Meta is expanding tests of facial recognition as an anti-scam measure to combat celebrity scam ads and more broadly, the Facebook owner announced Monday. Monika Bickert, Meta’s VP of content policy, wrote in a blog post that some of the tests aim to bolster its existing anti-scam measures, such as the automated scans (using machine learning classifiers) run as part of its ad review system, to make it harder for fraudsters to fly under its radar and dupe Facebook and Instagram users to click on bogus ads. “ ...

Product Performance - The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are the top-selling product in 60% of all Ray-Ban stores across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa [1] - The product has significantly driven sales for EssilorLuxottica, as highlighted by the company's CFO during the earnings call [1] Market and Consumer Behavior - Despite the absence of multimodal AI features in Europe due to regulatory uncertainty, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses continue to perform well in the region [1] - Consumers may be more attracted to the glasses' speakers and cameras rather than their AI capabilities [1] Partnership and Future Outlook - The early success of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses has exceeded Meta's initial expectations [2] - This success has likely contributed to Meta extending its partnership with EssilorLuxottica into the next decade [2]

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re diving into the recent layoffs at Meta; the fallout from the battle between WordPress and WP Engine; and whether Cybertrucks are simply too big to exist in Europe. Let’s get into it.Multiple teams at Meta were hit by layoffs this week. The company confirmed the layoffs in a statement to TechCrunch and noted that the changes were made to reallocate resources. The cuts reportedly impacted teams working on Reality Labs, Instagram, and WhatsApp, though Meta decli ...

In Brief How much equity in OpenAI will Microsoft get once the former becomes a for-profit company? That’s the multi-billion-dollar question — one the two parties are racing to answer ahead of a two-year deadline.The Wall Street Journal reports that both Microsoft and OpenAI have hired investment banks to negotiate Microsoft’s equity — which could be substantial. The tech giant is said to have sunk nearly $14 billion into OpenAI. As of October, OpenAI is the second-most valuable startup in the U.S. behind S ...

The top U.S. automotive safety regulator has opened a new investigation into Tesla’s so-called “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software after four reported crashes in low-visibility situations — including one where a pedestrian was killed.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) announced Friday that it is probing the driver assistance system to find out whether it can “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions,” such ...

Nebius, the company formerly known as Yandex that’s now focused on cloud infrastructure for AI uses (aka “AI compute”), is to begin trading on the public markets once again — more than two years after the Nasdaq halted trading due to economic sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2022.The Netherlands-based company is vying to become one of Europe’s leading players in the burgeoning “GPU-as-a-service” space, and sits in a somewhat unique position — it is a startup in many ways as it’s ...

In Brief AWS CEO Matt Garman has harsh words for remote workers: return to the office or quit. The Amazon executive recently told employees who don’t like the new five-day in-person work policy that, “there are other companies around,” presumably companies they can work for remotely, Reuters reported on Thursday.Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, told employees last month that there will be a full return-to-office starting in 2025, an increase from three days for roughly the last year. Garman is the latest tec ...

Core Insights - Microsoft experienced a logging outage for its cloud products during a two-week period in September, which may have created a security blind spot for customers [1][2] - The outage was attributed to a bug in Microsoft's internal monitoring agents, not a security incident, affecting the collection of log events [1][2] - Affected products include Microsoft Entra, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Purview, potentially hindering customers' ability to analyze data and detect threats [2] Incident Background - The logging outage follows previous scrutiny from federal investigators regarding Microsoft's withholding of security logs from U.S. government departments, which could have expedited the identification of China-backed intrusions [3] - The intrusions, attributed to a group known as Storm-0558, involved the theft of a digital skeleton key that allowed access to U.S. government emails stored in Microsoft's cloud [3] - In response to past incidents, Microsoft announced it would start providing logs to lower-tier cloud accounts beginning September 2023 [4]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Thursday that Prabhakar Raghavan, the executive in charge of the company’s search engine and ads products, is leaving his role. Longtime Google executive Nick Fox will replace Raghavan, who will now take on the role of chief technologist. “Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in his own career,” Pichai said in the announcement post. “After 12 years leading teams across Google, he’ll return to his computer science roots and take on the role of Chief Technol ...

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!Kirsten is still out doing Kirsten things, so I (Rebecca Bellan) will continue to pass along all the tech mobility news that’s fit to print. It’s been a week since Tesla’s flashy robotaxi reveal, and everyone seems to have differing opinions on what Elon Musk showcased and, crucially, what he left out. Obviously the big deal was the robotaxi or ...