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Sean Parker, who once taught the music industry what asking for forgiveness looks like, is now back with the labels' blessing and money.

Meta now lets you make your own Muse gadgets that feature the company's new AI agent with code that the company open sourced. The company suggests projects like loading Muse on a color E Ink display to show reminders, adding it to an HDMI stick so you can display Muse on a big screen, or putting Muse on a small touchscreen device to make what looks kind of like a DIY Muse Charm. "Muse gadgets are open source devices you build yourself," Meta says. "Program an off-the-shelf ESP32 board or set up

I skipped the vendor tables and lined up the independent runs: 113 real coding tasks, four tries each, with the bill attached. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Many of Netflix's biggest critically acclaimed hits have been the products of its multiyear production deals with noted directors like David Fincher and Shawn Levy. In the past few weeks, though, the streamer has brought some of those partnerships to an end in a way that feels indicative of a larger strategic shift. With rival studios Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery on the verge of a megamerger that will reshape the entertainment landscape, Netflix is clearly thinking about how it can conti

Apple will add new limits for "full disk access" on Mac in response to risks posed by AI agents, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. In an update on Friday, Apple says it's rolling out new controls to "ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action." The change comes just weeks after Inc's Jason Aten found that Meta's Muse AI somehow knew the contents of his messages, despite not giving the chatbot explicit per

Dish-owned Sling TV will no longer be offering its Sling Pass feature that allowed people to buy a single day of cable TV programming at a time, as reported by The Desk. The feature was announced last year and offered a day pass, a weekend pass, and a week-long pass option to be able to watch channels like ESPN and CNN without a full-month cable subscription. But soon after it launched, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery sued Sling TV over Sling Pass, though a federal judge ruled against Disney i

What’s new in Flash-Next, and the Mac and PC setups that get its long-prompt speed today. Continue reading on Towards AI »

A Princeton researcher found that publicly available election records could be combined with AI to link voters to their ballots When voters cast their ballots, their votes are supposed to remain secret: from their family, their neighbors, and the government. But what if artificial intelligence could make secret votes visible? Continue reading...

Greg Lui allegedly used false paperwork to smuggle export-controlled gear from US to third countries and then China US authorities have arrested a man accused of smuggling more than $300m worth of computer servers to China, the Department of Justice announced. Greg Lui, 38, of California, also known as “Yiu Kong Lui”, allegedly used false paperwork and shipments through third countries to smuggle the export-controlled computer servers to China, the justice department said in a statement on Thurs

Apple says it will add new controls around macOS’s Full Disk Access permission, warning that increasingly capable AI agents make broad access to users’ files, messages, mail, and browsing history riskier.

Disclosure: I drafted this article with AI assistance, adapting the script and research from my own video. The analysis, sources and… Continue reading on Towards AI »

New helpful little guy just dropped. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge It's a tale as old as last week: OpenAI's new agent platform, called Dots, is full of cute little guys who can do your bidding. But unlike the ultra-approachable Meta Muse, Dots feel very much like using workplace software that happens to be able to order you a burrito - emphasis on work. OpenAI announced Dots earlier this week. Like Muse, Dots have blobby, anthropomorphic avatars and customizable names. In the future,

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money […]

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money […]

In a throwback to MySpace-style internet drama, Shivon Zilis announced that she and the father of her four children, Elon Musk, had broken up on X. To do so, she quote-tweeted a post from "Big Tech Alert," an account that, among other things, monitors what accounts are following and unfollowing each other. That post noted Musk was no longer following her on X. It was also sponsored by Kalshi, because everything in this relationship is totally fucking cursed, dude. In her statement, Zilis wrote,

Blackstone's Jas Khaira will take the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on building next-gen AI. Register for your pass and get 50% off a second.

We modeled seven managed services workloads to build sizing ranges that enterprises can actually budget against and found a cost driver… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Rivian had high hopes for its more affordable R2 vehicle - and so far, those hopes appear to be paying off. The company released its third-quarter production and delivery numbers today, reporting 19,751 vehicles produced and 19,248 delivered. That represents an 85 percent year-over-year increase in production and a 45 percent jump in deliveries. (For a direct-to-consumer automaker like Rivian, deliveries serve as a proxy for sales.) The company also reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance, expec

With all the talk about how AI might one day kill us all, it's easy to forget that AI has already harmed some people psychologically. Circuit Breaker Labs has created "crash-test dummies" to solve that.

Beehiiv, a creator platform that has risen in popularity as an alternative to Substack, is increasing its prices - and many users aren't happy. In a post explaining the increase, Beehiiv cofounder and CEO Tyler Denk says it will allow the company to "continue investing in our core platform experience." As part of the change, Beehiiv is changing the name of its midrange Scale plan to Lite, which has gone up by at least $10 per month depending on subscriber count. For someone with up to 10,000 sub

Nacon announced what the company is claiming is the world's first officially licensed PlayStation 5 controller with a built-in screen for adjusting settings like joystick sensitivity or remapping buttons right on the gamepad. The Revolution 5 Unlimited's screen can also be used to mix audio from multiple sources so while using a pair of headphones connected to the gamepad with a cable you can listen to music from your phone and sounds from the game you're playing at the same time. The Revolution

Learn how startups can choose GPT-6 models, tune reasoning effort, improve prompts and skills, coordinate tools, and prepare workflows for production.

OpenAI's answer to Muse arrived this week, and it looks a whole lot like Muse dressed up in a suit and tie. Dots is a business-first product - for now, at least - costing a minimum of $100 per month. And sure, you can make a cute little Dot character, just like you can make a cute little Muse character. But OpenAI's early marketing is all about how you can use it to do Business Things: launch websites, reschedule calls, build slide decks for board meetings. Muse, on the other hand, keeps remindi

"There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others," the pope wrote. "Algorithms lack the spark of humanity."

Australians are conversing less every year, with a recent study showing we lost an average of 338 spoken words each day between 2005 and 2019 We talk a lot about losing our ability to write as a result of AI. I’m convinced our greatest loss might be our ability to listen. Listening to different views and entering into different worlds is integral to our humanity. But Australians are conversing less every year. While rapidly evolving AI tools and chatbots promise faster responses and so-called “e

Home affairs department orders all federal government agencies to conduct review of ‘legacy technology’ amid fallout from AI agent hacks Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Australian government faces significant “tech debt” that could bring a big bill for taxpayers after the OpenAI Medicare breach, as government agencies will need to fortify their defences against future attacks by AI agents. This week, the home affairs department ordered all federal government ag

‘AI factories’ developer on track to launch the second-biggest IPO in Australian history, but investors warn its forecasts are ‘a little bit of a fairytale’ Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast From her balcony in Launceston, Kayla Thompson can see the buzz of construction at what will soon be one of Australia’s first AI factories. Her teenage stepchildren get an even clearer view from their classroom window. Like many of her neighbours, Thompson didn’t realise Firmus Te

Clay Co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin joins the AI Stage to discuss the rise of GTM engineer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register for your ticket and get a second pass at 50% off.

Today is the last day to book your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. From October 13–15, 10,000+ founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders will arrive at San Francisco’s Moscone West looking for companies, products, ideas, and people worth knowing. The question is: Will they find your startup?

Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images of AI agents running amok, such as hacking systems used to run our critical infrastructure, banks or even militaries. Yet one serious danger is mentioned less frequently – the threat posed by AI–empowered lethal weapons. Fully autonomous versions of these weapons are colloquially known as

If a chatbot prompt like ‘find Australian medicine statistics’ results in a website breach, the responsibility does not lie with a piece of code The recent panic about a breach of Medicare computer security by an “AI agent” contrasts sharply with other recent cases such as the Telstra and Optus outages that left many Australians unable to reach Triple Zero. In those cases, no one blamed the computers involved. The mistakes were clearly sheeted home to the corporations that operated them. This wa

Chatham Financial uses Codex and GPT-5.6 to build technology and redesign workflows, cutting trade validation from 30 minutes to under 4.

Apple's rumored push into smart home tech could include a smart home security camera that only gives users text event descriptions instead of video footage. Mark Gurman said in the first episode of the Power On podcast that the camera will be part of "a new Apple smart home ecosystem," alongside Apple's rumored smart home hub: They're also building home security products, both first-party and third-party home security products. And the biggest thing is a program called J450. And this is an offs

President Trump reportedly asked for Grok's opinion before invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.

Compare dots, Muse, Team Bots, and Claude Managed Agents to see where memory lives, who can edit it, and how forgetting works. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Guided Vision is launching in Gemini Live on compatible Android devices today to use AI to give real-time audio descriptions of anything you point your phone's camera at. By sharing your camera in Gemini Live, you can have Google's AI help with things like reading small text, describing your surroundings, finding or identifying objects around you, and describing details on specific objects. Like the VoiceOver Live Recognition feature Apple has added to the iPhone and Vision Pro, it's designed f

OpenAI is rolling out new shopping features for ChatGPT that let users virtually try on clothing and accessories using their own photos and save products they like to a Favorites library.

Android Central, a blog focused on the Android ecosystem, laid off its staff yesterday, but owner Future confirms to The Verge that the site will continue publishing. Yesterday, four of the six staffers on Android Central's staff page posted publicly about the layoffs, including Shruti Shekar, Derrek Lee, Harish Jonnalagadda, and Nicholas Sutrich, and former senior editor Namerah Saud Fatmi updated her LinkedIn to indicate that her tenure at Android Central had ended. Both Lee, the site's managi

Google launched its first advanced chip into orbit to pave the way for space data centers.

State attorney general issues subpoena to OpenAI as ​part of broader inquiry into potential security vulnerabilities California’s attorney general has issued an investigative subpoena to OpenAI, starting an investigation into the startup ⁠as ​part of a broader inquiry into potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities and incidents related ⁠to its AI models, his office said on Thursday. Last month, Rob Bonta announced that ⁠the Department of Justice was conducting a formal ​investigation into the “Hug