Author: GT

Spotify on Thursday announced a series of deals with major record labels to develop new AI products designed to ensure fair compensation and center artists and songwriters in the experience. In partnership with Sony, Universal, Warner, and Merlin, the streamer said it would develop “responsible AI” products that not only respect copyright, but also allow the artists to choose whether they want to allow the use of AI tools. The company didn’t delve into the specifics of how the new tools would operate, but the company already offers generative AI experiences for users, including with its AI DJ that plays…

Ticktock! TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 hits San Francisco’s Moscone West on October 27–29, and this is your final chance to lock in major savings before doors open. Ticket prices increase after tomorrow, October 17 at 11:59 p.m. PT, so don’t wait. Save up to $624 on your pass right now, and if you’re coming with your team, you can save 15% to 30% on group passes. Why attend Disrupt? Disrupt is where the startup world converges. Join 10,000 founders, VCs, and tech innovators to hear 250+ industry leaders across 200+ sessions, explore startup breakthroughs from 300+ showcasing startups, and experience the…

Amazon One Medical, the retailer’s primary care provider acquired in 2022, is launching a pay-per-visit virtual healthcare service for children ages 2 to 11, the company announced on Thursday. Message-based visits start at $29, and video visits cost $49. The healthcare service doesn’t require insurance or a One Medical membership and can help treat issues like pink eye, lice, and more than 10 skin-related issues, including eczema, bug bites, contact dermatitis, fungal rashes, and more. The service also covers EpiPen and asthma medication renewals. Amazon started offering a pay-per-visit virtual healthcare service for adults in 2024. “This service isn’t meant…

Medal, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, has spun out a new frontier AI research lab that’s using its trove of gaming videos to train and build foundation models and AI agents that can understand how objects and entities move through space and time — a concept known as spatial-temporal reasoning. Called General Intuition, the startup is betting that Medal’s dataset — which consists of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users across tens of thousands of games — surpasses alternatives like Twitch or YouTube for training agents.  “When you play video games,…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 takes place October 27-29 in San Francisco’s Moscone West, and exhibit space is nearly full. With less than two days left to secure your table, now is the time to step in before a competitor takes your place. Showcase your brand to 10,000 founders, investors, media, and tech leaders on the hunt for the next breakthrough. Build a year’s worth of connections in just three days. Generate hot leads. Capture investor attention. If your work is making waves, your vision excites, or your team is ready to grow, this is your moment to shine at one of…

MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged voting technology firm Smartmatic with money laundering and other crimes arising from more than $1 million in bribes that several executives allegedly paid to election officials in the Philippines.The payments, between 2015 and 2018, were made to obtain a contract with the Philippines government to help run that country’s 2016 presidential election and secure the timely payment for its work, according to a superseding indictment filed Thursday in a Florida federal court.Three former executives of Smartmatic, including co-founder Roger Pinate, were previously charged in 2024 but at the time South Florida-based Smartmatic was…

As geopolitical tensions intensify between the U.S. and China, tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are ramping up efforts to move production of their products and data centers outside of China, Nikkei reported, citing supply chain sources. In particular, Microsoft wants to have up to 80% of the components needed to make its Surface notebooks and tablets, as well as its data centers, manufactured outside of China as soon as 2026, the report said. The scope of the change is “quite wide” and includes components and assembly for the company’s future notebooks and server products, Nikkei cited a supply chain…

Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesEssilorLuxottica said a healthy amount of its revenue growth in the third quarter was due to its partnership with Meta, primarily from its Ray-Ban brand, to develop and sell smart glasses.”Clearly there is a lift coming from Ray-Ban Meta wearables as a product category,” CFO Stefano Grassi said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.The European eyewear company said sales in in the quarter grew 11.7% year-over-year to 6.9 billion euros (about $8…

Following backlash over an increase in “AI slop” taking over users’ feeds, Pinterest on Thursday added new tools that let users limit how much AI-generated content they see on the platform. Users can now personalize their feeds to restrict generative AI imagery in select categories, and the company said it will make its existing GenAI content labels more noticeable in the days to come. The site, widely used to browse and bookmark inspirational content and potential purchases, has come under fire from users who have complained about the massive uptick in GenAI content. The media has also been documenting the…

Ke Yang, the Apple executive leading the iPhone maker’s efforts to build AI-driven web search, is heading to Meta, according to a Bloomberg report.   Yang’s departure marks the latest in a string of exits from Apple’s AI unit, putting the company into jeopardy in the lead-up to a much-anticipated Siri revamp scheduled for March. Ruoming Pang, Apple’s former head of AI models, left for Meta earlier this year. Roughly a dozen team members on Apple’s AIML (AI and machine learning) team also left the company. Several members joined Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs.  A few weeks ago, Yang began overseeing the…