This week’s roundup of technology news has some interesting stories. AI is continuing to level up, as evidenced by a song generated by an artist called Ghostwriter that racked up more than 250,000 Spotify streams and 10 million views on TikTok. Apple is now offering its own banking features for Apple Card customers by partnering with Goldman Sachs. Software on the Apple Watch is due to get a huge update, and Microsoft is no longer advertising on Twitter. Not to forget, Netflix experienced technical issues on the livestream of its “Love Is Blind” reunion show, and Tesla has cut the prices of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
The upcoming Disrupt conference by TechCrunch will also host six stand-alone industry TC Sessions events with specific programming tracks. It will be interesting to keep an eye out for that. TechCrunch also has podcasts like Equity, Found, Chain Reaction and the latest TechCrunch Live episode with Mark Batsiyan and Brynne McNulty Rojas.
Speaking of startups, the Colombian real estate startup Habi recently achieved the unicorn status. And Blank Street has figured out how to make their chain of coffee shops attractive to venture capital firms and recently raised a $20 million Series B funding round in a year with a decreased fundraising.
On the AI front, there’s a discussion on whether light-based chips, or photonics chips, are the answer to training OpenAI’s AI ChatGPT models. OpenAI also released their AI ChatGPT to the masses, so it is interesting to see what the future holds.
Alaska Airlines is also taking steps to modernize the airport experience, starting with the removal of the check-in kiosk. Snapchat’s AI chatbot is also being opened to a global audience and is being upgraded with more features.
Overall, the tech news cycle is a fast-paced one and it is exciting to stay on top of the latest developments.
