastodon: https://tcrn.ch/mstdn Read more: https://techcrunch.com/

Netflix’s new ‘Moments’ feature lets you save and share clips from your favorite episodes

Lauren Forristal — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 20:00:14 +0000

If you’ve ever struggled to explain a scene from your favorite Netflix series or movie to a friend because you couldn’t find the clip online, the streamer just came up with a solution. Netflix launched on Monday a new clipping feature called “Moments” on its iOS app, letting you quickly save your favorite scenes. Now, […]

A mysterious new image generation model has appeared

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 17:48:27 +0000

Update: The model’s been revealed as Recraft’s Recraft v3. The original story follows: A mysterious new image generation model is beating models from Midjourney, Black Forest Labs, and OpenAI on the crowdsourced Artificial Analysis benchmark. The model, which goes by the name “red_panda,” is around 40 Elo points ahead of the next-best-ranking model, Black Forest […]

Instagram is lowering video quality for unpopular videos

Anthony Ha — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:25:17 +0000

The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality. In a video (via The Verge), Mosseri said Instagram tries to show […]

Classic Christmas song gets authorized Spanish reworking thanks to ‘responsible’ AI

Brian Heater — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 16:22:38 +0000

In the decades following its 1958 release, Brenda Lee’s rockabilly-tinged “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has attained status as an all-time holiday classic. Sixty-six years later, it’s getting a Spanish language rework courtesy of “responsible” AI. Universal on Friday announced the release of “Noche Buena y Navidad,” which utilized SoundLabs AI’s MicDrop technology to reconstruct […]

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 […]

‘Blade Runner 2049’ producer accuses Musk and Tesla of circumventing copyright with AI imagery

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 20:22:04 +0000

In an interesting variation of the usual “stop stealing our stuff” lawsuit already deployed dozens of times against AI companies, today brings a more nuanced form of alleged theft. Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind “Blade Runner 2049,” is suing Tesla, Elon Musk, and Warner Bros. Digital for what they claim is a willful circumvention […]

ShoBizzy, a networking app for the TV industry, aims to open new doors for freelancers

Lauren Forristal — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:35:18 +0000

With the current unemployment crisis in Hollywood, many TV and film crew members are concerned about finding their next job. This is particularly the case for freelancers, who often face unstable work and irregular pay. ShoBizzy is the latest professional networking app for the entertainment industry that aims to address this challenge. And, as more […]

Penguin Random House is adding an AI warning to its books’ copyright pages

Anthony Ha — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 18:26:49 +0000

Penguin Random House, the trade publisher, is adding language to the copyright pages of its books to prohibit the use of those books to train AI. The Bookseller reports that new books and reprints of older titles from the publisher will now include the statement, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced […]

Midjourney plans to let anyone on the web edit images with AI

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 17:07:33 +0000

Midjourney is planning to release an upgraded web tool that’ll let users edit any uploaded images from the web using Midjourney’s generative AI. The upgraded tool, which Midjourney CEO David Holz said will be released “early next week,” will also allow users to retexture objects in images to “repaint” their colors and details according to […]