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Lyft restructures its micromobility business and Volkswagen brings ChatGPT to US vehicles Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Short week, shorter newsletter. For all the U.S.-based readers, I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day. Before we jump into the news fray, here is one…

Microsoft gives deepfake porn victims a tool to scrub images from Bing searchThe advancement of generative AI tools has created a new problem for the internet: the proliferation of synthetic nude images resembling real people. On Thursday, Microsoft took a major step to give revenge porn victims a tool to stop its Bing search engine from returning these images. Microsoft announced a partnership with StopNCII, an organization…

Driverless car-sharing startup Vay steers toward B2B servicesThe new business-to-business division is a bet on what co-founder and CEO Thomas von der Ohe thinks is the future of mobility. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Drip Capital, a fintech that provides working capital to SMBs, picks up $113MDrip Capital has raised $113 million in a combination of $23 million in equity and $90 million in debt to provide credit to more small businesses in India and the U.S. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google’s AI-powered Ask Photos feature begins US rolloutGoogle said the feature could be used for more than just photo retrieval alone; users would also be able to ask questions to get helpful answers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Endolith is using ‘Olympic caliber’ copper microbes to address the copper shortageThe stealthily operating startup thinks it can narrow the gap by helping miners extract more copper from their mines. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

All Hands AI raises $5M to build open source agents for developersAs with many open source startups, All Hands AI expects to monetize its service by offering paid, closed-source enterprise features. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TechCrunch Minute: This robotic wheelchair can climb stairsKorea’s Institute for Machinery and Materials unveiled a pretty cool robotic wheelchair this week. By creating a compliant wheel that conforms to the terrain around it, these engineers have created an early version of a wheelchair that can climb stairs and traverse rocky terrain. The wheel uses a “smart chain” structure, which means that a…

Mintlify is building a next-gen platform for writing software docsMintlify offers a collection of documentation-authoring tools, including tools that can auto-generate docs from codebases. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

German LLM maker Aleph Alpha pivots to AI supportEurope doesn’t have many large language model (LLM) makers but one of these rare AI beasts — Germany’s Aleph Alpha — appears to be preparing to rule itself out of the running, per Bloomberg, which has an interview with CEO Jonas Andrulis on its pivot to a broader generative AI-support play. The idea with a…

Rivian’s chief software designer is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024Every automaker is aiming to build and sell the so-called software-defined vehicle. Rivian may have actually done it, but getting there wasn’t easy. Just ask Rivian’s chief of software Wassym Bensaid. In a bid to drive down manufacturing costs and improve the performance of its EVs, Rivian changed 600 parts on its flagship R1S SUV…

The AI industry is obsessed with Chatbot Arena, but it might not be the best benchmarkLMSYS' Chatbot Arena is perhaps the most popular AI benchmark today — and an industry obsession. But it's far from a perfect measure. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google expands AI-powered virtual try-on tool to include dressesGoogle announced Thursday that it expanded its generative AI-powered virtual try-on tool to support dresses, allowing users to virtually wear thousands of dresses from hundreds of brands, including Boden, Maje, Sandro, Simkhai and Staud. According to the company, dresses were one of the most searched apparel categories for the tool. However, as Google explained in…

Zamp targets growing demand for sales tax solutionsUntil six years ago, many e-commerce and SaaS businesses could have avoided paying sales tax to states where they had customers, but no physical presence. But as online shopping grew, states realized they were losing out on tax revenue. The era of free-riding for online retailers ended in 2018 when South Dakota took Wayfair to…

Announcing the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, which takes place from October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco, is rapidly approaching. Today we’re thrilled to announce the 200 startups selected to participate in this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) cohort. TechCrunch’s editorial staff read, vetted and debated over thousands of applications. Narrowing the group down to 200…

YouTube to limit teens’ exposure to videos about fitness and weight across global marketsYouTube is going to limit teens’ exposure to videos that promote and idealize a certain fitness level or physical appearance, the company announced on Thursday. The safeguard first rolled out in the U.S. last year and is now being introduced to teens globally. The announcement comes as YouTube has faced criticism over the past few…

YouTube is developing AI detection tools for music and faces, plus creator controls for AI trainingAlso of note, YouTube is in the early stages of coming up with a solution to address the use of its content to train AI models. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

US, UK and EU sign on to the Council of Europe’s high-level AI safety treatyWe’re not very close to any specifics on how, exactly, AI regulations will be implemented and ensured, but today a swathe of countries including the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union signed up to a treaty on AI safety laid out by the Council of Europe (COE), an international standards and human rights organization.…

French clean tech startup Calyxia nets $35M to tackle microplastics pollutionWith a fresh $35M in the bank, French cleantech startup Calyxia has profitability within sight. But it's just getting started. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

ZipRecruiter’s new tool will quickly match and schedule an intro call with potential candidatesHiring platform ZipRecruiter is launching a new tool, called ZipIntro, to let employers schedule introductory calls with potential candidates at a set time. The tool will also help recruiters suggest potential candidates using AI. Employers can input information about the role and select a date and time for introductory calls. After that, ZipIntro matches them…