Thursday, March 27, 2025

China's censorship machine

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we look at how China could be tapping AI in its censorship activities; we dig into a new AI-driven personal shopping feature that Amazon is offering; and we dive into the ties between DOGE and Silicon Valley. Lock in.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Anton Petrus / Getty Images

👀 AI is watching: A leaked database reveals that China has developed an AI system that helps supercharge its censorship machine. The country is building a large language model that is being trained to flag any piece of content considered sensitive by the Chinese government.

🤳 Losing support: Americans' support for a TikTok ban is declining, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center, which found that 34% of American adults surveyed were in favor of a ban, compared to 50% in 2023.

🛠️ All fixed up: Google said it has fixed a vulnerability in its Chrome browser for Windows. The vulnerability, known as CVE-2025-2783, was discovered earlier this month after it had already been actively exploited by hackers.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Amazon

🛒 Shopping AI: Amazon is introducing a new AI-powered feature called Interests, which allows users to write a prompt of what they are looking for and Amazon will tap LLMs to translate it into search-friendly terms. They could just fix internal search instead, but what do we know?

🗣️ AI accents: Audio startup Krisp is rolling out a new feature in beta that allows Indian users to change their accents on calls to sound more American. This sounds a bit dystopian but the company claims they have data that shows this feature is already helping sales folks convert more deals.

🌡️ Money for Mercury: Digital banking startup Mercury raised $300 million in a round that included both primary and secondary funding. The company is now valued at $3.5 billion, a significant bump since its $1.62 billion round in 2021.

🎙️ VC is dead: Tusk Venture Partners recently decided to forgo raising a fourth venture fund and instead plans to pivot into an equity-for-services firm. Tusk co-founder and managing partner Bradley Tusk went on Equity to talk about the pivot and why he thinks VC has been dead for four years.

🤨 Well, well, well: Elon Musk's SpaceX allegedly built a backdoor solution to allow Chinese investors to buy shares in the company. This naturally raises national security concerns, as SpaceX is a government contractor, and Musk is spending increasing amounts of time at the White House.

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Around the web

😎 Upgraded access: New reporting from Wired found that the workers at DOGE had more access inside the U.S. Treasury than was initially disclosed. Why are they snooping around there? To halt USAID payments, of course.

🪜 RedNote's next steps: Remember RedNote? The Chinese social media site that Americans flocked to when it looked like TikTok would be banned in the U.S. is now looking to expand its reach after that surge showed there was interest in the app outside of mainland China.

Before you go

Image Credits: Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch

🔎 Transparency time: DOGE has a lot of ties to founders and investors in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch digs into who those folks are and what role they play in "making the government more efficient."