X got into trouble with regulators again; two mental health-focused startups raised funds; Amazon upgraded Titan, its image generation model; YouTube creators can now brainstorm with Gemini; Anysphere raised $60 million; DeepMind shared some research advances including a table tennis-playing robot.
A new AI assistant called Silvia, created by engineer Mansidak Singh, can understand and transcribe "Spanglish" and other language mixtures, addressing a common need among bilingual speakers and promising to expand to more language combinations in the future.
Berlin-based startup clare&me has raised €3.7 million in funding to develop its AI-powered mental health support offerings, including a self-help chatbot and a clinical intake assessment tool, utilizing an empathetic language model trained in various therapeutic techniques.
AI-powered workflow automation startup Bardeen has secured $3 million in strategic investment from Dropbox and HubSpot, bringing its total funding to $22 million, as it aims to revolutionize business process automation by focusing on repeatability and customizability.
Psychiatrist Dr. David Burns' AI-powered therapy app 'Feeling Great' has launched with $8 million in seed funding, offering interactive courses and an empathetic chatbot based on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to make mental health support more accessible and affordable.
SoundHound AI has acquired Amelia for $80 million, combining their expertise in voice and conversational AI to become a leading provider of AI solutions across multiple industries, with expected combined revenue exceeding $150 million in 2025.
Google DeepMind has developed a table tennis-playing robot that performs at an amateur human level, winning against beginner and some intermediate human opponents, marking a significant milestone in robotics while highlighting areas for impact outside the realm of table tennis.
Researchers from Imperial College London and Google DeepMind have developed DAAG, a novel AI framework that combines language and vision models to enhance embodied agents' learning efficiency and adaptability, addressing the challenge of limited training data in physical environments.
Anysphere, the startup behind AI coding assistant Cursor, has secured $60 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, reaching a $400 million valuation as it competes in the growing market of AI-powered coding tools.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Amazon's $4 billion investment in Anthropic and their cloud partnership, as part of a broader scrutiny of AI industry collaborations, to determine if it constitutes a merger situation requiring further investigation.
YouTube is testing "Brainstorm with Gemini," an AI-powered feature that helps creators generate video ideas, titles, and thumbnails, as part of its strategy to enhance content creation and compete with other platforms.
Napkin AI, a new visual AI platform that transforms text into customizable visuals using generative AI, has emerged from stealth with $10 million in funding from Accel and CRV, aiming to revolutionize corporate communication and content creation.