<p>Audible, Amazon&#8217;s audiobook service, announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with select publishers to convert print and e-books into AI-narrated audiobooks. This initiative aims to quickly expand its catalog as it competes with Apple, Spotify, and others in the rapidly growing audiobook market. Audible is leveraging Amazon&#8217;s AI capabilities to assist publishers in producing audiobooks. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>In a bid to make its AI DJ feel more interactive, Spotify is updating the feature to allow users to request music or change the mood of a playlist using voice commands. The company is rolling out this feature, initially only supported in English, in over 60 markets for its Premium subscribers. Previously, users could [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Hungry to learn more about Anthropic, directly from Anthropic? You aren&#8217;t alone if so, which is why we&#8217;re so delighted to announce that Anthropic co-founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan is joining the main stage at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley&#8217;s Zellerbach Hall. And TechCrunch Sessions: AI is right around [&hellip;]</p>

<p>An analysis by Epoch AI, a nonprofit AI research institute, suggests the AI industry may not be able to eke massive performance gains out of reasoning AI models for much longer. As soon as within a year, progress from reasoning models could slow down, according to the report&#8217;s findings. Reasoning models such as OpenAI&#8217;s o3 [&hellip;]</p>

<p>AllTrails, the hiking and biking companion that was named 2023&#8217;s iPhone App of the Year, is launching a new premium membership called &#8220;Peak&#8221; that includes an upgraded feature set. This $80-per-year subscription will introduce AI tools to build custom routes and provide real-time trail condition forecasts, trail traffic heatmaps, and a feature that lets you [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Microsoft is hosting its annual Build developer conference next week from May 19 to 22. The event is guaranteed to include announcements regarding new AI integrations, services, and apps, including for Windows. At last year&#8217;s Build, Microsoft announced an integration of Copilot into Microsoft Teams, Copilot+ AI-powered PCs, Windows Volumetric Apps for Meta Quest headsets, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Buzzwords that are stretched to the point of being meaningless are as old as the tech industry itself. The top current one is &#8220;AI agent&#8221; and its variants, like &#8220;agentic.&#8221; So, unsurprisingly, no one really knows what an AI agent is. Even people with software engineering backgrounds who work for Andreessen Horowitz, one of the premier venture [&hellip;]</p>

<p>On Monday, Google announced the launch of its AI Futures Fund, a new initiative that seeks to invest in startups that are building with the latest AI tools from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI R&amp;D lab.&nbsp; The fund will back startups from seed to late stage and will offer varying degrees of support, including allowing [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Saudi Arabia&#8217;s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, launched an AI company called Humain to bolster the country&#8217;s artificial intelligence sector. The company plans to build out the country&#8217;s AI infrastructure, including the construction of data centers. This news arrives as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to attend a U.S.-Saudi investment forum on [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is using his olive oil inefficiently in an &#8220;offense to horticulture,&#8221; the Financial Times humorously reports. For its &#8220;Lunch with the FT&#8221; series, the paper joined Altman in his kitchen. He prepared a garlicky pasta and salad, taking a rare break from his demanding job of advocating for the disruption of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI&#8217;s ambitious Stargate data center project is facing delays thanks to tariff-related economic uncertainty, reports Bloomberg. Growing market volatility and cheaper AI services have made banks, private equity investors, and asset managers wary of investing in Stargate, an OpenAI-led project that aims to raise up to $500 billion for AI infrastructure in the U.S. and [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Google&#8217;s openly available Gemma collection of AI models has reached a milestone: over 150 million downloads. Omar Sanseviero, a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind, announced the figure on X over the weekend, also revealing that developers have created more than 70,000 variants of Gemma on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. Google launched Gemma [&hellip;]</p>

<p>VCs are known to move in herds, which is why Eric Slesinger stands out a bit. While most American investors chase AI startups or U.S.-based defense tech startups, the former CIA officer is hunting for defense tech deals in Europe. In fact, Slesinger, founder of 201 Ventures, recently closed a $22 million fund focused on [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump has fired Shira Perlmutter, who leads the U.S. Copyright Office. The firing was reported by CBS News and Politico, and seemingly confirmed by a statement from Representative Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration. “Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI is currently in “a tough negotiation” with one of its biggest investors and partners, Microsoft, according to the Financial Times. The AI startup recently announced a major change to its corporate restructuring plans — while it still aims to convert its business arm into a for-profit public benefit corporation, its nonprofit board will remain [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The tech industry seems to have two thoughts when it comes to where human workers fit into the AI-powered world they are creating: Either they think that all the jobs, except perhaps their own, will be done by bots. (VC Marc Andreessen seems to think that his work as an investor could never be automated).  [&hellip;]</p>

<p>OpenAI appears to be pulling well ahead of rivals in the race to capture enterprises&#8217; AI spend, according to transaction data from fintech firm Ramp. According to Ramp&#8217;s AI Index, which estimates the business adoption rate of AI products by drawing on Ramp&#8217;s card and bill pay data, 32.4% of U.S. businesses were paying for [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Manus AI is one of the hottest AI agent startups around, recently raising $75 million at a half-billion-dollar valuation in a round led by Benchmark. But two unnamed sources told Semafor that the investment is now under review by the U.S. Treasury Department over its compliance with 2023 restrictions on investing in Chinese companies. Benchmark’s [&hellip;]</p>

<p>SoundCloud appears to have quietly changed its terms of use to allow the company to train AI on audio that users upload to its platform. As spotted by tech ethicist Ed Newton-Rex, the latest version of SoundCloud&#8217;s terms include a provision giving the platform permission to use uploaded content to &#8220;inform, train, [or] develop&#8221; AI. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Data center operator CoreWeave is reportedly seeking a $1.5 billion debt deal after a disappointing IPO. According to the Financial Times, CoreWeave is holding a roadshow this week with bankers at JPMorgan for debt options. The company&#8217;s executives intend to use the meetings to gauge investor interest. New Jersey-based CoreWeave listed its shares in March, [&hellip;]</p>