Author: Sabnam Hossain

ElevenLabs, a voice AI business, has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is now allowing authors to publish AI-generated audiobooks on its Reader app. Days after the business teamed up with Spotify to create AI-narrated audiobooks, the news was made. The website itself seeks to rival Audible, which ElevenLabs claims provides authors with lower royalties. According to its business plan, ElevenLabs will pay authors when users interact with their audiobooks, which will be available through its Reader app. At the moment, it gives authors about $1.10 for every 11 minutes or longer that a listener spends with an audiobook. According to…

Anthropic claimed to have tested its most recent model, the Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on the Game Boy classic Pokémon Red in a blog post. The model can play Pokémon continually because the manufacturer gave it basic memory, screen pixel input, and function calls to press buttons and move across the screen. Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s capacity for “extended thinking” is one of its distinctive qualities. Like DeepSeek’s R1 and OpenAI’s o3-mini, Claude 3.7 Sonnet may “reason” through difficult problems by using more computer power, but at the expense of more time. That came in handy in Pokémon Red. Claude 3.7 Sonnet…

In his court testimony on Monday, Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, the executive responsible for overseeing the program Store, stated that he had initially expressed concerns regarding the 27% commission that the iPhone manufacturer intended to charge program developers for transactions made outside of the App Store. He said the price would lead to an “antagonistic relationship” between Apple and developers, in addition to being a possible compliance issue. In order to determine whether or not they owed Apple money for the purchases that occurred outside of the App Store, it appeared that Apple needed audit rights. Due to the Epic…

Elon Musk polled his followers on X, the platform he purchased for $44 billion, over the weekend to find out if federal workers should be obliged to give his team an email listing the five tasks they completed this week. Musk followed through after more than 70% of the votes were in favor. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email to federal employees this past weekend asking them to submit their weekly list of accomplishments by Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET. Musk shared on X “Consistent with [President Donald Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly…

The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic, the company that creates the AI chatbot Claude, is wrapping up a $3.5 billion fundraising round that values the business at $61.5 billion. According to the WSJ, investors have now agreed to a larger tranche, despite Anthropic’s stated goal of raising $2 billion. The negotiations are underway for participation in the upcoming round by Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX. If it ends up reaching $3.5 billion, Anthropic will have raised almost $18 billion in all. According to the WSJ, Anthropic recently achieved almost $1.2…

Chegg alleges that Google engaged in unfair competition, including reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment, in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  According to Chegg, Google unfairly uses its dominant power in search to profit from third-party intellectual property by requiring businesses to submit their content in order to be featured in Google Search. Chegg is requesting an injunction against Google for its alleged “unlawful and unfair” actions in addition to compensatory damages and other types of remedies. Chegg is merely the most recent publisher to criticize Google’s attempts to…

As seen by Wang’s attendance on Sunday during the first night of Web Summit Qatar, the statement generated a range of responses. Felix Salmon of Axios, Wang’s interviewer, asked the audience how many people shared that viewpoint, and he only counted two hands. Salmon reported that an “overwhelming” number of hands went up when he asked the group how many people disagreed. So Salmon asked Wang and explained. “AI is going to fundamentally change the nature of national security,”. He stated that he grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico “the birthplace of the atomic bomb”. Both of his parents…

This week, Axios reported that layoffs aimed at probationary employees—who are usually in their first year or two on the job—would “gut” the US AI Safety Institute (AISI) and Chips for America, both of which are a component of NIST. Additionally, according to Bloomberg, some of those workers had previously received verbal warnings that they would soon be let off. The future of AISI appeared dubious even prior to the most recent layoff reports. As part of then-President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI safety, the institute was established last year to research hazards and create standards related to AI…

In a live video last Monday, billionaire Elon Musk unveiled Grok 3, the newest flagship model from his AI startup xAI, calling it a “maximally truth-seeking AI.” However, it seems that Grok 3 was momentarily suppressing negative information about Musk and President Donald Trump. People wondered, “Who is the biggest misinformation spreader?” on social media over the weekend. Grok 3 stated in its “chain of thought” that it was specifically told not to bring up Elon Musk or Donald Trump when the “Think” setting was active. The “reasoning” method the model employs to arrive at a response to a query…

A firm called Sonar Mental Health has created a “wellbeing companion” named Sonny to assist school systems that are having difficulty supporting their students’ mental health. Sonny is a chatbot that uses both AI and human employees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The AI provides a response when students text Sonny with their queries, but humans are ultimately in charge of the message. More than 4,500 middle and high school students in nine districts can now access Sonar, which signed its first school relationship in January 2024. According to the company, a group of six individuals with backgrounds in…