Meta | TechCrunch

Sales tax automation startup Kintsugi doubled its valuation this year

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:17:35 +0000

A 2018 Supreme Court ruling eliminated the requirement that an e-commerce retailer needed a physical location in a state in order for said state to be able to collect sales tax on purchases made by residents. While the decision was a boon for states, it created a headache for e-commerce sellers. Kintsugi is looking to […]

Meta slapped with a €798M fine in Europe over anticompetitive Marketplace practices

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:07:07 +0000

Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been hit with yet another huge regulatory fine in Europe, this time over abusive practices related to Facebook Marketplace. The European Commission announced that it would fine Meta €797.72 million — nearly $840 million — for breaching EU antitrust rules connected to how it ties its […]

Meta taps US, UK universities to test VR in education, creates digital twin ‘metaversities’ in Europe

Paul Sawers — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 14:33:43 +0000

As part of an ongoing effort to embed virtual reality (VR) in education, Meta has launched a new partnership with a slew of universities in the U.S. and U.K., designed to provide feedback on a new product that Meta hopes will finally make VR just a little more mainstream. The new Meta for Education beta […]

FBI says hackers are sending fraudulent police data requests to tech giants to steal people’s private information

Zack Whittaker — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:50:27 +0000

The warning is a rare admission from the FBI about the threat from fake emergency data requests submitted by hackers with access to police email accounts.

‘For You’ feeds fail on election night, offering outdated information, angering users

Sarah Perez — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:49:06 +0000

“For You” algorithms that promote the most interesting content across a social network, personalized to the individual user, offered a disjointed, outdated, and nearly unusable experience on election night in the U.S. as they highlighted hours-old posts that no longer reflected the current state of the race. Frustrations were particularly high on Threads, Meta’s X […]

Anticipating post-election drama, Meta extends political ad ban past Election Day

Dominic-Madori Davis — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:40:47 +0000

Meta announced Tuesday that it is extending its restriction on political ads until later in the week, though it did not specify which day the ban would be lifted. When asked for more information, a Meta spokesperson pointed TechCrunch to the announcement about the company working to “protect the integrity of elections on Facebook and […]

Regulators deliver successive blows to Amazon and Meta’s nuclear power ambitions

Tim De Chant — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:00:21 +0000

A series of recent rulings from regulators dashed the Big Tech companies' hopes of finding a quick fix for their electricity needs.

Meta says it’s making its Llama models available for US national security applications

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 17:19:59 +0000

To combat the perception that its “open” AI is aiding foreign adversaries, Meta today said that it’s making its Llama series of AI models available to U.S. government agencies and contractors in national security. “We are pleased to confirm that we’re making Llama available to U.S. government agencies, including those that are working on defense […]

Threads now has 275M monthly active users

Ivan Mehta — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 07:34:38 +0000

Meta's social network, Threads, now has 275 million monthly active users, the company said on Sunday.

Chinese military researchers reportedly used Meta AI to develop defense chatbot

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:44:02 +0000

Chinese research scientists linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of China’s ruling party, reportedly used “open” AI from Meta to develop a tool for defense applications. According to Reuters, Chinese researchers, including two affiliated with a PLA R&D group, used Meta’s Llama 2 AI model to create a military-focused chatbot. The […]

Instagram upgrades DMs with focus on creators

Sarah Perez — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:23:10 +0000

Instagram on Friday announced an update to DMs, its direct messages inbox, which will improve the experience for those who receive a lot of inbound messages, like creators and influencers. Now, the app is introducing tools that will allow users to sort and filter their “message requests” — meaning those messages that don’t arrive in […]

Meta is making a robot hand that can ‘feel’ touch

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 17:31:53 +0000

Meta says it’s partnering with sensor firm GelSight and Wonik Robotics, a South Korean robotics company, to commercialize tactile sensors for AI. The new devices aren’t meant for consumers. Rather, they’re intended for scientists. Meta says it envisions them being used to advance research into AI that can “learn about the world in richer detail” […]

Threads is testing the ‘trending now’ view in Japan

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 09:15:14 +0000

After rolling out the trending topics feature in the U.S. earlier this year, Threads is now testing out the feature in Japan. “Lots of folks outside the US have been asking for the “Trending Now” feature, and we’re working on bringing it to more countries. This week, we’ll begin testing the feature in Japan with […]

Meta releases an ‘open’ version of Google’s podcast generator

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 17:20:47 +0000

Meta has released an “open” implementation of the viral generate-a-podcast feature in Google’s NotebookLM. Called NotebookLlama, the project uses Meta’s own Llama models for much of the processing, unsurprisingly. Like NotebookLM, it can generate back-and-forth, podcast-style digests of text files uploaded to it. NotebookLlama first creates a transcript from a file — for example, a […]

This Week in AI: The AI agents cometh

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:15:00 +0000

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. If you want this in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The agents are coming — the AI agents, that is. This week, Anthropic released its newest AI model, an upgraded version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, that can interact with the web and desktop apps by clicking […]

WhatsApp introduces contact storing directly within the app, teases usernames

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

WhatsApp on Tuesday announced a new feature that will allow users to save contacts within the app. That means that even if you lose your phone or link a new device to your primary number, you will see all your contacts stored within WhatsApp’s cloud storage. Until now, WhatsApp relied on your phone’s contact book […]

What we know about the layoffs at Meta

Cody Corrall — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 20:15:00 +0000

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re diving into the recent layoffs at Meta; the fallout from the battle between WordPress and WP Engine; and whether Cybertrucks are simply too big to exist in Europe. Let’s get into it. Multiple teams at Meta were hit by layoffs this week. The company confirmed the […]

Meta lays off employees across multiple teams

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 04:37:47 +0000

Multiple teams at Meta were hit by layoffs on Wednesday, the company confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch, noting these changes were made to reallocate resources within the company. “Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy,” said a Meta spokesperson […]

Meta’s AI chief says world models are key to ‘human-level AI’ — but it might be 10 years out

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 01:54:46 +0000

Are today’s AI models truly remembering, thinking, planning, and reasoning, just like a human brain would? Some AI labs would have you believe they are, but according to Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, the answer is no. He thinks we could get there in a decade or so, however, by pursuing a new method […]

Instagram’s latest feature is a digital business card for your profile

Aisha Malik — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Instagram is rolling out a new “profile card” feature that is essentially a digital business card for your profile. The official launch comes a few months after the Meta-owned social network was spotted testing the feature with select creators. The new two-sided profile cards are designed to make it easier for users to share their […]