AI & Robotics

Dazzle AI CEO Marissa Mayer recently became the latest tech CEO to face criticism over seemingly out-of-touch comments extolling the usefulness of AI. In Mayer’s case, that involved asking an AI tool for help with a school-assigned description of her daughter. For OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, that’s included suggesting that parents create personalized podcasts for their kids’ drive to…

Zest, the restaurant discovery app that launched earlier this year, is already thinking about a future where mobile apps are no longer the primary interface. On Thursday, the startup introduced a new feature: a personal AI-powered “restaurant concierge” that lives in your text messages, similar to other popular AI agents like Instinct or Poke. The launch reflects a broader shift in how…

AI infrastructure company Runware is making news again, just months after unveiling the Sonic Inference Pod, a modular data center built in a factory and shipped to customers ready to install. Now the company has bigger plans. It told TechCrunch it wants to build a factory that assembles these pods on a production line, as if they were cars. The idea isn’t entirely new. Companies like Crusoe…

The voice AI sector is hot, and top players are trying to consolidate their position as more business models come to the fore through partnerships and acquisitions. Deepgram is the latest to make such moves: The company said on Thursday that it is acquiring Daily, the maker and maintainer of one of the most popular open source voice AI infrastructures, Pipecat. The companies didn’t disclose…