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Meta’s Threads crosses 200 million active users

Ivan Mehta — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 08:40:50 +0000

A day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about his newest social media experiment Threads reaching “almost” 200 million users on the company’s Q2 2024 earnings call, the platform has touched the milestone. Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that the Twitter rival has reached 200M active users in a post on Threads. Meta has taken […]

Zuckerberg says Meta will need 10x more computing power to train Llama 4 than Llama 3

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 07:53:29 +0000

Meta, which develops one of the biggest foundational open source large language models, Llama, believes it will need significantly more computing power to train models in the future. Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta’s second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that to train Llama 4, the company will need 10x more compute than what was needed to […]

Meta says India is the largest market for Meta AI usage

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:12:44 +0000

WhatsApp’s massive 500 million users in India have supercharged Meta’s AI ambitions. Meta CFO Susan Li said Wednesday that India is the largest market in terms of Meta AI usage, a notable milestone considering the product launched in India just a few months ago. Li said during Meta’s second-quarter earnings call that people have used […]

Google releases new ‘open’ AI models with a focus on safety

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:25:16 +0000

Google has released a trio of new, “open” generative AI models that it’s calling “safer,” “smaller” and “more transparent” than most — a bold claim, to be sure. They’re additions to Google’s Gemma 2 family of generative models, which debuted back in May. The new models, Gemma 2 2B, ShieldGemma and Gemma Scope, are designed […]

Meta will pay Texas $1.4B in settlement over facial recognition software

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 16:38:02 +0000

Meta agrees to pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years, and the first payment of $500 million is due in the next month, according to a court filing.

Meta is rolling out its AI Studio in the US for creators to build AI chatbots

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 12:36:25 +0000

Meta said Monday that it is rolling out its AI studio to all creators in the U.S. to let them make personalized AI-powered chatbots. The company first announced the AI Studio last year and started testing it with select creators in June this year. Meta is making the tool available to all creators, who can […]

Zuckerberg touts Meta’s latest video vision AI with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 23:37:54 +0000

Meta's machine learning model, Segment Anything, has a sequel: It now takes the model to the video domain, showing how fast the field is moving.

OpenAI comes for Google with SearchGPT

Cody Corrall — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 17:05:00 +0000

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete directly with Google. The feature aims to elevate search queries with “timely answers” from across the internet and allows the user to ask follow-up questions. The temporary prototype is currently only available to a small group of users and its publisher partners for testing […]

Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp has 100M monthly active users in the US

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0000

WhatsApp has recently ramped up its marketing push in the U.S.

TechCrunch Minute: Meta’s new ‘Imagine me’ feature lets you generate AI selfies

Amanda Silberling — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Meta’s AI integrations into apps like Instagram and Facebook have felt pretty useless so far. If I’m just trying to find my friend’s Instagram, why do I have to navigate around a Meta AI interface that is desperately trying to tell me the top five vegetarian protein sources? But with the release of Meta’s new […]

Oversight Board wants Meta to refine its policies around AI-generated explicit images

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Board wants Meta to change the terminology it uses for labeling explicit, AI-generated images from "derogatory" to "non-consensual."

Backed by Microsoft, AWS and Meta, the Overture Maps Foundation launches its first open map datasets

Paul Sawers — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000

The Overture Maps Foundation is today releasing data sets for 2.3B building "footprints" globally, 54M notable places of interest, a visual overlay of "boundaries," and land and water features such as physical infrastructure.

Mark Zuckerberg imagines content creators making AI clones of themselves

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 02:22:00 +0000

Content creators are busy people. Most spend more than 20 hours a week creating new content for their respective corners of the web. That doesn’t leave much time for audience engagement. But Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, thinks that AI could solve this problem. In an interview with internet personality Rowan Cheung, Zuckerberg laid out his […]

Meta releases its biggest ‘open’ AI model yet

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Meta’s latest open source AI model is its biggest yet. Today, Meta said it is releasing Llama 3.1 405B, a model containing 405 billion parameters. Parameters roughly correspond to a model’s problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters. At 405 billion parameters, Llama 3.1 405B isn’t the […]

Meta given weeks to tell EU consumer protection authorities how it’ll fix ‘pay or consent’

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:46:35 +0000

Meta has been given until September 1 to respond to consumer protection concerns in the European Union. The Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network, a network of authorities responsible for the enforcement of EU consumer protection laws, is concerned about a binary choice Meta has forced on regional users of Facebook and Instagram since last November. […]

Meta puts a halt to training its generative AI tools in Brazil

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:47:08 +0000

Meta has suspended the use of its AI assistant after Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) banned the company from training its AI models on personal data from Brazilians. The move puts a dent in Facebook’s attempt to build out its AI products in Brazil, a market with more than 200 million people. As cited […]

How to tell if your online accounts have been hacked

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 20:00:00 +0000

This is a guide on how to check whether someone compromised your online accounts.

Meta removes special restrictions for Trump’s account ahead of 2024 elections

Maxwell Zeff — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 22:49:09 +0000

Meta announced former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will no longer be subject to heightened suspension penalties, according to an updated blog post on Friday. The company says it made the decision to ensure all Presidential nominees were on equal footing on their platform ahead of the 2024 Presidential election. When Meta reinstated […]

Meta will soon let kids aged 10 to 12 interact with others in VR with their parents’ approval

Aisha Malik — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 17:14:16 +0000

Meta announced on Wednesday that users aged 10 to 12 will soon be able to interact with others in VR if they have their parents’ approval to do so. Up until now, children were not able to chat or interact with other users on Quest. In an upcoming update, Meta is adding the ability for […]

A year later, what Threads could learn from other social networks

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 12:36:54 +0000

Threads, Meta’s alternative to Twitter, just celebrated its first birthday. After launching on July 5 last year, the social network has reached 175 million monthly active users — that’s a notable achievement. But, after a year, Threads is trying to find its own voice by not being as newsy as Twitter/X and not being as […]