Kyle Wiggers, Author at TechCrunch

Zscaler buys Avalor to bring more AI into its security tools

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:30:43 +0000

Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity. In a press release announcing the news, Zscaler founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry said that the deal would expand Zscaler’s platform with capabilities including streamlined reporting of […]

OpenAI’s deals with publishers could spell trouble for rivals

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:12:12 +0000

OpenAI’s legal battle with The New York Times over data to train its AI models might still be brewing. But OpenAI’s forging ahead on deals with other publishers, including some of France’s and Spain’s largest news publishers. OpenAI on Wednesday announced that it signed contracts with Le Monde and Prisa Media to bring French and […]

What is Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot and how does it work?

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:28:44 +0000

You might’ve heard of Grok, X’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s a chatbot and, in that sense, behaves as you’d expect — answering questions about current events, pop culture and so on. But unlike other chatbots, Grok has “a bit of wit,” as X owner Elon Musk puts it, and “a rebellious streak.” Long story […]

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:00:39 +0000

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies for more wide-ranging needs. And that growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming […]

Luminary Cloud’s simulator taps GPUs to help speed up product design

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:00:14 +0000

Simulations are an essential step in physical product engineering. They enable engineers to create prototypes and understand how they might perform in the real world, accounting for factors like aerodynamic drag, air and water flows, and pressure and temperature distributions. But today’s engineering simulators tend to be quite slow and difficult to scale up, according […]

OpenMeter makes it easier for companies to track usage-based billing

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 18:35:10 +0000

In enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), usage-based pricing — a pricing model in which customers are charged only when they use a product or service — is gaining ground. According to a report from VC firm OpenView, approximately 60% of SaaS businesses offer some form of usage-based pricing today. Recently, Apigee, Google Cloud’s API management platform, made […]

Axion Ray’s AI attempts to detect product flaws to prevent recalls

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 13:00:55 +0000

Recalls are costly for — and damaging to — any company, no matter the size or market. For instance, McKinsey estimates that, for businesses manufacturing medical devices, recalls have been as high as $600 million in recent decades. The reputational impact tends to be lasting; customers aren’t quick to forgive. A Harris Interactive poll found […]

Pienso builds no-code tools for training AI models

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 12:00:38 +0000

AI might be the “it thing” of the moment. But that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier to deploy. According to a 2023 S&P Global survey, about half of companies with at least one AI project in production are still at the pilot or proof-of-concept stages. The reasons for the slow ramp-ups vary, but the commonly […]

Should artists be paid for training data? OpenAI VP wouldn’t say

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 21:07:03 +0000

Should artists whose work was used to train generative AI like ChatGPT be compensated for their contributions? Peter Deng, VP of consumer product at OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT — was loath to give an answer when asked on SXSW’s main stage this afternoon. “That’s a great question,” he said when SignalFire venture partner […]

The women in AI making a difference

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 17:45:04 +0000

As a part of a multi-part series, TechCrunch is highlighting women innovators — from academics to policymakers —in the field of AI.

Women in AI: Heidy Khlaaf, safety engineering director at Trail of Bits

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:30:48 +0000

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more […]

Women in AI: Claire Leibowicz, AI and media integrity expert at PAI

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:30:06 +0000

Apple terminates Epic’s account, Meta platforms get knocked offline and former Twitter execs sue Elon Musk

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:15:22 +0000

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering all of — or at least the bulk of! — noteworthy happenings around the tech-o-sphere. This week, Roku played hardball with its customers, requiring them to consent to new dispute resolution terms. This means users can’t use their Roku devices until agreeing to the […]

Women in AI: Sandra Wachter, professor of data ethics at Oxford

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 13:30:36 +0000

OpenAI announces new board members, reinstates CEO Sam Altman

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 22:58:12 +0000

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has a seat at the table — or board, rather — once again. OpenAI today announced that Altman will be rejoining the company’s board of directors several months after losing his seat and being pushed out as OpenAI’s CEO. Joining him are three new members: former CEO of the […]

Women in AI: Sarah Kreps, professor of government at Cornell

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:57:22 +0000

Why most AI benchmarks tell us so little

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 21:10:12 +0000

On Tuesday, startup Anthropic released a family of generative AI models that it claims achieve best-in-class performance. Just a few days later, rival Inflection AI unveiled a model that it asserts comes close to matching some of the most capable models out there, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, in quality. Anthropic and Inflection are by no means […]

We tested Anthropic’s new chatbot — and came away a bit disappointed

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:25:07 +0000

This week, Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Google, Amazon and a who’s who of VCs and angel investors, released a family of models — Claude 3 — that it claims bests OpenAI’s GPT-4 on a range of benchmarks. There’s no reason to doubt Anthropic’s claims. But we at TechCrunch would argue that the results […]

Reach Security taps a company’s existing tools to fight cyber threats

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:00:34 +0000

Thanks to an uncertain economy, cybersecurity budgets are in a tight spot. According to a 2023 survey from IANS and recruiting firm Artico Search, more than a third of chief information security officers (CISOs) kept their security spending the same — or slightly reduced — in 2023. A separate report from PwC suggests that one […]

Political deepfakes are spreading like wildfire thanks to GenAI

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:00:56 +0000

This year, billions of people will vote in elections around the world. We will see — and have seen — high-stakes races in more than 50 countries, from Russia and Taiwan to India and El Salvador. Demagogic candidates — and looming geopolitical threats — would test even the most robust democracies in any normal year. […]