It’s still too easy to make political deepfakes

Cloning voices of political figures has never been more accessible

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Friday, May 31, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch AM and a Happy Friday to you all! Today, we've got a concerning study about political deepfakes, SpaceX trying to recycle its ships, Temu getting the whip in the EU, Stripe going invite-only in India, and more. — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: dane_mark/DigitalVision 1. Launch your deepfakes in time for the elections: It is still way too easy to clone voices of political figures — a study has found that AI companies like Invideo AI, Veed, ElevenLabs, Speechify, Descript and PlayHT don't stop you from recreating political personalities' voices and getting them to say whatever. It's a terrifying reality that we just have to live with as we near a contentious election in the United States. Read More 2. Reduce, reuse, re-Starship: Elon Musk's SpaceX is getting ready to send its Starship rocket back into space so it can suss out whether its reusable heat shield can handle going into the atmosphere a second time. If successful, it could lead the company a step closer to the holy grail of reusable space launch vehicles. Read More 3. EU cracks down on Temu: Chinese e-commerce marketplace Temu, a simultaneous source of both temptation and ick, has come under greater scrutiny in the EU. The European Commission has designated Temu as a 'very large online platform' (VLOP), meaning it'll have to comply with much stricter rules. Read More A MESSAGE FROM TWILIO SEGMENT What can good data do for you? - Twilio Segment CDP Segment helps 25,000+ companies turn customer data into tailored experiences. With customer profiles that update real-time, and best in class privacy features - Segment's Customer Data Platform allows you to make good data available to every team. Good Data - Segment Morning Must Reads Image Credits: Cylib The EV battery recycling space is ripe for disruption, and Cylib wants to carve out a niche for itself. The German startup has raised €55 million from backers like World Fund and Porsche Ventures to bring its battery recycling capabilities to industrial scale in Europe. Read More Stripe reins in ops in India: Fintech giant Stripe said Indian businesses will no longer be able to sign up for new accounts through its website, and will instead need to request an invite. The company says this is due to an evolving regulatory landscape in the country, as India's central bank has changed up the rules for financial service providers quite a bit in the past couple years. Read More Spain tells Meta to stay out of its elections: Spain has banned Meta from launching features that would have collected data on voters in Spain ahead of next month's elections. The country's data protection authority, the AEPD, means business: It's using emergency powers from GDPR to protect its own territory. Will the U.S. do something similar to protect its own elections? LOL, no. Read More Meet your Disrupt speakers: Are you coming to TechCrunch Disrupt this October in San Francisco? You totally should, because the lineup is pretty sick, if we may say so ourselves. We're bringing together voices from across the industry to talk about cool topics like connecting startups with banks, real-world genAI applications, how to stand out in the age of AI, and so much more. Read More Around the Web Is Siri finally going to be useful?: Apple's next operating system for iPhones, iOS 18, will apparently bring an overhauled version of Siri that's powered by AI, reports Bloomberg. Honestly, it's about time, because Siri is as useful as a brick most of the time. I'm excited to see how integrations with ChatGPT and potentially, Gemini, will turn out. Read More Google says its AI Snippets aren't hallucinating: Hilarious examples of Google's AI Snippets feature getting things absolutely wrong are the rage these days, but Google contends its model isn't hallucinating when it tells you to use glue to get cheese to stick to pizza. Rather, it's just picking the top web results and misinterpreting nuance, reports 9to5Google. Read More Threads gets more features: Threads is rolling out a redesigned desktop site that gives you TweetDeck-like features, allowing you to customize your homepage, reports The Verge. That'll definitely make it easier for users to wean themselves off X. Read More Before You Go Image Credits: Westend61 / Getty Images Your Startup Ad Here: Boston-based OneScreen is bringing billboards into the current era in a bid to help more startups get noticed. The company's software helps startups find the right placement for their physical ads, like billboards and subway ads, based on demographic, historical and geographic data. Read More Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Question about our events? events@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch.com? advertise@techcrunch.com Interested in sponsoring live events? sponsors@techcrunch.com Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy

Amazon gets green light for more drone deliveries

Plus: The "Sam Altman, was he, wasn't he fired from YC" rumor is put to rest

View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Thursday, May 30, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch PM! This afternoon, we deliver some drone news from Amazon and get to the bottom of Sam Altman's Y Combinator career. We also look at the continued backlash Spotify is getting over Car Thing, as well as lots of venture funding rounds and some truths about misinformation. Enjoy! Tomorrow is your last day to save up to $800 on Disrupt passes. Book your early-bird pass today!   TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Amazon It's a bird, it's a plane, it's your package!: Amazon received approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly its delivery drones longer distances, meaning it can now expand its Prime Air service, which uses delivery drones to fly individual packages to more customers. Read more Rumor has it …: That Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator. Well, YC co-founder Paul Graham has had enough and is finally clearing the air. Read more Turn your searches into shareable pages: Perplexity AI is getting in on the action started by companies like Arc and is offering Perplexity Pages that enable users to make reports, articles or guides in a visually appealing format. Read more Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Spotify I want my Spotify Car Thing: Gen Zers are taking to TikTok to protest Spotify's decision to discontinue support for Car Thing, its in-car streaming device. Making matters worse for the streaming company is a new lawsuit claiming Spotify misled consumers by selling them a soon-to-be obsolete product and then not offering refunds. Read more It's all about the money: Former teen model Katrin Kaurov is putting her financial prowess to work. She teamed up with Aleksandra Medina to start Frich, an app where Gen Z talks and learns about money. Read more Hacked: Cybersecurity company Check Point says attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in its enterprise VPN products to break into the corporate networks of its customers. Read more Forward charges into payments infrastructure: After Brandon Lloyd sold his second company, Bypass, a payments and point-of-sale software company for sports and entertainment, to Fiserv in 2020, he dove more into the payments industry and realized something: Software companies were getting a raw deal from the payments provider industry. Read more When sharing is not caring: Two new studies show that when it comes to the spreading of misinformation, a small group of committed "supersharers," were responsible for the vast majority of the "fake news." Wait until you see who these people are. Read more Hacking a satellite: Space startup Basalt Technologies may have started in a shed behind a Los Angeles dentist's office, but soon it will try to "hack" a derelict satellite to test out a theory. Read more South Korea getting electric air taxis: The country could see the taxis by 2026 if a partnership between Archer Aviation and Kakao Mobility can take flight. Read more Money, money, money Image Credits: Microbio Valar Labs debuts AI-powered cancer care prediction tool and secures $22 million. Read more AI manufacturing startup funding is on a tear as Switzerland's EthonAI raises $16.5 million. Read more TechCrunch Minute Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC What Sam Altman's firing and rehiring reveals about OpenAI: It's the story that keeps on keeping on. But one thing that has remained pretty vague is why the board members felt they had to take such a drastic step in the first place. The only thing the board members said publicly was that Altman had not been "consistently candid in his communications with the board" and that they no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the company. Hit play and let's chat! Around the web Grubhub and Amazon forge deal: Your Amazon Prime subscription is even more delicious. It now comes with a free Grubhub subscription. CNBC reports it comes with a yearlong subscription and free delivery on orders over $12. Read more An edit button for texts: That's one of a handful of new Google features coming to Android devices, The Verge reports. Read more Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Question about our events? events@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch.com? advertise@techcrunch.com Interested in sponsoring live events? sponsors@techcrunch.com Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy