Some of India’s biggest fintech startups are expanding into soundboxes, whose chimes are becoming millions of Indian merchants’ new “ka-ching.” Paytm, which leads the market with over 7 million merchants, launched an advanced soundbox that accepts Rupay, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. The device allows cardholders to tap and pay …

YouTube Music recently redesigned its “Now Playing” screen, adding a comments section where users can read and write comments from the app. The latest update adds larger cover art, accessible buttons, and more. A company spokesperson said iOS and Android devices will get the redesign today. YouTube Music added a …

Google removed Chamet, a popular but controversial live video chat app, from the Play Store. Reported that the app violated its user-generated content (UGC) policy. The company did not comment but cited its policy that “Apps whose primary purpose is featuring objectionable UGC will be removed from Google Play.” The …

OpenAI wants ChatGPT in classrooms, despite its high risk of misuse and confusion. The company has suggested ways for teachers to use the system beyond its traditional role as a research assistant for procrastinating students. Dubious use case of unknown prevalence: plagiarism makes the chatbot controversial. Teachers worldwide have caught …

Inalife, a new startup, has created a digital legacy platform to help families preserve their memories, create an interactive family tree, and record messages for future generations, such as when a baby turns 18. The Hong Kong-based company launched its desktop app in July, attracting a few hundred users. Next …

A global law enforcement operation dismantled the Qakbot botnet this week, the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure. Qakbot, a banking trojan, is notorious for giving other hackers access to a victim’s network to install ransomware. In 18 months, Qakbot has enabled over 40 ransomware attacks …

BeFake, an AI-augmented social network based on Gen Z app BeReal, raised $3 million in seed funding. The app’s name, a play on BeReal’s authentic photo sharing among friends, implies the opposite. BeFake users grab photos with both the front and back cameras and customize them with AI using in-app …

Meta released FACET, a new AI benchmark, today to assess the “fairness” of AI models that classify and detect objects and people in photos and videos. FACET, a tortured acronym for “Fairness in Computer Vision EvaluaTion” with 32,000 images of 50,000 people labeled by human annotators, accounts for occupations and …

Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, and Intel-owned Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua led a $155 million Series C funding round for Tel Aviv-based AI21 Labs, which develops text-generating AI tools. Google and Nvidia joined. AI21 Labs’ total raised $283 million values the company at $1.4 billion, up from The …

One month after announcing its provisional measures to oversee generative AI, China approved the first large language model-empowered public services. Baidu’s Ernie Bot, ByteDance’s Doubao, Sogou founder’s Baichuan, and chatbots from Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Sciences labs are among eight generative AI applications registered with China’s cyberspace authority. …