Author: GT

The sprawling metropolis of Phoenix continues to be a testbed for Waymo, and not just on the technical front. The Alphabet-owned company has used its first testing and commercial market to experiment with its business model, too, including delivery. Waymo is known for its robotaxis, but it has tested how its tech could be used for delivery. The company previously tapped UPS and Uber Eats for pilot programs, and it put considerable staff and resources toward developing self-driving trucks under its Waymo Via arm, before shuttering that program in 2023 to focus on robotaxis. Now it seems Waymo is ready…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Friday joined Bluesky, the social media platform of choice of many in the left-leaning online world.In its inaugural post, the White House account offered a sizzle reel of the administration’s memes, trolls and messages from President Donald Trump’s nine months since returning to office. The post appeared aimed at tweaking liberals who aren’t fans of the Republican president. The first post included mentions of the administration’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, a doctored image of Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache, and stream…

Ron Conway, the founder of venture firm SV Angel, known for its early investments into Google, Airbnb, and Meta, has resigned from the Salesforce Foundation, the New York Times reported. The resignation follows Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff saying last week that he “fully supported” President Trump and proposing that National Guard troops should patrol San Francisco streets to combat crime and homelessness. In an interview with the New York Times last week, Benioff argued that San Francisco needs “a show of force” and called for deploying the National Guard to address what he described as the city’s deteriorating conditions. He…

Electric aircraft startup Lilium may have ceased operations a year ago, but its insolvency filing wasn’t quite the end of the German-based company. There were multiple failed attempts to restructure the company, including a last-ditch effort by Mobile Uplift Corporation, a company set up by investors from Europe and North America, to acquire the operating assets of the startup’s two subsidiaries. Ultimately, a bankruptcy administrator put the company’s assets through a competitive bid process. Now some of its tech will live on over at Archer Aviation, which beat out Ambitious Air Mobility Group and U.S.-based Joby Aviation with the winning…

OpenAI announced Thursday it paused the ability for users to generate videos resembling the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. using its AI video model, Sora. The company says it’s adding this safeguard at the request of Dr. King’s estate after some Sora users generated “disrespectful depictions” of his image. “While there are strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures, OpenAI believes public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used,” OpenAI said in a post on X from its official newsroom account. “Authorized representatives or estate owners can request that…

Reddit announced Thursday that it is expanding its AI-powered search experience to five new languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. With this expansion, the feature is now available in countries like Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Italy. Users who have set one of these languages as their default, instead of English, can now chat with the AI in question-and-answer format. Reddit uses a Google AI model to power the feature. Reddit first debuted AI-powered search last year and has been working to expand it in different ways. The feature is part of Reddit Answers, which lives alongside the…

Meta on Friday previewed its upcoming parental control features for teens’ conversations with AI characters on its platforms. The features, which will be rolled out next year, include the ability to block certain characters and monitor conversation topics. Starting in the coming months, parents will be able to turn off chats with AI characters entirely for teens. This action won’t block access to the Meta AI chatbot — the company’s general-purpose AI chatbot — which will only discuss age-appropriate content. Parents will also be able to turn off chats with individual characters if they prefer more selective control. Plus, they…

South Korean telco giant SK Telecom is making big changes at its new AI division, AI CIC, just weeks after it was launched. Staff employed by the unit are being offered a voluntary retirement program as part of a broader effort to bring together the company’s various AI-related divisions, SK Telecom confirmed to TechCrunch. “In late September, SK Telecom announced the launch of the AI CIC (Company-in-Company) unit and confirmed that detailed organizational restructuring would be specified by the end of October,” a spokesperson at SK Telecom told TechCrunch. “This special retirement program is entirely a supportive measure and is…

In Evelyn Mora’s early career, she realized that fashion designers, although often deeply focused on sustainability, couldn’t stage environmentally friendly large-scale fashion shows.   In 2021, she launched VLGE, a gaming and immersive-world-building platform that specializes in working with brands. It lets brands build their own worlds, fill them with interactive content and games, and export said worlds to other platforms like Roblox. The product is revolutionizing what shopping could be in the future — a world where brands can create interactive worlds to connect with Gen Z rather than hosting fashion shows and filming campaigns. VLGE has worked with names such…

Electricity companies across the U.S. are struggling to figure out how much demand will actually materialize from the artificial intelligence boom, as the stock market speculates that vast sums of money will be spent on infrastructure to support a big data center buildout.”There is a question about whether or not all of the projections, if they’re real,” Willie Phillips, who served as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2023 until April 2025, told CNBC. “There are some regions who have projected huge increases, and they have readjusted those back.”The AI companies are rolling out ambitious plans to build…