With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by …...Read More

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday launched an investigation into Character.AI and 14 other technology platforms over child privacy and safety concerns. The investigation will assess whether Character.AI — and other platforms that are popular with young people, including Reddit, Instagram and Discord — conform to Texas’ child privacy …...Read More

Microsoft has announced the newest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Called Phi-4, the model is improved in several areas over its predecessors, Microsoft claims — in particular math problem solving. That’s partly the result of improved training data quality. Phi-4 is available in very limited access …...Read More

Throw a stone and you’ll likely hit a deepfake. The commoditization of generative AI has led to an absolute explosion of fake content online: According to ID verification platform Sumsub, there’s been a 4x increase in deepfakes worldwide from 2023 to 2024. In 2024, deepfakes accounted for 7% of all …...Read More

Google’s trying to make waves with Gemini, its flagship suite of generative AI models, apps, and services. But what’s Gemini? How can you use it? And how does it stack up to other generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, and Microsoft’s Copilot? To make it easier to …...Read More

Running a startup can be expensive, requiring a multitude of different subscriptions. Cap table management software, which helps founders organize their funding, can cost thousands of dollars a year. San Francisco-based Carta is the market leader in this industry. But some startup founders say Carta is making it too hard …...Read More

Yahoo laid off around 25% of its cybersecurity team — known as The Paranoids — over the last year, TechCrunch has learned. Overall, the company has laid off or lost through attrition 40 to 50 people from a total of 200 employees in the cybersecurity team since the start of …...Read More

ServiceTitan, which offers financial and customer management software for the trades, went public in a big way on Thursday, much to the delight of retail investors. The stock quickly popped from its opening IPO sales price of $71 to $105 a share in modest trading volume. It is currently maintaining …...Read More

Meta’s Threads is rolling out its own take on Bluesky’s “Starter Packs,” which are curated lists of suggested accounts that help new users find people to follow. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday that the social network is testing a way for users to find and easily follow collections …...Read More

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! GM’s decision to no longer fund its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise was a surprise to many — and got me thinking about …...Read More