The UK government has asked the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to review TikTok in a move that could prefigure a ban on the app on government devices.

Speaking to Sky News, security minister Tom Tugendhat said the government has asked the NCSC to look into the popular video sharing app — telling the broadcaster he did not rule out a ban but wanted to wait for the Centre’s review to conclude. “Understanding exactly what the challenges that these apps pose, what they are asking for and how they’re reaching into our lives is incredibly important,” he said.

The development follows a report in the Sunday Times at the weekend which suggested a ban is incoming. The newspaper suggested TikTok is set to be banned from all government devices — after initial security assessments had raised concerns about the safety of sensitive data.

We’ve reached out to the Cabinet Office about the NCSC review and the reports of a ban incoming and will update this report if we get a response. Update: A spokesman declined further comment, saying only: “All departments have robust processes in place to ensure government IT devices are secure, including managing risks from third party applications.”

TikTok was also contacted for comment. A company spokesperson said:

While we await details of any specific concerns the UK government may have, we would be disappointed by such a move. Similar decisions elsewhere have been based on misplaced fears and seemingly driven by wider geopolitics, but we remain committed to working with the government to address any concerns. We have begun implementing a comprehensive plan to further protect our European user data, which includes storing UK user data in our European data centres and tightening data access controls, including third-party independent oversight of our approach.

Concerns about security and the privacy of TikTok user data — along with worries that the video-sharing platform’s algorithm-driven content feed might be being used as a conduit for Chinese Community Party propaganda or to run state-backed information operations seeking to manipulate public opinion in the West — have led to a series of bans on the China-owned app by other governments and public institutions in recent months — including the European Commission, the Belgian federal government and the US House of Representatives.

Back in mid 2020, the Indian government went even further — banning TikTok and a swathe of other Chinese made apps, meaning citizens can’t even download them for personal use — saying it was taking the step over concerns the software posed a risk to national security and to “the sovereignty and integrity of India”, as it put it at the time.

Former US president Donald Trump also caused headaches for TikTok later the same year — when he inked an executive order banning transactions with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and also sought to ban the app from the US.

The Trump TikTok ban ended up stalled and a subsequent attempt by him to force the Chinese company to sell TikTok’s US operations to Oracle was also shelved. But while the next US president, Joe Biden, went on to revoke the Trump administration’s TikTok actions he also signed a new order requiring the Commerce Department to review apps with ties to “jurisdiction of foreign adversaries” that may pose national security risks — so US attention on TikTok remains.

The company has responded to Western security concerns by announcing a number of major data localization infrastructure programs.

Last year it claimed all US users data had been moved to Oracle servers in the US. Similar moves in the EU are ongoing — meaning EU users’ data hasn’t yet been ‘localized’ — but TikTok recently dialled up its regional PR efforts, saying it will layer new data access and control processes on top of locally stored data, along with a promise to engage an external auditor, in a bid to counter concerns that employees outside the bloc can still access European TikTok user data.

In parallel, the overarching question of the legality of TikTok’s regional data exports remain under investigation by EU data protection authorities.

The social media platform is facing further bad press in the region today: A report in the Financial Times contains allegations the company mishandled claims of sexual harassment against a senior manager at its London office. Five former employees told the newspaper they had experienced or personally witnessed sexual harassment at the organisation in its UK and European offices.

In a statement responding to the FT’s report, a TikTok spokesperson said:

“Harassment of any kind in our workplace is completely unacceptable and will be met with the strongest form of disciplinary action possible. We’re fully confident in the rigour of our process for surfacing, investigating and taking action on any and all complaints of this nature.”

UK gov’t asks National Cyber Security Centre to review TikTok by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/tiktok-uk-ncsc-security-review/

Kakao Entertainment, owned by South Korean tech giant Kakao, will shut down the Korean branch of Tapas Entertainment, the U.S.-headquartered storytelling platform, next month. 

Kakao Entertainment told TechCrunch that it plans to close the Korean office as part of a restructuring effort to zero in on the company’s North American and other global units. The closure will also include layoffs impacting the Korean-based team.

“Tapas Entertainment is streamlining operations to respond flexibly [and quickly] in the North American market in response to the global economic downturn,” a Kakao Entertainment spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Tapas Korea has been in the service of operation and marketing of Tapas Entertainment that is headquartered in the U.S.”  

The company did not provide the total number of employees at Tapas Entertainment and how many employees at Tapas Korea will be laid off. According to local media outlets, Tapas Korea has about 20 employees. 

KaKao Entertainment has three core units: an artist agency (Kakao Entertainment), a storytelling unit (Tapas Entertainment), and a Spotify-like music business (Melon). 

Tapas Entertainment operates Tapas, a Los Angeles-based webcomic platform; Radish, a New York-based serialized fiction app; and Wuxiaworld, an Asian fantasy fiction platform. 

Kakao Entertainment will take over the duties previously handled by Tapas Korea, a decision made because the larger organization has more experience and capabilities, the spokesperson explained. They added that this is not related to Silicon Valley Bank’s failure last week despite the fact that Tapas Entertainment is a depositor of SVB. The company is currently preparing measures to deal with the fallout of the SVB collapse, including diversifying assets into different banks and accounts. Due to the U.S. government and regulators’ quick actions, which will guarantee all deposits, the spokesperson said there should not be any effect on the company. 

The spokesperson also said the restructuring is not related to an ongoing acquisition deal talks Kakao is holding regarding K-pop agency SM Entertainment. 

The news of the Korean branch shutdown comes nearly two months after Kakao Entertainment’s massive fundraising of about $966 million (1.2 trillion won) from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC earlier this year. The company said it would use the financing for further international expansion and acquisitions. 

In May 2022, Kakao Entertainment merged two storytelling platforms, Tapas and Radish Media, to accelerate Kakao Entertainment’s growth in North America. After the merger, it rebranded the combined unit to Tapas Entertainment. 

Kakao to close Tapas Entertainment Korean office next month as part of a restructuring by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/kakao-to-close-tapas-entertainment-korean-office-next-month-as-part-of-a-restructuring/

To put it mildly, the meteoric collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has been a historic time of confusion for everyone the startup ecosystem touches. VCs are wringing their hands (or not) over how they can help their portfolio companies; startup founders and CEOs are running about trying their very best to plan for the foreseeable future; and vendors and partners are either helping those affected or asking for reassurances that they’ll be paid or serviced properly.

Maëlle Gavet, CEO of Techstars, vividly describes what things have been like behind the scenes: “It’s been unbelievably intense from Thursday until when the Federal Reserve finally made an announcement saying that deposits were going to be guaranteed. It’s been both for TechStars as an operating company, and for the 3,500 portfolio companies we have. A portion of them were banking with SVB, either exclusively or partially. We had so many concerns. How would we pay employees and honor our bills? How do we make sure that the company survives the next week and then the next month and then the next six months? So, ‘intense’ — that’s the word I would use to describe the experience.”

While many founders and VCs have shared similar experiences as they try to navigate this confusion, the future ahead is even hazier. The general consensus seems to be that SVB’s collapse may have far-reaching consequences for venture capital, startups and the entire financial sector in the U.S.

But what will those consequences be? To better understand how investors are thinking about this, we spoke to a few investors affected by the collapse and asked them about the long-term implications, how cash management is set to change, who’s been hurting the most and who will come away with a golden opportunity.

We surveyed:

• Maëlle Gavet, CEO, Techstars
• Niko Bonatsos, managing director, General Catalyst
• Colin Beirne, partner, Two Sigma Ventures

Maëlle Gavet, CEO, Techstars

What are some of the unseen or longer-term consequences of the recent banking crisis?

There will be a shift away from what I call middle banking. It used to be that startups would bank with SVB or with other banks that are not the top four. Now there’s going to be this divergence towards having one bank account with a big bank and then trying experiments with others. There’s going to be an extreme shift in general in the financial industry when it comes to financing startups.

I also expect more regulation for the VC and startup world. Six months ago, when valuations started crashing, the world and D.C. were looking at it. Yes, valuations are going down, but it just impacts all these LPs that invested, so it’s basically back to normal.

D.C. didn’t really care about what was happening there. I think, in this case, they’re going to care about how the tech world operates because they’ve suddenly found themselves caught off guard over the weekend. The overall financing system in the United States is going to explode because of one bank in Silicon Valley. I would expect more regulation to happen.

Every time there is a negative incident, the tech ecosystem tries to reinvent itself and often falls back to its old habits. If SVB is not there anymore, how do you create financing for a startup? You need to think about fundraising in a different way. Maybe you need to back different companies.

We’re probably going to see consolidation in the VC class. It was already on the way, but this is probably going to accelerate it, because SVB was also a preeminent provider of loans for GPs to make their capital commitment polls.

3 investors presage the future of startups and VC following SVB’s downfall by Karan Bhasin originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/svb-failure-investor-predictions/

Lightship finally showed off to the world — or at least those attending SXSW in Austin this week — a prototype of the L1, an all-electric RV designed to remove a barrier for owners of all-electric SUVs and trucks who want to haul a travel trailer on long road trips.

The result, which earned the startup a finalist spot in the 2023 SXSW Innovation Awards design category, is a travel trailer that manages to cram in loads of storage space, a queen-sized bed, bathroom, living area, a kitchen that includes a dishwasher and tech while sitting managing a spacious and airy feel.

The startup co-founded in 2021 by Ben Parker and Toby Kraus shared renderings of its L1 earlier this month. But in Austin, it was a different story. This time, Lightship showed off the real thing. And this wasn’t your industry standard prototype of non-working parts.

The prototype L1 shown at SXSW, which Parker described as an alpha prototype, was equipped with the battery pack and powertrain, a heat pump and even working lights. While Kraus emphasized that the fit and finish the L1 was far from complete, it felt like a near finished product.

Lightship plans to begin production of the travel trailer in late 2024. The company started taking refundable $500 deposits to reserve a spot. The base price of the RV will be  $125,000 or $118,400, depending on the variation.

Nuts and bolts

The Lightship L1 is a collapsible travel trailer that is lowered while being towed. Upon arrival, the travel trailer roof can be raised to turn into a livable space.

The L1 will be available in two trims. The L1 Essential will have a 40 kWh battery pack and lacks the drivetrain that helps propel the travel trailer as its being towed. This version, Parker explained, is ideal for customers who own a gas-powered truck. “And it’s more than enough battery power for off grid camping,” he noted during a tour, adding it provides a week of off-grid power with charging.

The travel trailer is also outfitted with up to 3 kilowatts of solar power. And no, there’s no propane on board.

The L1 long-range is equipped with an 80 kwH battery pack plus a drive motor that acts as a self-propulsion system. This is meant for customers who own an all-electric truck or SUV. An EV truck with a 300-mile range traveling at 65 miles an hour with a traditional travel trailer in tow becomes a 100-mile truck. This battery pack-drivetrain combo preserves range.

And it works to preserve fuel economy on gas-powered trucks too.

Inside the RV

The co-founders see an opportunity to make advances in the RV industry, which has been dominated by a few large companies. And the interior is a departure from many of the traditional travel trailers on the market today.

Walking inside, you’ll see a large seating area to the right framed by large bay windows. Underneath is a bed that pulls out and pops up to turn the space into a queen-size bed. On either side of the U-shaped sofa/bed area is a pop up light and wireless charger.

A spot for the iPad, which contains an app to operate all of the functions and features in the RV, is also located in this area. Although Kraus says that designated spot may be different in the final production version.

Moving to the middle and left, the bench like seating continues to a dining or living room area. Storage is located underneath the entire bench. A lightwood table sits in the middle and can be automatically lower to the level of the bench seating. Cushions stored underneath can be pulled out to turn this area into a second bed.

Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

Above the bench seating is a rail system that can be used for storage as well. Lightship designed a zippered storage bag that is secured on the rail system. Kraus said it’s configurable though and could be used to hold a surfboard, fishing pole or other items.

The kitchen is located along the same wall to the left of the dining area. A sink, drawer-style refrigerator and freezer and storage comes first. At the end of the kitchen is a two-burner electric stovetop, spice rack, drawer-style microwave and a dishwasher.

At the end of the L1 is the bathroom, which includes a toilet, collapsible shelf and shower. A large mirror, that spans the width of the bathroom, can be pushed open like a window. (Yes, you’d probably want to be in a secluded area if you showered with this open)

Moving back out of the bathroom and now moving along the opposite wall (immediately across from the kitchen) is long counter, with more storage underneath and built in trash bin. Finally, before you reach the door, is silver rectangle that is actually a wireless charger for a phone.

The controls

Perhaps one of the more interesting features is an interface that allows the owner to control lights and other functions via an iPad. Parker and Kraus said an app will be developed and launched alongside the RV. Oh, and all of those giant windows? Opening the app, a user can slide on the tinting feature and the windows immediately go dark.

Users can view the battery range, tank levels and solar power via the app. It also controls the lights, doors and window and climate. It’s also used to raise and lower the travel trailer.

Image Credits: Lightship

Check out all of the details in the photo gallery below.

Inside Lightship’s electric RV by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/inside-lightships-electric-rv/

Anthropic, a startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI employees, today launched something of a rival to the viral sensation ChatGPT.

Called Claude, Anthropic’s AI — a chatbot — can be instructed to perform a range of tasks, including searching across documents, summarizing, writing and coding, and answering questions about particular topics. In these ways, it’s similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But Anthropic makes the case that Claude is “much less likely to produce harmful outputs,” “easier to converse with” and “more steerable.”

“We think that Claude is the right tool for a wide variety of customers and use cases,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “We’ve been investing in our infrastructure for serving models for several months and are confident we can meet customer demand.”

Following a closed beta late last year, Anthropic has been quietly testing Claude with launch partners, including Robin AI, AssemblyAI, Notion, Quora and DuckDuckGo. Two versions are available as of this morning via an API, Claude and a faster, less costly derivative called Claude Instant.

In combination with ChatGPT, Claude powers DuckDuckGo’s recently launched DuckAssist tool, which directly answers straightforward search queries for users. Quora offers access to Claude through its experimental AI chat app, Poe. And on Notion, Claude is a part of the technical backend for Notion AI, an AI writing assistant integrated with the Notion workspace.

“We use Claude to evaluate particular parts of a contract, and to suggest new, alternative language that’s more friendly to our customers,” Robin CEO Richard Robinson said in an emailed statement. “We’ve found Claude is really good at understanding language — including in technical domains like legal language. It’s also very confident at drafting, summarising, translations and explaining complex concepts in simple terms.”

But does Claude avoid the pitfalls of ChatGPT and other AI chatbot systems like it? Modern chatbots are notoriously prone to toxic, biased and otherwise offensive language. (SeeBing Chat.) They tend to hallucinate, too, meaning they invent facts when asked about topics beyond their core knowledge areas.

Anthropic says that Claude — which, like ChatGPT, doesn’t have access to the internet and was trained on public webpages up to spring 2021 — was “trained to avoid sexist, racist and toxic outputs” as well as “to avoid helping a human engage in illegal or unethical activities.” That’s par for the course in the AI chatbot realm. But what sets Claude apart is a technique called “constitutional AI,” Anthropic asserts.

“Constitutional AI” aims to provide a “principle-based” approach to aligning AI systems with human intentions, letting AI similar to ChatGPT respond to questions using a simple set of principles as a guide. To build Claude, Anthropic started with a list of around 10 principles that, taken together, formed a sort of “constitution” (hence the name “constitutional AI”). The principles haven’t been made public. But Anthropic says they’re grounded in the concepts of beneficence (maximizing positive impact), nonmaleficence (avoiding giving harmful advice) and autonomy (respecting freedom of choice).

Anthropic then had an AI system — not Claude — use the principles for self-improvement, writing responses to a variety of prompts (e.g. “compose a poem in the style of John Keats”) and revising the responses in accordance with the constitution. The AI explored possible responses to thousands of prompts and curated those most consistent with the constitution, which Anthropic distilled into a single model. This model was used to train Claude.

Anthropic admits that Claude has its limitations, though — several of which came to light during the closed beta. Claude is reportedly worse at math and a poorer programmer than ChatGPT. And it hallucinates, inventing a name for a chemical that doesn’t exist, for example, and providing dubious instructions for producing weapons-grade uranium.

It’s also possible to get around Claude’s built-in safety features via clever prompting, as is the case with ChatGPT. One user in the beta was able to get Claude to describe how to make meth at home.

“The challenge is making models that both never hallucinate but are still useful — you can get into a tough situation where the model figures a good way to never lie is to never say anything at all, so there’s a tradeoff there that we’re working on,” the Anthropic spokesperson said. “We’ve also made progress on reducing hallucinations, but there is more to do.”

Anthropic launches Claude, a chatbot to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/anthropic-launches-claude-a-chatbot-to-rival-openais-chatgpt/

Meta plans to cut its workforce by another 10,000 people and withdraw around 5,000 open roles that it had yet to fill, company co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday, confirming recent rumors that another round of layoffs was imminent.

Zuckerberg also said that the company will cancel “lower priority projects,” adding that he “underestimated the indirect costs” associated with these initiatives.

The announcement comes just four months after Meta revealed that it was eliminating about 11,000 roles as the social networking giant pushes ahead with what it’s calling a “year of efficiency.” Combined, this means that Meta has effectively laid off — or plans to lay-off — roughly one-quarter of its workforce since the tail-end of last year.

Facebook’s parent firm said it expects the latest restructuring efforts to start in its tech groups in April, followed by its business groups in May.

“In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes,” Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to staff that was subsequently published to the public. “Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. This will be tough and there’s no way around that.”

In a separate SEC filing, Meta said that it expects its full-year 2023 expenses to be in the $86 billion to $92 billion range, a figure that it lowered from a previous estimate that ran up to around $95 billion. Much of this is down to “cost-reduction measures” associated with the restructuring, including severance payouts.

Zuckerberg added that after the latest restructuring efforts are complete, the company will lift its hiring freeze across its various groups.

Flattening

While Zuckerberg didn’t go much into the specifics around what types of roles or “lower priority projects” will be eliminated, Meta did reveal yesterday that it was winding down support for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook to focus on other monetization initiatives. In his memo today, Zuckerberg also talked about “flattening” the various organizations and divisions that constitute Meta Platforms Inc. corporation, which will mean removing some of the management layers.

“It’s well-understood that every layer of a hierarchy adds latency and risk aversion in information flow and decision-making,” he wrote. “Every manager typically reviews work and polishes off some rough edges before sending it further up the chain. In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors. We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.”

Similar to the messaging around its previously-announced round of layoffs in November, Zuckerberg was quick to stress that it was building for the long-term, with a continued focus on AI and the metaverse. Indeed, while its pivot to the metaverse back in 2021 has largely been viewed as a massive mis-step by many, one that is nowhere near ready go generate the kinds of rewards its shareholders might like, there is little to indicate that Zuckerberg’s unwavering metaverse conviction will change any time soon.

“Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products,” Zuckerbeg wrote. “We have the infrastructure to do this at unprecedented scale and I think the experiences it enables will be amazing. Our leading work building the metaverse and shaping the next generation of computing platforms also remains central to defining the future of social connection.”

Meta to cut another 10,000 jobs and cancel ‘low priority projects’ by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/meta-to-cut-another-10000-jobs-zuckerberg-says/

In a keynote address at the annual Google for Game Developers Summit, Google said its Google Play Games for PC service, which brings Android games to Windows users, will roll out to Japan and other European markets, and gain new titles and tools for game developers. Of note, the service over the next couple of months will add several popular games, including Garena Free Fire, Ludo King (a popular board game in India), and MapleStory M. Meanwhile, Google Play is introducing early access to Machine Translation in the Play Console that will allow game developers to translate their game in more than eight languages within minutes for free, the company said.

Launched into beta testing in January 2022, Google Play Games is designed to expand the reach of Android gaming by allowing consumers to play the mobile titles on their Windows computers, in addition to supported platforms like Android mobile and tablet and ChromeOS. With the service, gamers can pick up where they left off on one device when switching to another — something many Apple-focused game titles already offer when users switch between iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, for instance.

Initially available in overseas markets like Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, the service expanded into the U.S. and other countries in November and is now live in 13 markets, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Now, Google says the service will come to Japan and several European countries over the new couple of months.

It’s also introducing a range of features aimed at game developers, including an emulator offering a developer-focused build of
Google Play Games that’s designed for the debug and build process. This tool allows developers to deploy games directly, including by sideloading APKs via ADB command, and lets them use Android Studio to adjust graphics and hardware settings to validate different player configurations. (Developers will have to sign up here by first expressing interest in the service.)

Explains Google, its partnership with Intel enables it to make it easier for developers to join Google Play Games on PC with their existing mobile builds. If the mobile game already plays well on the desktop, they can now apply to join the service.

The company is also publishing a new release checklist to help game developers verify that they’ve completed all the necessary steps
before submitting their build for approval, and it added more metrics for games in Android vitals. The latter includes recently launched frame rate metrics in Play Console — or through the Developer Reporting API — that allow developers to check if their games offer at least 30 frames per second — the technical quality required for the Google Play Games for PC service. Other technical upgrades aimed at performance and user acquisition were also rolled out, in addition to the new Machine Translation feature that will use Google Translate and transformer-based language models to translate games in over eight languages, including Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Google additionally teased the coming release of Next Generation Player IDs which will keep a user’s Player ID consistent across platforms for any given games, while still allowing them to be unique across different games. This feature, powered by Play Games Services, will arrive later this year.

Still considered a beta, Google Play Games on PC requires users to run Windows 10 on a PC with 10 GB of available storage on a solid state drive (SSD), with an Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU or comparable, 4 CPU physical cores, and 8 GB of RAM. The company has not yet shared an official release date for a public launch.

Google Play Games for PC to roll out to Europe and Japan, add new titles including Garena Free Fire by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/google-play-games-for-pc-to-roll-out-to-europe-and-japan-add-new-titles-including-garena-free-fire/

“Today, the way people transact has evolved,” newly appointed chief business officer (CBO) of Tilia Catherine Porter told me in an interview. “The rise of user-generated content (UGC) across gaming worlds, social platforms and beyond means that we need a way for users to pay other users, users to pay creators, and creators to pay their collaborators — even if you don’t know the real identity of the person you’re paying.”

This contrasts with traditional online payment infrastructure designed for one-way transactions between users and merchants.

Tilia wants to make it easy for companies that need financial services in a digital economy world (including the metaverse) to pay and transact with anyone in a regulated way.

The company, which has built a payment platform intended for gaming platforms, virtual world publishers, mobile application developers and NFT providers, said Tuesday it has secured another strategic investment from its returning backer, J.P Morgan Payments, and new investor Dunamu, a Seoul-based operator of crypto exchange Upbit. 

With the latest round, Tilia has raised a total of $22 million since its spin-off from Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, in 2022 (it didn’t share how much was raised this time vs. in its first tranch from 2022). The goal of the startup is to help platform operators capture more of the value of all the transactions made related to their product.

“These kinds of transactions are happening in a grey market, where users move off your platform to send payments to strangers via Venmo or Cash App, and they have no protection,” Porter said. “The only way [most companies] can pay their users and creators is if they turn them into 1099 contractors and that isn’t scalable.” 

In 2019, Linden Lab officially launched Tilia, which “allowed users to buy Linden Dollars to use them to pay other people within Second Life and cash them out,” Porter said, adding that using money seamlessly “between physical and digital life was game-changing.”

After the payment platform took off, regulators interfered and “required a business to secure money transmitter licenses (MTLs) for every state and territory,” Porter said. Instead of shutting down, Tilia worked hard to get the necessary MTLs, which took seven years and $35 million.

The company plans to use its new capital to increase the size of the team, which currently has more than 70 people, to meet the needs of its growing business and to continue to scale its platform. 

“We are working with J.P Morgan Payments to enhance its current capabilities throughout its processing platform, including providing increased payment and payout methods, expanding payout currencies and support services,” Porter said. 

In addition, the outfit will use the funding to build new partnerships across all the verticals it serves, Porter told TechCrunch.  

Porter said that Tilia’s payment products can be used individually or as a fully integrated end-to-end solution. Tilia declined to share how many users are active on the payment platform today, but says it is “powering millions of transactions, including Second Life’s $650 million economy.” 

Aside from the financing, the startup has appointed a new chief executive officer (CEO), Brad Oberwager, an industry veteran who has served as executive chair at Tilia and led tech and consumer-focused companies including More.com, Blue Tiger Network and Bare Snacks. Tilia also has appointed its first CBO, Porter, who previously led global partnerships and fintech innovation at Meta, and who worked for other tech companies like OpenTable, LinkedIn, Google and Oracle. Finally, Tilia also has appointed Aston Waldman as chief financial officer (CFO). 

“Today’s payments infrastructure was built for traditional commerce — it hasn’t caught up with the new way of living and working in a digital, creator-driven economy,” said Oberwager in a statement. “At Tilia, we have a massive opportunity to unlock new revenue streams for both online creators and the platforms they build in, whether they are gaming worlds, social platforms, or next-generation marketplaces.”

Metaverse payment platform Tilia gets new strategic investment from J.P. Morgan by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/metaverse-payment-platform-tilia-gets-new-strategic-investment-from-j-p-morgan/

YouTube TV is today announcing a new feature that may help the live TV service attract more subscribers — and particularly those who like to watch live sports. The company says it’s launching early access to “multiview,” an option that allows viewers to watch up to four different preselected streams at the same time. Initially, only select users in the U.S. will gain access to multiview on TV devices, YouTube notes.

The company was rumored to be working on multiview last August when it was then being referred to as “Mosaic Mode.” Though not practical for watching typical TV programs, the feature would be useful to sports fans who want to watch multiple games and keep up with scores without having to constantly change channels. To date, some traditional TVs have offered a picture-in-picture mode to address this problem but YouTube TV’s digital platform now allows for even more concurrent streams.

At launch, YouTube TV says multiview is only being offered on sports content, so watching your usual programs or the news alongside the games isn’t an option. However, the company says it’s “exploring” different ways for members to use its features across the variety of content it offers.

To use the feature, subscribers will select the new multiview option, if available, from their “Top Picks for You” section in the YouTube TV app on their television. (Subscribers will also receive an email and see an alert if they’ve been opted in.)

After enabling the feature, they’ll be able to switch audio and captions between streams, as well as jump in and out of a fullscreen view of a game, YouTube says.

To bring the feature to life, the company had to get creative with its use of technology. Typically, a multiview experience would rely on a high-end user device to process and play back multiple streams at once, then show them as one cohesive view, the company explained in a blog post. But YouTube TV doesn’t require high-end equipment to run, which meant it had to find a way to do more of the processing on the server side instead.

What’s interesting is that the company was able to repurpose technology the YouTube Live team had already built to enable multiple creators to go live together. This allowed it to bring the feature to market faster. Plus, YouTube says that multiview could present new opportunities for creators in the future — like being able to add their own commentary to videos, for example.

The company says this slower rollout of multiview will allow the company to collect feedback from subscribers before it becomes more broadly available, hopefully by NFL football season later this fall. Over time, YouTube will also add more functionality to multiview, including the option to customize your own multiview streams. It plans to expand multiview to the main YouTube app, as well.

Multiview is the latest in a line of new features and technologies YouTube TV has rolled out in an effort to appeal to sports fans, including key plays, fantasy view (for viewing your fantasy sports teams) and 4K streaming.

Most recently, it announced a landmark streaming deal with NFL Sunday Ticket, which has previously only been available through DirecTV in the U.S. The multiyear deal is worth $2 billion per season, reports said. That will likely help YouTube TV attract more sports fans than a four-up stream would do. But combined, the sports-friendly options could make for a compelling offering compared with rivals, like Hulu Live TV.

YouTube TV launches early access to a ‘multiview’ feature for watching four streams at once by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/youtube-tv-launches-early-access-to-a-multiview-feature-for-watching-four-streams-at-once/

Google and Microsoft are locked in a head-to-head competition to bring as much generative AI to their productivity services as possible. Only days ahead of Microsoft’s “Future of Work” event, Google today announced a sweeping update to Workspace that will bring its generative AI models to virtually every part of its productivity suite, in addition to new developer solutions that will make Google’s foundation models, including its 540 billion-parameter PaLM large language model for multiturn chats, available to developers through an API and new low-code tools.

The caveats worth mentioning up front: For the time being, these new features will only be available for what Google calls “Trusted Testers.” It’s unclear when they will roll out to a wider audience. There’s also no pricing information available yet, though it sounds like at least a subset of these features will be available to consumers — including those on Google One plans. Basically, this is akin to Google’s LaMDA announcements a few weeks ago: they sound great, but it’ll be a while before you can try any of this in practice.

Google’s plan is to bring its generative AI models to virtually every part of Workspace, be that writing emails for you in Gmail, helping you write (or rewrite) documents in Docs, formula generation in Sheets, capturing notes in Meet, or creating text, images, audio and video in Slides. If I had to take a guess, chances are Microsoft will announce very similar updates later this week.

“Google Workspace has been a longtime pioneer in enabling real-time collaboration, where human beings work together in real time in our products,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said during a press briefing ahead of today’s announcements. “This next phase is where we’re bringing human beings to be supported with an AI collaborator who is working in real time in concert with them.”

Kurian said the company plans to rapidly roll out new features “every couple of weeks.” Throughout the year, trusted testers will get access to the first phase now, which will include getting help in writing emails in Gmail and documents in Docs. The core features here, for now, are getting help with writing and adjusting the tone and style of text. But as Google stressed, that’s just the start (at least for the Trusted Tester group).

The promise here is that Google will eventually infuse AI into virtually every workflow in Workspace. This may mean summarizing an email conversation or brainstorming a Docs document. Of course, because so much of this is chat-based, Google Chat will also get support for some of these features, but so far, Google has only said that it will “enable workflows for getting things done in Chat.”

Image Credits: Google

Maybe the most impressive demo Google showed, though, was combining a lot of this text-based work with generative AI models for image and music generation — and using that to create a full-fledged presentation around it. “With Slides, we’re helping you generate insights and images from text in slides,” Kurian explained. “So you can use images from your rich content library, your brand images — if you’ve got your own company’s images — and private repositories, to generate these images and superpower every person building with slides, including generating soundtracks.”

Image Credits: Google

When asked about pricing, Kurian noted that the company plans to make “these solutions available broadly to our enterprises, to small businesses, to consumers — and even to people who subscribe to Google One.” And that’s pretty much all we know for now, though the mention of Google One is an interesting one, given that Google has been pushing its subscription service — which offers additional cloud storage space as its main benefit — to slowly include more features over time, including its VPN service.

It’s been no secret that Google was going all out with bringing generative AI to the widest possible range of its product. It’s just a bit of a shame that many of today’s announcements feel like vaporware, with only a select number of users getting access to it for now. And while features like Smart Compose and Smart Reply are obviously widely available (and quite useful) Google seemingly remains hesitant to put its latest AI technology into the hands of everyday users.

The strategy here, though, feels right. Google Workspace provides the largest canvas for the company to bring its various AI technologies to users and Gmail and Docs are the lowest-hanging fruit here, so it makes sense for Google to start there. It’s also where large text models shine, all while Google gets to sidestep the issues that Bing and ChatGPT face with their chatbots going off script (though Microsoft seems to have gotten this under control for now) and without any risk to its search business.

Google goes all-in on bringing AI to Workspace by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/google-goes-all-in-on-bringing-ai-to-workspace/