Category: Gaming

How many times does the letter “r” appear in the word “strawberry”? According to formidable AI products like GPT-4o and Claude, the answer is twice. Large language models (LLMs) can write essays and solve equations in seconds. They can synthesize terabytes of data faster than humans can open up a book. Yet, these seemingly omniscient…

Before entrepreneur and investor Mike Lynch died along with six others after the yacht they were on capsized in a storm last week, the party was celebrating Lynch’s victory in the U.S. criminal courts. In June, he was acquitted of all counts of fraud connected to HP’s 2011 acquisition of his company, Autonomy. But it…

In Latin American countries like Brazil and Chile, messaging platform WhatsApp has become one of the most popular apps to use to buy things online. It was even the e-commerce platform of choice in the region during the pandemic. But WhatsApp is designed to be a messaging platform, not an e-commerce site. A startup called…

Generative AI models aren’t actually humanlike. They have no intelligence or personality — they’re simply statistical systems predicting the likeliest next words in a sentence. But like interns at a tyrannical workplace, they do follow instructions without complaint — including initial “system prompts” that prime the models with their basic qualities and what they should…

Apple announced today that Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri will step away from his executive role, effective January 1. Kevan Parekh, Apple’s current VP of Financial Planning, will be promoted to CFO after 11 years at Apple. Maestri has been CFO at Apple since 2014, and he’s now transitioning to a different role in the…

After a nearly three-year interlude, Jared Isaacman is returning to space. The billionaire entrepreneur first went to orbit as part of the Inspiration4 mission, which made history for having a crew comprised entirely of private citizens, not professional astronauts. But with this next mission, Polaris Dawn, he and mission partner SpaceX have set their sights…

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. NASA leadership have made their decision: Starliner will be coming back to Earth — empty. More on that below. Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or send a message on Signal at 512-937-3988. You also can send a note to the whole TechCrunch…

OpenAI, Adobe and Microsoft have thrown their support behind a California bill requiring tech companies to label AI-generated content, according to letters from the companies viewed by TechCrunch. The bill is headed for a final vote in August. AB 3211 requires watermarks in the metadata of AI-generated photos, videos and audio clips. Lots of AI…

Elon Musk has come out in support of California’s SB 1047, a bill that requires makers of very large AI models to create and document safeguards against those models causing serious harm. “This is a tough call and will make some people upset, but, all things considered, I think California should probably pass the SB…

Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging platform Telegram, has been in the headlines since his arrest at a private airport near Paris on Saturday, reportedly in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the app. While many stories since have centered on free speech (i.e, should what happens on Telegram stay on Telegram?),…