Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup working on AI-powered video generation tools along the lines of OpenAI’s Sora. Aakash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, announced the news in a post on X on Monday. “Over the past 2 years we’ve built 3 video foundation models as a small team — Hotshot-XL,
Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit
Artificial intelligence continues stirring things up in chemistry. To wit: Y Combinator-backed Cambridge, U.K.-based ReactWise is using AI to speed up chemical manufacturing — a key step in bringing new drugs to market. Once a promising drug has been identified in the lab, pharma firms need to be able to produce much larger amounts of
What Are Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1? Baidu first introduced its Ernie (Enhanced Representation through knowledge Integration) AI model in 2021, and Ernie 4.5 represents the latest evolution of this foundational model. The company highlights several key improvements, including enhanced reasoning abilities, improved efficiency, and better multimodal processing. Baidu has also emphasized that Ernie 4.5
Nvidia AI empire: No company has capitalized on the AI revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Its revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have skyrocketed since the introduction of ChatGPT over two years ago — and the many competitive generative AI services that have launched since. And its stock price soared. During that period, the world’s leading
Google is doubling down on building out its AI business in the U.K. On Monday morning in London, the CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian appeared alongside customers BT and WPP to spell out some of its plans. The company said it would expand U.K. data residency to include
Most of the focus in generative AI has been on text-based interfaces used to generate text, images, and more. The next wave appears to be voice, and it’s rolling in fast. In the latest development, Google today announced that it would be adding Chirp 3 — its speech-to-text and HD text-to-speech models — to its
Roblox announced Monday that it’s launching the first iteration of its 3D model, dubbed “Cube,” to allow creators to create 3D objects using generative AI. The company also launched an open source version so anyone off the platform can build on it. Announced last year at Roblox’s annual developer conference, the company is demoing Cube
Last week, at the Abundance Summit in Los Angeles, billionaire entrepreneur Travis Kalanick gave attendees a rare glimpse into his vision for the future of his newest company, CloudKitchens. While today the eight-year-old L.A.-based outfit is known for a growing real estate portfolio that it uses to it host – and set up – restaurants
We’ve been blown away by the overwhelming response to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. After thorough consideration, we’ve selected six standout finalists. The power to choose who will take the stage and share their AI expertise with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts is now in your
