Author: admin

Meta is launching a new program to incentivize startups to adopt its Llama AI models. The program, Llama for Startups, provides companies “direct support” from Meta’s Llama team, as well as funding in certain cases. Any U.S.-based firm that is incorporated, has raised less than $10 million in funding, has at least one developer on staff, and is building generative AI applications is eligible to apply by the May 30 deadline. “Members may receive up to $6,000 per month for up to six months to help them offset the costs of building and enhancing their generative AI solutions,” Meta wrote…

NEW YORK (AP) — The recommended reading list contained some works of fiction. It also contained some works that were, in fact, actually fictional.The content distributor King Features says it has fired a writer who used artificial intelligence to produce a story on summer reading suggestions that contained books that didn’t exist.The list appeared in “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer,” a special section distributed in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.More than half of the books listed were fake, according to the piece’s author, Marco Buscaglia, who admitted to using AI for help…

In one case, a person suffered permanent brain damage because of a delayed transfer, The Guardian newspaper reported.UnitedHealth has allegedly secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers — the latest accusations in a series of woes facing the health insurance giant. The alleged action, first reported by The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, was part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that have saved the company millions, but at times, risked residents’ health, the publication showed, citing an investigation. The story, which cites thousands of documents and firsthand accounts of more than 20 former employees of the healthcare company and…

Target has slashed its annual forecasts amid a pullback in discretionary spending due to tariff-driven uncertainty and a backlash against shifts in its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy. The United States big box retailer, which reported its first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, relies on China for 30 percent of its store label goods. While it is on track to reduce its dependency by another 5 percent by the end of the year, tariff-driven uncertainty has caused a slump. In its forecast, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based retailer expects a low single-digit decline in annual sales. Wall Street analysts expected a marginal increase…

Amazon is testing short-form AI-powered audio product summaries on select product pages, the company announced on Wednesday. The audio summaries are voiced by what Amazon calls “AI-powered shopping experts” that discuss key product features, customer reviews, and information from across the web. The new AI product summaries can be accessed by tapping the “Hear the highlights” button in the Amazon Shopping app. Amazon will test the feature on products that typically require consideration before purchase, the company says. The idea behind the feature is to help Amazon customers save time while shopping and get important information through a conversational, discussion-style…

Google on Wednesday detailed its plans to bring ads to AI Mode, the company’s AI-powered experience in Google Search. Ads may appear “where relevant” below and “integrated into” AI Mode responses as part of a test, Google says. AI Mode lets Google Search users ask a question and get an AI-generated response, with the ability to go deeper through follow-up questions and links to websites. “In some cases, a website builder might be a good next step [in an AI Mode query], so we may show a helpful ad that can help [users] get started,” explains Google in a blog…

Donald Trump’s 40 Wall Street looks nice from the ground. Its financial picture is far less impressive.Roy Rochlin/Getty Images The most troublesome loan in Donald Trump’s empire, a $115 million mortgage against a Wall Street skyscraper, comes due in exactly 46 days. How the president covers that bill will reveal a lot about his current financial standing—and how politics is shaping it. The property, 40 Wall Street, seems to be deeply underwater. Trump controls the building but not the land on which it sits, long held by a German shipping family. The president currently pays $2.5 million a year in…

AI startup Mistral on Wednesday announced a new AI model focused on coding: Devstral. Devstral, which Mistral says was developed in partnership with AI company All Hands AI, is openly available under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially without restriction. Mistral claims that Devstral outperforms other open models like Google’s Gemma 3 27B and Chinese AI lab DeepSeek’s V3 on SWE-Bench Verified, a benchmark measuring coding skills. “Devstral excels at using tools to explore codebases, editing multiple files and power[ing] software engineering agents,” writes Mistral in a blog post provided to TechCrunch. “[I]t runs over code…

We’re ecstatic to announce that Kisson Lin, founder and CEO of Tanka, will be joining us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI for a provocative — and instructive — interview titled “Your Next Co-Founder Will Be AI.” She’s among the many excellent speakers joining the AI conference on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, and there’s still plenty of time to register to get your seat at the table to learn from their expertise — with up to $600 in savings. If you don’t already know Lin, her company powers an AI messenger with long-term memory that self-learns and evolves with…

For the last two decades, Google has brought people a list of algorithmically selected links from the web for any given search query. At I/O 2025, Google made clear that the concept of Search is firmly in its rearview mirror. On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and his executives presented new ways to bring users the web, this time intermediated through a series of AI agents. “We couldn’t be more excited about this chapter of Google search where you can truly ask anything […] your simplest and hardest questions, your deepest research, your personalized shopping needs,” said Google’s VP of…