Technical

Microsoft may have long had OpenAI as its trusty partner (after its sizable investment ), but AWS today announced that Stability AI , one of the hottest new upstarts in the generative AI space and the company behind Stable Diffusion , is doubling down on its cloud, making it its “preferred cloud provider to build and scale its AI models for image, language, audio, video, and 3D content generation.” In addition, Stability AI will also work with AWS to make its open-source tools and model available to more students, researchers, startups and enterprises (which sounds quite a bit like what Microsoft and OpenAI said when they announced their partnership). Stability AI, which recently announced a $101 million funding round at a valuation of over $1 billion, was already using thousands of Nvidia GPUs in the AWS cloud to train its models. Now, the two companies are formalizing this relationship, with Stability AI planning to use AWS’ SageMaker ML platform, on top of its lower-level infras...

European Union regulators have fired another warning shot at Elon Musk over his erratic piloting of Twitter since his takeover last month — saying he has “huge work” ahead if the social media site is to avoid falling foul of major new governance rules for digital services which entered into force earlier this month . Reminder: Breaches of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) can attract penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover. Since getting his hands on the bird, Musk has fired the top team and made slashing Twitter’s headcount a priority — with reports of 50% cuts early this month, and further sackings since (including of a large number of contractors). He’s also reversed the prior leadership’s ban on former US president Donald Trump’s Twitter account and suggested he’ll implement a general amnesty for accounts previously suspended for violating its policies — all the while engaging in public boosterism with a small group of mostly far right Twitter accounts, which can b...

We’re getting ready to launch a price hike, but you still have time — 72 hours to be precise — to attend TC Sessions: Space 2022 on December 6 in Los Angeles for $199. Will you be in the room? Click, register and save: Space tech may come with a jaw-dropping price tag, but this space conference doesn’t. Buy your pass before December 2 at 11:59 p.m. PST — prices go up to $495 at midnight. Why pay more if you don’t have to? Let’s take a gander at just some programming we have lined up for the day. Check out the event agenda for specifics on all the speakers, topics and times. TechCrunch Space Pitch-off : You can improve your own pitch by watching how the VC judges react and by the questions they ask. It’s a window into what might make them decide to schedule a meeting with you. We’ll announce the competitors soon, and they’ll have to deliver their very best to impress our panel of expert judges: Jory Bell (Playground Global), Mark Boggett (Seraphim Space), Tess Hatch (Bessemer...

Cruise, GM’s self-driving technology subsidiary, has started the long and winding regulatory process to test its next-generation ‘Origin’ robotaxi on public roads in San Francisco. The company has applied for a permit with the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test its custom-built driverless vehicle on public roads. The news first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed to TechCrunch by Cruise. Cruise is already charging the public for rides in its autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs in certain parts of San Francisco after receiving all the required permits from the California DMW and the California Public Utilities Commission. But the Origin is a different automotive animal. The driverless Origin, the product of a multi-year collaboration with parent company GM and investor Honda that is designed for a ridesharing service, was unveiled in January 2020.  The shuttle-like vehicle — branded with Cruise’s trademark orange and black colors — has no steering wheel or pedal...

We’re just about one week away from achieving liftoff for TC Sessions: Space — a full day jam-packed with the latest space science, tech and trends. Join us on December 6 in Los Angeles to hear from and connect with the startups, researchers, investors and technologists forging the future of space. A word (or two or three) about our partner companies. They play a vital role at TechCrunch events. As subject-matter experts, they show up and present sessions with relevant content designed to help early-stage founders succeed. And yes, we’re about to showcase one of them. Beat the price hike: The moon is not made of cheese, but if you act quickly enough, you’ll save a chunk of cheddar. Buy a $199 pass before December 2 at 11:59 pm (PST) . The price goes up to $495 at midnight, December 2. Today, we’re excited to highlight Antaris, a cloud-based satellite software platform dedicated to simplifying satellite design and deployment while reducing cost and time-to-orbit. Be in the room...

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Oh hey! While we have you here, grab your calendar — we’ve got some things for you to add. For the stargazers among us, we’ll be in Los Angeles doing TC Sessions: Space on December 6. And on April 20, 2023, we’re heading to Boston for our TC Early Stage festival . Come to either. Come to both. Come to neither. We love you all just the same. But we’d prefer to see your faces in person if we can! Oh, and did you know it’s “Giving Tuesday”? That means it’s time to think about which of your favorite causes deserve some of your time or dollars, if you have some of either to spare. — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 And the winner is… : Okay, all you fans of taking photos of yourself “in the now,” no matter where you are. Ivan writes that BeReal won “app of the year” for 2022 in Apple’s annual App Store Awards. Order up! : Nigerian restaurant ...

Richard Garfield is a name familiar to many in the tabletop gaming world, most notably as one of the creators of Magic: The Gathering, the most prominent trading card game out there. But Garfield is dipping his toes into the world of digital and in particular blockchain-adjacent games, and TechCrunch took the opportunity to quiz the veteran gamemaker on the pros and cons of this and other new approaches to gaming. It should be noted at the outset that unlike the dubious profit-focused gameplay of your Axie Infinity and suchlike, Garfield’s new game, technically a “mode” of Blockchain Brawlers , is not focused on speculation but more of an experiment in distribution of a complete card-based game outside traditional publishing methods. It should probably also be noted that the game platform is full of the usual NFT and monetization chatter, but the core game itself, a 1v1 bluffing style match, is capable of being played with ordinary playing cards or for that matter numbered pieces o...

NASA’s plan to decommission and deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) by 2031 creates another collaborative, multinational opportunity to provide a persistent orbital presence. Yet, the path to achieving that goal remains unclear. Here’s the rub. No one knows exactly what that presence looks like, how it should be built, who would run it and how it would make money. These complex questions are why we’re thrilled that Blue Origin’s Shahir Gerges, director of business strategy for Orbital Reef, will join us for a fireside chat onstage at TC Sessions: Space on December 6. These aren’t issues for engineers and astronauts to solve, although they must be involved in the discussion. Instead, it will take far-sighted business leaders who see where the market is headed. They’ll also need to build a compelling case for how a phenomenally expensive expedition, like a long-term space station, can reasonably be expected to pay for itself over a 10-year period. What, who and how much wil...

AWS introduced Contact Center, its customer service oriented product some years ago, putting it smack dab in the middle of enterprise applications. It also places the company in the position of competing directly with the likes of Salesforce and other established enterprise SaaS vendors. When you are competing in that space, you need some powerful features, and today at AWS re:invent in Las Vegas, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky introduced three features to help bring more automation to managing Amazon Contact Centers running on AWS. For starters, the company is introducing new performance management capabilities under Contact Lens for Amazon Connect designed to help managers identify CSAs who are having issues. The solution uses a combination of performance review forms and machine learning-driven voice analytics to review job performance. In reality, it’s supposed to help identify agents who might need additional training or coaching. “These reduce the time the contact center managers s...

At this morning’s Re:Invent keynote in Las Vegas, Amazon unveiled AWS SimSpace Weaver, a computing service that allows developers to run city-sized simulations at scale in the cloud. The service is designed to free simulation developers from the constraints of their own hardware. Amazon’s proposed applications here are city managers simulating a natural disaster to test emergency response systems, as well the impact of sports games on traffic flow. These are  complex situations with a lot of moving parts, which shouldn’t require watching a real life instance to gain insight. Among the other advantages to running this in the cloud is the ability to have multiple external parties view and interact with the simulation remotely in real-time. Image Credits: Amazon “Simulating these events requires modeling hundreds of thousands of independent dynamic entities to represent the people and vehicles,” AWS Principal Developer Advocate, Marcia Villalba, notes in a blog post . “Each enti...

Twitter is no longer enforcing its policy against misleading information about COVID-19, per an update posted to an official company blog page . Reuters spotted the change earlier — which said the change was effective as of last Wednesday. “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the social media company writes in a brief grey-on-grey note on a company webpage that’s still emblazoned with the title: “Coronavirus: Staying safe and informed on Twitter”. No explanation was given by Twitter for the policy change. Under its prior COVID-19 misinformation policy the company had said it would remove “demonstrably false or potentially misleading content that has the highest risk of causing harm”. Grey on grey update freezing enforcement of Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy (Screengrab: Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch) Since billionaire Tesla owner, Elon Musk, took over the company last month, on closing his $44BN ...

The U.S. government said it is banning telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from several prominent Chinese brands in an effort to protect the nation’s communications network. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously on Friday to expand its ban on the sale and import of Chinese technology from firms that pose an “unacceptable risk to the national security” of the United States. The decision implements the directive in the Secure Equipment Act of 2021 signed by President Biden in November that places additional restrictions on companies including Huawei, ZTE , surveillance camera makers Hikvision and Dahua , and two-way radio manufacturer Hytera. These organizations will be prohibited from exporting new products into the U.S. unless they assure that the devices “won’t be used for public safety, security of government facilities, and other national security purposes,” the FCC said. Existing equipment from these companies, which are all liste...