Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022

Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of space, including artist and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight. In 1961, Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy to be the country’s first […]

Hollywood agency CAA aims to help stars manage their own AI likenesses

Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many stars having their digital likeness used without permission, CAA has built a virtual media storage system for A-list talent — actors, athletes, comedians, directors, musicians, […]

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In a statement shared with TechCrunch and other publications, Expedia said Murthy and Rachamadugu are “no longer employed at Expedia Group” due to an unspecified “violation […]

OpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which has voice and vision capabilities that can turn ChatGPT into a virtual assistant seemingly aspiring to be “Her.” Hot off OpenAI’s tail, Google’s I/O conference […]

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In a statement shared with Bloomberg and elsewhere, Expedia said Murthy and Rachamadugu are “no longer employed at Expedia Group” due to an unspecified “violation of […]

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But requests for a fraction of that compute were often denied, blocking the team from doing their work. That issue, among others, pushed several team members […]

VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads

A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to city streets, these startups are taking their tech off-road.  Two recent entrants — Seattle-based Overland AI and New Brunswick-based Potential — are poised to get […]

Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century

When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying to sell their innovative tech through old-school methods like repeated cold emails and calls. Khanna, a former product marketer, and Hughes, a former sales manager, […]

This Week in AI: OpenAI moves away from safety

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. By the way, TechCrunch plans to launch an AI newsletter […]