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 ...

Cable television has long been viewed as a stagnant business, showing little promise for growth over the years. However, Comcast believes it has found a new growth opportunity.On Wednesday, the company announced that it’s spinning off NBCUniversal’s cable television networks — such as CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Oxygen, SYFY, and USA Network — into a separate publicly traded company. It’s also including digital assets like GolfNow, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, and Sports Engine. This bold spin-off strate ...

Meta hired Salesforce’s CEO of AI, Clara Shih, to lead a new organization building AI tools for businesses that use Meta’s apps to reach consumers, according to a LinkedIn post from Shih on Tuesday. Meta confirmed the appointment and the new Business AI group in a statement to TechCrunch.“I’m thrilled to share today that I’ve joined Meta to lead a new Business AI group,” said Shih in a LinkedIn post. “Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every business, empowering a ...

Microsoft on Tuesday revealed new custom chips aimed at powering workloads on its Azure cloud and bolstering security, particularly a new hardware accelerator that can manage data processing, networking and storage-related tasks.The Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft’s first data processing unit, designed for “data-centric workloads with high efficiency and low power,” the company said. Microsoft expects future DPU-equipped Azure servers to run storage workloads at four times the performance of existing servers w ...

Core Viewpoint - The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has approved Alphabet's partnership and investment in AI startup Anthropic, determining it does not warrant investigation under current merger regulations [1]. Group 1: Investment Details - Alphabet invested a total of $2.3 billion in Anthropic, with an initial investment of $300 million followed by an additional $2 billion [3]. - Anthropic has also attracted significant investments from other tech giants, including Amazon, which invested $4 billion [3]. Group 2: Regulatory Investigations - The CMA had previously initiated a "stage 1" probe into Alphabet's investments in Anthropic, which is a three-year-old startup focused on large language models and chatbots [2]. - The CMA concluded that it could not investigate the partnership under current merger rules due to the size and scope of the deal, similar to its findings regarding Amazon's investment [3]. Group 3: Influence Assessment - The CMA stated that it does not believe Google has acquired material influence over Anthropic through the partnership [5]. - The assessment included considerations of whether Google's commercial relationship with Anthropic allowed for board-level influence or created a technical reliance that could hinder competition [5][6]. - The available evidence did not indicate that Google could exercise material influence over Anthropic through the partnership [6].

In Brief The Department of Justice is reportedly pushing to force Google to spin off its Chrome browser business.That’s according to Bloomberg, which reports that the Justice Department is also planning to recommend to a federal judge that Google face antitrust requirements related to AI and its Android mobile operating system. The enforcement actions are the product of the Justice Department’s historic multi-year case against Google, which sought to prove that the tech giant has a web search monopoly in t ...