Industry Overview - The entertainment and media industry grew 5% to $2.8 trillion in 2023 and is projected to reach $3.4 trillion over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 4% [2] - Non-English language content is experiencing rapid growth even in traditionally English-speaking markets, with Netflix reporting a 90% increase in viewership of non-English content in the U.K. over the last three years [2] Company Initiatives - IMAX is leveraging AI to enhance localization of its original content in response to the rising demand for non-English content [1][3] - IMAX has partnered with Dubai-based startup Camb.ai to utilize its AI speech models for translating original content, including documentaries [3] Camb.ai Technology - Camb.ai has developed AI dubbing and speech translation technologies that have been successfully used in live sports events and leagues [4] - The company offers its Boli model for speech-to-text translation and Mars for speech emulation, supporting 140 languages, including low-resource languages [4] AI Deployment and Strategy - IMAX plans to roll out AI translations in stages, starting with high-resource languages, following internal testing of Camb.ai's technology on its original content [9] - The AI technology can deliver speech translation in up to 10 languages simultaneously with a latency of 20 to 30 seconds, which aligns with typical streaming delays [9] Financial Aspects - IMAX's AI deployment is expected to reduce translation costs, although specific figures were not disclosed [11] - Camb.ai raised $4 million in a seed round led by Courtside Ventures and is currently closing a larger pre-Series A round to expand its operations [11]

In Brief It’s not exactly a secret that Apple has explored the possibility of building a television. Before his death in 2011, co-founder Steve Jobs famously told biographer Walter Isaacson that he’d “finally cracked it,” but no full-fledged Apple TV (as opposed to the Apple TV set-top box) has emerged in the years since.Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple went as far as building full-scale prototypes with a large display that could also serve as a touchscreen Mac or iPad. But Apple eventually halted ...

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re exploring the DOJ telling Google to sell off Chrome to break up its monopoly, OpenAI accidentally deleting potential evidence in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against it, and how AI companies are using TikTok brainrot for study tools. Let’s do this.The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Google should divest its Chrome browser to help break up the company’s illegal monopoly in online search. District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Goog ...

In Brief Tesla and Rivian may have resolved a lawsuit in which Tesla accused Rivian of poaching employees and stealing trade secrets.Bloomberg reports that Tesla told a California statement judge that the companies have reached a “conditional” settlement, and that it expects to seek dismissal of the lawsuit by December 24. Tesla filed the suit, which was set to got to trial in March, back in 2020. The EV maker alleged that it had discovered an “alarming pattern” in which Rivian was recruiting Tesla employe ...

In Brief The European Commission (EC) has quietly closed a longstanding antitrust investigation into Apple over rules it enforces against third-party e-book and audiobook app developers. The EC opened the probe back in 2020 after receiving complaints over how Apple forced competing e-book and audiobook app developers to use Apple’s own in-app payment system, while also preventing them from informing customers of alternative ways to pay — a practice known as anti-steering. The EC opened a parallel investigat ...

In Brief Apple is developing a new version of its voice assistant, Siri, powered by advanced large language models, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. This more conversational Siri is part of Apple’s attempt to catch up in AI, where competitors have released impressive features, like Google’s Gemini Live, that are far more natural to talk to than Siri.The new assistant reportedly will fully replace the Siri interface that users rely on today, and Apple is planning to release the feature in the spring ...

Malicious hackers have compromised potentially thousands of organizations by exploiting two new zero-day vulnerabilities found in widely used software made by cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks.Security researchers at Palo Alto Networks said Wednesday that they have observed a “limited set of exploitation activity” related to the two vulnerabilities in PAN-OS, the operating system that runs on all of Palo Alto’s next-generation firewalls. The bugs are considered zero-days because the company had no time ...

Maxwell Zeff is a senior reporter at TechCrunch specializing in AI and emerging technologies. Previously with Gizmodo, Bloomberg, and MSNBC, Zeff has covered the rise of AI and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. He is based in San Francisco. When not reporting, he can be found hiking, biking, and exploring the Bay Area’s food scene. ...

Nvidia raked in more than $19 billion in net income during the last quarter, the company reported on Wednesday, but that did little to assure investors that its rapid growth would continue. On its earnings call, analysts prodded CEO Jensen Huang about how Nvidia would fare if tech companies start using new methods to improve their AI models.The method that underpins OpenAI’s o1 model, or “test-time scaling,” came up quite a lot. It’s the idea that AI models will give better answers if you give them more tim ...

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has urged the European Union to widen its Digital Markets Act (DMA) investigation into Google, claiming the search giant is in breach of several areas where the bloc has yet to formally probe the company’s compliance.The EU’s flagship market contestability rulebook has been in force on a handful of tech giants since March, including Google. Fines for failing to abide by DMA rules that mandate things like platform access on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminat ...