Picsart, a photo-editing startup backed by SoftBank, announced on Thursday that it’s partnering with Getty Images to develop a custom model to bring AI imagery to its 150 million users.
The company says the model will bring responsible AI imagery to creators, marketers and small businesses that use its platform.
Image Credits: Picsart x Getty Images AI ImagePicsart’s AI lab, PAIR, is building the model.
The company is also integrating Getty Images video content into Picsart’s platform and making it available to Plus members.
Picsart isn’t the first startup that Getty Images has partnered with for responsible AI imagery, as it also partnered with AI image generator, Bria, and Runway, a startup building generative AI for content creators.
When Jordan Nathan launched his DTC nontoxic cookware company, Caraway, in 2019, he knew he was not the only founder trying to sell a new brand of pots and pans to millennials scrolling through Instagram.
When Caraway launched, it joined companies like Our Place, Great Jones and Made In Cookware in an increasingly crowded category of online cookware startups.
Caraway’s competitors also helped Caraway decide to start talking to retailers early in the process.
You can now find Caraway sets at Target and Costco, among others.
While being a later entrant helped Caraway in many ways, it did hurt them in one area, Nathan said.
There has been a silly amount of drama in the run-up to Tesla‘s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.
It will also hold a vote whether the company will change the location where it is incorporated from Delaware to Texas.
Some of Tesla’s biggest boosters are calling on the company’s “retail army” of shareholders to vote in favor of both, but with special focus on Musk’s compensation.
“A deal is a deal,” Tesla posted to its CEO’s social media platform X.
At the very least, it’s a primer for the legal battles that are sure to continue after Thursday’s vote.
“We’ve got an increased threat from foreign adversaries who have shown capabilities to jam, to destroy, to spoof the signals of GPS, which is scary,” Shaun Moore, CEO and co-founder of Tern AI, a startup that wants to provide an alternative to GPS, told TechCrunch.
The current system works by having GPS receivers in cars or phones pick up signals from satellites orbiting the earth.
The GPS receivers then use the time it took for each signal to travel to calculate the distance to each satellite.
“GPS technology has not meaningfully changed in 50 years, and what we’re seeing put forth as solutions to resolve or mitigate risk are just marginal improvements.
“When we first met Tern AI, what stood out the most was how differentiated and scalable their approach was to solving a critical problem in national security,” said Stephen DiBartolomeo, principal at Scout Ventures.
iOS apps that build their own social networks on the back of users’ address books may soon become a thing of the past.
In iOS 18, Apple is cracking down on the social apps that ask users’ permission to access their contacts — something social apps often do to connect users with their friends or make suggestions for who to follow.
To give users more control over the contacts an app can and cannot access, the permissions screen has two stages.
Before that, apps like Poparazzi and Clubhouse had demanded full address book access — a growth hack that helped them quickly expand their networks.
iOS 18 will let users decide which contacts an app can access.
360 One WAM, India’s largest wealth manager focused on ultra-high-net-worth individuals, has agreed to acquire popular Indian mutual fund investment app ET Money for about $44 million.
360 One disclosed (PDF) the deal in a stock exchange filing Wednesday evening.
ET Money boasts over 900,000 transacting clients and tracks assets under management of approximately $8.3 billion.
The platform has been a popular choice for retail investors, with monthly mutual fund net flows of around $89.9 million.
ET Money is the second startup from local media powerhouse Times Internet’s portfolio to be sold in recent weeks.
YouTube announced this week the rollout of “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” a new tool for creators to see which thumbnail performs the best.
When creators publish a new video (or update an existing video), they can test up to three thumbnails, which will be shown “evenly” across viewers, the company explained in a post.
YouTube encourages testing thumbnails with distinct differences, such as variations in layout compositions, backgrounds, and text overlays, to ensure a comprehensive test.
Creators can test thumbnails on a variety of content, including regular videos, podcast episodes, archived livestreams, and public long-form content.
Over the coming weeks, Thumbnail Test & Compare will become available in YouTube Studio on desktop to all creators with access to advanced features.
Waymo has voluntarily issued a software recall to all 672 of its Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis after one of them collided with a telephone pole.
This is Waymo’s second recall.
NHTSA confirmed to TechCrunch that it has received Waymo’s recall documents and is processing them for publication on its website.
The accident that prompted Waymo’s second recall happened on May 21 when a Waymo vehicle in Phoenix, driving without a human safety operator, collided with a telephone pole in an alley during a low speed pullover maneuver.
The Waymo vehicle slowed down to pull over and struck a pole at a speed of 8 miles per hour.
Co-founders Elle Smyth and Sarah Hamer came up with the idea while working together at supply chain unicorn startup, Stord.
“We met each other and bonded over our love for the supply chain industry,” Smyth told TechCrunch.
Warehouse workers have to reference “phone book-sized” manuals of how to ship items to retailers, like Target and Walmart.
If shipping/warehouse workers don’t pack these items correctly, retailers will charge the brands fees, known as a chargeback.
RetailReady replaces those manuals with a digital version that gives workers a directed workflow on how to pack an order correctly.
Fisker is issuing the first recall for its all-electric Ocean SUV because of problems with the warning lights, according to new information published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The recall technically only applies to all 6,864 Ocean SUVs in the US, as other regions have their own safety regimes.
The recall comes after months of problems with the Ocean SUV, and at a time when Fisker is on the brink of bankruptcy.
This recall is not related to any of the four active investigations NHTSA has launched into the Ocean.
With those, the agency is probing inadvertent automatic emergency braking, sudden braking loss, vehicle rollaway and doors that won’t open.
