At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, Ashton Kutcher and Sound Ventures leadership discussed their significant AI investments and vision, including a $265 million AI fund that has backed major players like OpenAI and Anthropic, while emphasizing their belief that AI will transform every company and industry.
Salva Health, the 2024 TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield winner, is working towards eliminating the barriers to early breast cancer detection with Julieta; a portable and affordable AI-powered device that detects abnormalities in breast tissue without requiring radiation or internet access.
Google has launched 'Grounded with Google Search', a paid feature that allows Gemini to access current search results for more accurate responses with citations and search suggestions. Grounding features a dynamic retrieval configuration to optimize when the feature is used.
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT search, a GPT-4o-based model that provides natural language answers using current web sources. ChatGPT search features specialized views for partnered content, source attribution, and contextual follow-up capabilities, and is available to Pro and Team users.
Google's AI Overviews feature, which faced initial controversy over questionable suggestions, is expanding to over 100 countries with multiple languages, improved source attribution, and new features like simplified language and saved overviews, while maintaining US-exclusive mobile ads.
Despite OpenAI's claim of "near-human accuracy" for its open-source Whisper speech recognition system, recent research has revealed significant hallucination issues across multiple studies, raising concerns about its widespread use in sensitive applications.
Read AI secured $50 million in Series B funding led by Smash Capital, with participation from Madrona and Goodwater Capital, in a round coming just 6 months after its $21 million Series A round, amid strong growth metrics of 100,000 new weekly accounts and 81% first-month retention.
Materials science and biotechnology startups raised funding; creatives stand against the threat of generative AI; Anthopic launched new models and a computer use API; Google open-sourced SynthID Text, and more.
Pharos, founded by healthcare and AI veterans from Vital and Meta, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Felicis Ventures to develop AI solutions that help healthcare institutions' quality teams improve patient care and streamline clinical reporting.
Google has announced it will display information about AI-powered edits made using tools like Magic Editor and Magic Eraser in Google Photos' metadata and Details tab, following IPTC standards, as part of its efforts to increase transparency around AI-edited images.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has initiated a Phase 1 investigation into the Alphabet-Anthropic partnership to determine if it constitutes a merger that could potentially reduce market competition, following a similar investigation into the Amazon-Anthropic partnership.
Avenue Biosciences has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to develop its machine learning platform that optimizes signal peptides for more efficient protein production, potentially making treatments like monoclonal antibodies and gene therapies more accessible.