Technology

• A review of Character.AI finds several instances of AI personas being created without a person's consent, seemingly violating the company's terms of service (Wired) October 15, 2024
  Wired: A review of Character.AI finds several instances of AI personas being created without a person's consent, seemingly violating the company's terms of service  —  Character.AI lets users create bots in the likeness of any person—without requiring their consent.
• Galileo, a startup that helps companies fine tune, evaluate, observe, and protect their AI models, raised a $45M Series B led by Scale Venture Partners (Richard Nieva/Forbes) October 15, 2024
  Richard Nieva / Forbes: Galileo, a startup that helps companies fine tune, evaluate, observe, and protect their AI models, raised a $45M Series B led by Scale Venture Partners  —  Galileo, founded by former Google and Uber employees, helps companies to make sure their models are actually ready for primetime when they launch.
• YouTube rolls out a new "captured with a camera" label, using the C2PA standard to detect if the video came from a real camera with unaltered footage and sound (Umar Shakir/The Verge) October 15, 2024
  Umar Shakir / The Verge: YouTube rolls out a new “captured with a camera” label, using the C2PA standard to detect if the video came from a real camera with unaltered footage and sound  —  YouTube is rolling out new labels that tell if uploaded videos come from a real camera with unaltered footage and […]
• Sources: Qualcomm is likely to wait until after the US presidential election in November before deciding whether to pursue an offer to buy Intel (Bloomberg) October 15, 2024
  Bloomberg: Sources: Qualcomm is likely to wait until after the US presidential election in November before deciding whether to pursue an offer to buy Intel  —  – Chipmaker wants White House clarity before deciding to pursue  — Any deal for Intel would be among largest tech deals ever
• Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto project gets off to a bumpy start, as its website crashes and WLFI token sales fall far short of the $300M target (CoinDesk) October 15, 2024
  CoinDesk: Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto project gets off to a bumpy start, as its website crashes and WLFI token sales fall far short of the $300M target  —  A blockchain wallet connected to the token holds nearly $4 million worth of ether (ETH), $1.2 million of tether (USDT) and around $250,000 USD Coin (USDC) […]
• Trump signaled he wouldn't break up Google if he regained the presidency, saying "China is afraid of Google" and questioning if it might "destroy the company" (New York Times) October 15, 2024
  New York Times: Trump signaled he wouldn't break up Google if he regained the presidency, saying “China is afraid of Google” and questioning if it might “destroy the company”  —  The former president also said he would do “something” to make Google “more fair” if he regained the presidency.
• Adobe teases AI tools that can generate 3D scenes, make animated graphics in different styles, and automatically remove distractions in images and videos (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge) October 15, 2024
  Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Adobe teases AI tools that can generate 3D scenes, make animated graphics in different styles, and automatically remove distractions in images and videos  —  Adobe is previewing some experimental AI tools for animation, image generation, and cleaning up video and photographs that could eventually be added to its Creative Cloud […]
• Analytics software provider Amplitude acquires Command AI, an app user engagement startup formerly called CommandBar that raised $23.8M, a source says for $45M+ (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch) October 15, 2024
  Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Analytics software provider Amplitude acquires Command AI, an app user engagement startup formerly called CommandBar that raised $23.8M, a source says for $45M+  —  Amplitude, a publicly traded company that makes digital analytics software, has acquired Command AI, an app user engagement startup formerly known as CommandBar.
• A teardown of Microsoft's diskless Xbox Series X, which was released today, shows a redesigned motherboard, a 6nm chip, and a new cooling system (Tom Warren/The Verge) October 15, 2024
  Tom Warren / The Verge: A teardown of Microsoft's diskless Xbox Series X, which was released today, shows a redesigned motherboard, a 6nm chip, and a new cooling system  —  Microsoft's discless Xbox Series X goes on sale today, and while it looks slightly different on the outside thanks to a white paint job and […]
• Port, which offers DevOps services, raised a $35M Series B led by Accel and says its revenue is up 7x in the last 12 months while its customer base grew 8x (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) October 15, 2024
  Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Port, which offers DevOps services, raised a $35M Series B led by Accel and says its revenue is up 7x in the last 12 months while its customer base grew 8x  —  DevOps platform startup Port IO Ltd. has closed on its biggest funding round to date, raising $35 million in […]
• Meta rolls out "activity status" to Threads that shows a green dot next to a user's profile picture to show the user is online, if they have the feature enabled (Jay Peters/The Verge) October 15, 2024
  Jay Peters / The Verge: Meta rolls out “activity status” to Threads that shows a green dot next to a user's profile picture to show the user is online, if they have the feature enabled  —  Meta is adding an “activity status” to Threads so that you can see who's actively online as you're scrolling […]
• Court filing: VMware agrees to pay $102.5M to settle a securities fraud class action lawsuit that could apply to those who traded its stock from 2018 to 2020 (Brandon Vigliarolo/The Register) October 15, 2024
  Brandon Vigliarolo / The Register: Court filing: VMware agrees to pay $102.5M to settle a securities fraud class action lawsuit that could apply to those who traded its stock from 2018 to 2020  —  Old accusations of securities fraud continue to dog VMware, with the virtualization juggernaut agreeing to pay $102.5 million …
• Decagon, which offers enterprises AI-powered customer service agents, raised a $65M Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures, valuing it at $650M (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes) October 15, 2024
  Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes: Decagon, which offers enterprises AI-powered customer service agents, raised a $65M Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures, valuing it at $650M  —  Companies are pitting AI-powered customer service agents against one another.  Decagon's CEO Jesse Zhang says his company's AI software has won time and again.
• Intel and AMD forge an x86 ecosystem advisory group to ensure a unified x86 instruction set architecture moving forward, amid competition from Arm and RISC-V (Paul Alcorn/Tom's Hardware) October 15, 2024
  Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware: Intel and AMD forge an x86 ecosystem advisory group to ensure a unified x86 instruction set architecture moving forward, amid competition from Arm and RISC-V  —  Cats and dogs, living together!  —  In a rare public-facing display of cooperation between two of the industry's fiercest rivals …
• Customer service AI startup Neuron7 raised a $44M Series B led by Smith Point Capital, and says it had 300% growth in ARR in 2023 and 65 full-time employees (Julie Bort/TechCrunch) October 15, 2024
  Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Customer service AI startup Neuron7 raised a $44M Series B led by Smith Point Capital, and says it had 300% growth in ARR in 2023 and 65 full-time employees  —  Five-year-old AI customer service startup Neuron7 just closed an oversubscribed $44 million series B round led by Keith Block …