Latest AI News
Why India's Tech Giants Believe AI Has Reached an Inflection Point
AI is increasingly becoming part of public services, agriculture, education and healthcare, not merely enterprise productivity.
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Forward Deployed Engineers are Testing Indian IT, Not Replacing It
As Microsoft and OpenAI ramp up enterprise deployment teams, Indian IT stocks have priced in disruption. But executives say the real test is whether Indian IT can move up the value chain before AI commoditises its core business.
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Why IBS Software Spun Off an AI Company Instead of Adding AI to SaaS
Everyone now has access to the same AI models, but IBS Software believes deep industry expertise will be the real competitive advantage.
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OpenAI bets on families as ChatGPT goes deeper into households
More than three years after ChatGPT’slaunchbrought generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families. OpenAI ishiringa dedicated product manager in San Francisco to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products. The role calls for experience building products for parents and families, and other trust-sensitive consumer experiences, according to the job posting. The hiring comes as ChatGPT’s audience continues to broaden beyond younger users. According to Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older globally rose to 31% in Q2 from 26% a year earlier, while the share of users aged 18 to 24 fell to 29% from 34%. In the U.S., nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier, the firm estimates. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about the job posting. A dedicated product role focused on families signals that OpenAI is beginning to think about its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as technology designed for households, said Ben Bajarin, chief executive of technology consultancy Creative Strategies. “This is similar to the path Google, Apple, and Meta eventually followed as their platforms became embedded in everyday life, but AI raises the stakes because the assistant is not just mediating content or devices,” he told TechCrunch. That shift also brings new trust and safety challenges. Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the hiring reflects both the maturation of OpenAI and a growing recognition that AI products used by children and teenagers require different safeguards than those designed for adults. “I see this as safety by redesign,” Balkam told TechCrunch. “You take the initial product or service that was released… not really with kids in mind… so this is a much-needed reaction and response.” The comments come as new research published this week by the Family Online Safety Institutefoundthat parents are underestimating how often their children use generative AI. While 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, 38% of children reported doing so themselves, according to the survey of more than 4,000 families in the United States and Australia. Balkam told TechCrunch that AI companies should build products differently for younger users, with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental oversight, and reminders to inform users that they are interacting with an AI — and not a human. The hiring also comes amid growing scrutiny of how AI companies protect younger users. OpenAI has facedmultiple lawsuitsfromparents allegingthat ChatGPTcontributed to harmsuffered by their children, including in casesinvolving suicide. In response to some of those concerns, OpenAI hasintroduced a series of safety measuresover the past year, includingparental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to better handle signs of distress, and, more recently, anoptional “Trusted Contact” featurethat can alert a family member or caregiver in cases of potential self-harm. AI companies, Balkam said, have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes made by social media platforms, which for years treated children much like adults before adding stronger safeguards amid mounting public pressure and regulatory scrutiny. The hiring also aligns with OpenAI’s broader efforts around families. In a recent workshop organized with the San Antonio Spurs Community Impact organization and the Positive Coaching Alliance, the companysaidit aimed to explore AI’s role in learning, coaching, and youth engagement. That said, the demographic shift is not unique to ChatGPT, though OpenAI’s audience is changing in some distinct ways. Sensor Tower estimates that users aged 25 to 34 account for 40% of the global app audiences for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, matching ChatGPT, compared with 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. Copilot, however, skews older, with 20% of its users aged 45 and above, compared with 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini, and 11% for ChatGPT. While ChatGPT remains relatively underpenetrated among older users, it is adding them faster than its rivals. The share of users aged 45 and above rose three percentage points year-over-year in the second quarter, compared with a two-point increase for Copilot and declines for Claude and Gemini, according to Sensor Tower. Among U.S. smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the widest reach at 32% in Q2, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4%, and Copilot at 2%. For Bajarin, OpenAI’s decision to hire a product manager focused on families signals where consumer AI is headed. As AI becomes a technology shared across generations, he expects companies to roll out family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, AI tutoring, and stronger safety controls.
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Apple Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Theft of Trade Secrets
The complaint names former Apple executives Tang Tan and Chang Liu and seeks damages along with the return of allegedly misappropriated confidential information.
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'Won't Part With Our Land': Why Bidadi Farmers are Not Buying Into Karnataka’s AI City Dream
The Karnataka government has proposed an AI City in Bidadi to cash in on the AI boom. But farmers in the region fear losing their land and their livelihoods.
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Meta Pulls AI Tool That Allowed Edits of Public Instagram Photos After Backlash
The company discontinued the feature within days of launch after criticism over consent and privacy in AI-generated image creation.
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Meta removes controversial AI feature on Instagram after backlash
Meta has axed a controversial feature that allowed users to modify photos from public Instagram accounts using AI. The feature, which was rolled out earlier this week along with a batch of other AI tools, “missed the mark” and is no longer available, according to the company. Earlier this week, MetaannouncedMuse Image, a new AI image generator built by Meta Superintelligence Labs, its dedicated AI unit. Meta promoted one feature that allowed individuals to generate images by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they wanted to reference. The feature, which wasn’t designed to alert a user if their photos were used in this way, prompted immediate backlash. TechCrunchwrote its own guideon how to disable the feature. Now Meta has reversed course. The company issued ablog postFriday announcing that it was removing the feature. Puck News founding partner Dylan Byers was the first to share thecompany’s decision. “Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” the company posted on its blog. “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.” TechCrunch reached out to Meta for more information and will update this article if it responds. Since its integration with social media platforms, AI has been misused with wild abandon — often togenerate naked images of female celebrities. Platforms have attempted to mitigate this trend, although the guardrails introduced have often fallen short. In the case of Meta’s newly nixed feature, it seems somewhat obvious that it would have been abused in this way. Indeed, Byers notes that the decision to do away with the feature came “amid scrutiny from users and talent agencies, including CAA.”
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Apple sues OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft
Apple filed alawsuitFriday against OpenAI over allegations of trade secret theft and breach of contract. The iPhone maker alleges that this misconduct, which it says reveals a pattern of theft from OpenAI employees who previously worked at Apple, was directed by OpenAI’s senior leadership, includingChief Hardware OfficerTang Tan. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Tan of using Apple’s confidential project code names during OpenAI’s recruiting process, asking job candidates to bring in Apple hardware components to their interviews, coaching departing Apple employees on how to evade the company’s security procedures, and asking for details about the company’s unannounced products. Before joining OpenAI, Tan had spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as VP of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch. The accusations come at a time when OpenAI is rumored to be developing itsfirst hardware product, which would likely compete with the iPhone. In April, industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuosuggested this device could be a smartphonethat would rely on AI agents instead of apps. If true, it would be one of the largest threats to Apple’s core hardware business to date. Apple’s former lead designer Jony Ive’s device startup iowas acquired by OpenAI last yearin a $6.5 billion deal to aid the AI company with its hardware ambitions. While io was named in the filing, Ive was not. Tan is not the only OpenAI employee referenced in the new complaint. Apple also alleges thatChang Liu,who spent eight years at Apple as a senior systems electrical engineer, failed to return an Apple-issued laptop after leaving the company for OpenAI in 2026 and had used the computer to download confidential Apple technical documents. Apple says in thecomplaintthat the stolen documents included information about unannounced technologies, features, and products, including technical specifications, engineering presentations, and proprietary project data. Liu is also accused in the lawsuit of sharing Apple’s confidential information with other Apple employees applying for jobs at OpenAI, advising at least one of them on what to study before their interview. Apple sent a letter to OpenAI in February to raise its concerns, and received no response, the company said in the complaint. It alleges that the behavior of these former employees is part of OpenAI’s strategy to extract Apple’s confidential information, which included asking Apple employees to bring designs and prototypes to their interviews, and answer questions about things like component and vendor selection processes. Apple says its ongoing investigation revealed that OpenAI and its partners have even used Apple’s confidential information while the AI model maker develops its own hardware product. For instance, the filing references a proprietary metal finishing technique that was used by OpenAI after it allegedly misled a partner into believing it had Apple’s permission to do so. Like many tech companies, Apple typically investigates potential trade secret theft or other improper activity by analyzing communications that took place on company-owned devices and reading through its server logs. By taking the case to court, Apple will have an opportunity to learn more about the extent of the alleged operation through the legal discovery process. Apple is asking the court to bar OpenAI from using or disclosing its trade secrets, require the company to return any confidential Apple materials, and preserve evidence related to the case. “This is the tip of the iceberg. Apple lacks visibility into what’s been happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized and exemplified by leadership,” the filing states. “As a natural result, OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.” In a prepared statement, Apple also said the following: “At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously. Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.” OpenAI was asked for comment. The filing is availablehere, or you can read it below. This story is developing and will be updated, and originally published at 1:32pm PT.
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Hugging Face’s CEO on why companies are done renting their AI
Loading the player… Open source AI is booming, according toHugging FaceCEOClem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he’s worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything. Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
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SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the biggest foreign IPO in US history, is urged to build new US fabs
The AI chip boom just produced its biggest Wall Street moment yet. SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chip giant,said Fridayit has raised $26.5 billion (KRW 40 trillion) in its U.S. market debut. SK Hynix sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADRs) at $149 each, structured so U.S. investors can buy in at roughly a tenth of what a full share costs in Seoul. This deal, the largest-ever U.S. debut by a non-American company, toppedAlibaba’s$25 billion IPO in 2014. The company begins trading on the Nasdaq today, Friday, July 10, under the temporary ticker SKHYV. Regular trading opens Monday, July 13, when the ticker officially becomes SKHY. So far, U.S. investors are lapping it up. Thestock opened at 14% over its IPO price, and the price was still rising in early trading on Friday. This even as it priced its U.S. shares at a 2.7% premium to its own three-day average back home in Seoul, according to itsKorea Stock Exchange filing. Yet, demand for the offering wasreportedlymore than seven times the available shares, per media reports. That’s especially amazing considering Korean companies have long traded at a discount to their global peers. That valuation gap is called the Korea Discount. Investors often cite factors such as complex corporate governance structures, low shareholder returns, regulatory uncertainty, and geopolitical risks related to North Korea to justify why companies from that country don’t command higher share prices. But SK Hynix clearly isn’t suffering from the Korea Discount and that’s because it makes memory chips, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM). HBM is a key component of AI GPUs processors. And right now, Nvidia relies on SK Hynix as one of its primary suppliers. Per its filing, the money raised from eager U.S. investors will go to three places: a new fab in South Korea (being built now to address the worldwide shortage of memory cause by AI); a new packaging facility in that country; and EUV scanners, the machines that make next-generation chips possible. Meanwhile, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stopped by a Micron event Thursday with a message for the broader chip industry, not just for U.S. memory maker Micron (who is one of SK Hynix’s biggest competitors). Lutnickreportedlysaid he’s already in talks with Samsung (the third major memory maker, worldwide) and SK Hynix about building new factories in the U.S. The idea being not to let South Korea continue to be the country that dominates this important tech. Micron, naturally, is in. Itannounced it plansto invest $250 billion in new U.S. manufacturing, a commitment the U.S. memory chip company says will create more than 90,000 jobs and keep leading-edge chip production on American soil. The timing of Lutnick’s request is notable beyond this U.S. IPO for SK Hynix: Both Korean chipmakersjust pledged more than $550 billionfor new manufacturing investment in South Korea.
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Open source AI matters more than ever, according to Hugging Face’s Clem Delangue
Open source AI is booming, according toHugging FaceCEOClem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he’s worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
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