Early this year, AI-powered fake audio of President Biden reached voters in New Hampshire. The FCC struck back swiftly, identifying the perpetrator as the Texas-based Life Corporation, which has been behind similar scams over the years, and whacked them and an associated individual with a $6 million fine. But the scammers also enlisted the help of a game, shape-shifting telecom that has previously been implicated in shady doings. Now Lingo Telecom, as it’s currently known (AKA Ameritel, Excel, Impact, Startec, Trinsic, etc.) will pay a $1 million civil penalty and agree to definitely follow the rules this time for sure, starting now.
Telecoms like Lingo are not supposed to enable scams by providing services to known bad operators. “Communications service providers are the first line of defense against these threats and will be held accountable,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
Ashesh Shah, the founder and CEO of The London Fund is, as you might imagine, bullish on Bolt. The London Fund is a U.K. venture firm with “over $1 billion…
Bolt’s aggressive ultimatum to its existing shareholders will be an expensive uphill battle, an expert familiar with Bolt’s corporate charter tells TechCrunch.
Microsoft demonstrated its leadership in accessible gaming hardware again on Wednesday with the announcement of a new one-handed joystick controller for Xbox and PC. The Xbox Adaptive Joystick works with…
Early this year, AI-powered fake audio of President Biden reached voters in New Hampshire. The FCC struck back swiftly, identifying the perpetrator as the Texas-based Life Corporation, which has been…
OpenAI broke its silence on California’s most controversial AI bill on Tuesday, officially expressing opposition in a letter to California state Senator Scott Wiener and Governor Gavin Newsom. The AI…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code…
August was online publishing platform Medium’s first profitable month — ever. That’s according to Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine, who on Wednesday published a recap of Medium’s recent digital Medium Day…
Flo Crivello was monitoring outputs from the AI assistants his company Lindy makes when he noticed something strange. A new client had asked her Lindy AI assistant for a video…
A firmware update is delivering multi-user audio sharing, allowing music to be streamed to multiple headphones at once.
At around $2,000, the Fit Bike places the system between Peloton’s entry-level Bike ($1,500) and Bike+ ($2,500).
The Startup Battlefield is the crown jewel of Disrupt, and we can’t wait to see which of the thousands of applicants will be selected to pitch to panels of top-tier VCs…
AI video creation platform D-ID is the latest company to ship a tool for translating videos into other languages using AI technologies. However, in this case, D-ID also clones the…
This week, surveys suggest that Gen Z — regularly the subject of mainstream media fascination — has very mixed opinions on AI.
Grim news coming in from Sicily, Italy. Mike Lynch, the U.K. investor and founder of IT company Autonomy, has been identified as one of two bodies recovered from the Bayesian,…
Zomato, the Indian food delivery giant, has acquired the entertainment ticketing business of financial services firm Paytm for $244.1 million, signaling a strategic move to expand its “going out” offerings.…
FireHydrant, an NYC incident management startup that launched in 2019, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Blameless, a former competitor. The companies did not share the purchase price. Both…
Tick-tock! We’re in the last 3 days to save up to $600 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets. Lock in these low prices before August 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Be…
Ring announced on Wednesday the next generation of its Battery Doorbell. For $100, customers get extended battery life, color night vision, a head-to-toe view of visitors and a new push-pin…
In 2020, Kathryn Wu launched a side hustle while she was working as a product engineer at Pinterest. Wu started a milk tea company, OhTea, with the hopes of connecting…
Grafana Labs, the open source company that probably powers at least a few operational dashboards in your company, today announced the completion of a primary and secondary transaction worth about…
The first vehicle that will be built on the low-cost EV platform Ford’s been developing in secret will be a mid-size pickup due out in 2027, the automaker announced Wednesday…
Apple and Google can take a breath after the U.K. competition watchdog announced Wednesday it’s closing a pair of investigations into their respective mobile app ecosystems, citing administrative priorities. Since…
AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and Stability AI have faced a lot of heat over how they’ve scraped data and rode rough-shod over others’ intellectual property when training and operating…
There’s a lot of hype about the promise of AI agents today, but payments are a huge limiting factor. Today, an AI agent might be able to plan a vacation…
WeTransfer’s expiry dates have been a major pain point for users — especially creatives. The thing is, if you don’t download the files the moment you get the link or…
