Made by Google was this week, with a whole host of reveals from Google’s biggest hardware event. Google unveiled its new line of Pixel 9 phones, including the $1,799 Pixel 9 Fold Pro, advanced AI-powered photo editing tools, and the new Pixel Buds Pro 2, which come with Gemini AI. The company also announced Gemini Live, a conversational AI voice assistant designed to compete with OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode. There were a few problems with the live demo.
Epic Games has launched its rival iOS app store in the European Union. It is launching with games like Fortnite, Rocket League, Sideswipe and Fall Guys and is working with developers to publish their games on the Epic Games Store in the future. Fortnite’s return to iOS comes over four years after Apple first removed the game from its App Store, years of litigation and regulatory changes brought about by the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
X launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta with improved reasoning. Grok’s new AI model can now generate images on X, although access is currently limited to the social network’s Premium and Premium+ users. However, Grok’s image generation feature does not appear to have any guardrails for creating images of political figures, as is the case with similar products – and many users take advantage of this.
This is TechCrunch’s weekly recap, where we summarize the most important news stories of the week. Want to get this newsletter in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.
News
The award for the “most epic fail” goes to…: CrowdStrike accepted the award for Most Epic Failure at Def Con’s Pwnie Awards, just weeks after its software update caused a worldwide IT meltdown. At least they took it with humor. Read more
Waymo brings its driverless robot taxis to the highway: Waymo will begin testing its fully autonomous robotaxis on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area after receiving approval from California regulators to charge for autonomous rides on the freeway. Read more
20 years of competition with Google Maps: OpenStreetMap is a community-based platform that provides maps to businesses and software developers so they can rely less on proprietary products like Google—and the platform just celebrated its 20th anniversary. Read more
Productivity your way: If you want to stay productive while distancing yourself from the usual Big Tech players, we’ve rounded up some open-source alternatives to popular productivity apps like Calendly, Zoom, and Substack. Read more
The FBI is tracking radar: The FBI seized the servers of a ransomware and extortion gang called Radar (also known as Dispossessor). This is a rare success for the FBI, which has struggled to contain and mitigate the growing ransomware threat. Read more
Score is turned off: The dating app for people with good to excellent credit was shut down in early August, the company told TechCrunch. What was supposed to be just a pop-up app attracted so much interest from users that it stayed online for six months before it was finally shut down. Read more
Apple takes action against Patreon: Apple threatened to remove Patreon from the App Store if developers used unsupported third-party billing options or disabled transactions on iOS instead of using the in-app purchase system for Patreon’s subscriptions. Read more
California supports digital IDs: Residents of California will soon be able to store driver’s licenses or ID cards in the Apple Wallet or Google Wallet apps as the state works to roll out support for digital IDs in the coming months. Read more
More bad news for Byju’s: India’s Supreme Court has stayed a ruling halting bankruptcy proceedings against Byju’s – a victory for US creditors seeking to reclaim $1 billion from the once-celebrated and now-disgraced edtech startup. Read more
Earn money with Telegram: Telegram announced new ways for developers to earn money on its platform, including monthly paid subscriptions that users can purchase with the app’s digital currency to gain access to additional content from a developer. Read more
That’s a whoopee from me: Palo Alto Networks is facing a lot of heat for a recent trade show event where two women posed with lampshades on their heads. CEO Nikesh Arora apologized in a LinkedIn post, saying it was “not consistent with our values.” Read more
analysis
Will AI change art as we know it? The latest AI models can produce great demos, but will they really change the way people make movies and TV? A panel at SIGGRAPH explored the potential of generative AI and other systems to change the way media is created today. While filmmakers and VFX experts believe the usefulness of these tools could pave the way for movies in the short term, in the long term it could also change the medium beyond recognition. Read more
Pour one out for CrowdTangle: Journalists, researchers and politicians are complaining that Meta has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool that was used to track the spread of misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Its successor is less accessible and has fewer features, critics say, leaving many wondering why the company has shut down the useful tool just three months before a contentious US election that is already under threat from AI and misinformation. Read more
