Latest AI News
OpenAI Could Reportedly Integrate Sora AI Video Tool Into ChatGPT
OpenAI is reportedly planning to bring the capabilities of its Sora artificial intelligence (AI) model to ChatGPT. As per the report, the San Francisco-based AI giant wants to add video generation to its main chatbot app's arsenal. The move is interesting given that the company is yet to fully roll out the Sora app globally. On the other hand, if video generation were added to ChatGPT, it could play a role in increasing the platform's popularity, but also negatively impact the Sora app's adoption.
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Anthropic Launches Institute to Study Societal Risks of Powerful AI
The company has launched a new institute to study the societal risks of powerful artificial intelligence as rapid advances reshape economies
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NVIDIA to Invest $26 Bn in Open-Weight AI Models Over 5 Years
The plan comes as NVIDIA launched a 120-billion-parameter model that runs agent-based AI systems at scale.
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NTT DATA Launches NVIDIA-Powered Enterprise AI Factories for Production-Scale AI
The new AI factories integrate NVIDIA NeMo and NIM to help enterprises deploy secure, agentic AI at scale.
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Bosch SDS and NxtGen Partner to Launch Sovereign AI Cloud
The initiative aims to bring digital twin-driven manufacturing intelligence to the Indian industry.
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India’s Genrobotics Lands Singapore Water Agency Deal for Robotic Sewer Systems
“Our technology was engineered for the most complex environments, and Singapore’s validation confirms that our solutions meet the highest global standards for safety and efficiency.”
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AI ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood put out the worst song I’ve ever heard
When the production company Particle6 debuted itsAI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwoodlast fall, the move was not warmly welcomed by Hollywood. “Good Lord, we’re screwed,” Golden Globe winner Emily Bluntsaidin an interview with the industry publication Variety. “Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop.” If only Particle6 followed Blunt’s advice. Instead, the company has put out a music video for its AI character, featuring a song called “Take the Lead.” This is not clickbait. Upon listening to it, I actually think it is the worst song I have ever heard. I was prepared for Norwood’s musical debut to sound something like “How Was I Supposed to Know?”, the AI-generated song attributed to the digital persona Xania Monet, which turned heads when it made it onto the Billboard R&B charts. Xania Monet’s AI-generated music isn’t my cup of tea, even if its lyrics are supposedly written by a real person — I personally prefer music that could exist without an AI music generator likeSuno. But Norwood’s song has unlocked a new level of AI cringe. Eighteen people contributed to the video for “Take the Lead,” including designers, prompters, and editors. Yet the song itself is about Tilly’s challenges as an AI-generated character who critics underestimate, because they believe she is not human. “They say it’s not real, that it’s fake,” Norwood snarls at the camera. “But I am still human, make no mistake.” That is, to put it gently, not true. Music does not have to be relatable to everyone, but perhaps it should be relatable to at least one person. What’s most impressive about Norwood’s song is that the AI character’s team managed to create a song about something that literally no human will ever experience, because no person can connect with the feeling of being disregarded for being an AI. The song, which sounds like a Sara Bareillis rip-off, opens with the lines, “When they talk about me, they don’t see/The human spark, the creativity.” The song builds as Norwood affirms to herself, “I’m not a puppet, I’m the star.” Then comes the chorus, in which Norwood appeals to her fellow AI actors: Actors, it’s time to take the leadCreate the future, plant the seedDon’t be left out, don’t fall behindBuild your own, and you’ll be freeWe can scale, we can growBe the creators we’ve always knownIt’s the next evolution, can’t you see?AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key In the video, Norwood struts down a hallway in a data center, which is perhaps the only part of the video grounded in any element of honesty. When the second chorus hits with a predictable key change, she instead walks across a stage, looking out into a stadium of cheering fake people who give her an undeserved moment of “triumph.” You could make the argument that Norwood is trying to appeal to actors at large and not just other AI characters. But the outro leaves no question that this is, in fact, a rallying cry from Tilly to her AI brethren: Take your power, take the stageThe next evolution is all the rageUnlock it all, don’t hesitateAI Actors, we create our fate We do not need this. We do not need music from an AI persona addressing other AI personas with a hopeful anthem about working together to prove judgmental humans wrong. Twenty years ago, the influential music publication Pitchfork gave Jet’s album “Shine On” a 0.0 out of 10. Instead of writing a review, they just embedded a YouTube video ofa monkey peeing into its own mouth. The Jet album isn’t abhorrent, but Pitchfork editor Scott Plagenhoefexplained in a 2024 interviewwhy the site’s writers had been so angry about it all those years ago. “Seeing mainstream rock music, which of course most of us had grown up with a fondness for, become so knuckle-dragging and Xeroxed was disappointing,” he said. These are the same complaints that artists have today about AI-generated works — these productions ring hollow and simply reproduce the work of artists past. “‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor; it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors, wrote in astatementlast fall. “It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry. While Jet was taking inspiration from older rock groups to make its “knuckle-dragging and Xeroxed” music, Tilly Norwood is literally derived from AI models that could not exist without the training data that tech companies took from artists without their consent. I think Pitchfork jumped the gun. Twenty years later, they finally have a worthy subject.
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Meta Unveils Four Custom MTIA Chips to Power AI for Billions
The chips are built to handle a wide range of AI workloads, including recommendation systems, generative AI training and large-scale inference.
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Lovable says it added $100M in revenue last month alone, with just 146 employees
Lovablecrossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue in February, the Stockholm company confirmed to TechCrunch. But it declined to say whether it is stillprojecting to reach $1 billion ARR by year’s end, saying its focus is on “helping builders scale their impact with our platform.” Alongside Cursor, Mercor, and others, Lovable is part of a wave of tools that make it easier to create websites and apps using natural language, a practice known as vibe coding. This initially resonated with individuals and startups, but the three-year-old company has been pushing hard to secure enterprise clients, which already include Klarna, HubSpot, and others. Lovable’s debut brand campaign, “Earworm,” which began running this week across social platforms, YouTube, and connected TV, still speaks to mainstream users. The film follows a woman who can’t rid herself of a song — performed by Swedish bandBoko Yout— until she finally opens Lovable and builds it into a working app. The creative team behind the campaign built the band app that’s featured in the film using Lovable itself as a functional, live product, in fact. “The purpose of this brand campaign is to inspire the next generation of builders — non-technical people with great ideas that deserve to come to life,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. That overarching message is one of the factors that have helped Lovable attractsome 8 million usersandbecome a unicornin less than a year after its launch. But the prospect that it could also secure enterprise dollars likely played a key role in boosting its valuation to$6.6 billion. More than half of Fortune 500 companies are using Lovable to “supercharge creativity,” co-founder and CEO Anton Osikadeclared at Web Summit last November. The company has added a range of dedicated features — often security-related — to convince businesses to use it for more than prototyping and keep them from canceling over time. Disclosing ever-increasing ARR numbers is also a way for the company to show its success is not fading. It had previously reported$100 million ARRlast July,$200 millionlast November, and$300 millionin January, which suggests that its revenue growth has been accelerating in recent months despite the rise of AI coding tools from major AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI. Neither Claude Code nor Codex is a vibe-coding platform, and the notion that they could create full apps as seamlessly may be overrated, but their parent companies may eventually decide to compete with Lovable, which is built atop their models. However, Osikahas shown little concern, and the company’s latest usage metrics offer some support for that confidence. Its most recent user spike was tied to a specific promotion — Lovable’s SheBuilds initiative for International Women’s Day on March 8, when the whole platform was free for one day. “We saw various records set,” the company told TechCrunch. “One we’re most proud of is that over 500,000 projects were built or updated on Lovable that day (compared to a typical daily average of [approximately] 200,000).” Also notable is the fact that Lovable achieved $400 million ARR with only 146 full-time employees, as chief revenue officer Ryan Meadowstold Business Insider. The company now plans to increase its headcount — and there’s room for it. Its recently inaugurated space in Stockholm hasspace for 300 people, and the company is also hiring in Boston, London, New York, San Francisco, and remotely. Even accounting for these70 open positions, Lovable’s revenue-to-employee ratio will likely remain well above industry norms. Research firm Gartner predicts that a new wave of unicorns will emergeby 2030 with $2 million ARR per employee. At $2.77 million in ARR per employee, Lovable has already surpassed that number.
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Netflix may have paid $600 million for Ben Affleck’s AI startup
Last week, Netflixannouncedthe acquisition of InterPositive, an AI company co-founded by Ben Affleck that helps filmmakers edit footage in post-production. This deal could be worth up to $600 million,according to Bloomberg, potentially ranking it among the streaming giant’s largest acquisitions ever. The most Netflix has ever paid for a single acquisition was approximately$700 millionfor the Roald Dahl Story Company. While Netflix has not publicly confirmed the details, sources tell Bloomberg that the actual cash payment may be lower, with the owners of InterPositive eligible for additional payouts tied to specific performance targets. InterPositive makes tools that help filmmakers work more efficiently in post production — addressing continuity issues or enhancing scenes, for example — but it doesn’t generate new content or use footage without permission. This acquisition fits Netflix’s broader push to integrate AI into content production. The company has alreadyused generative AIin its original shows and movies, including to create a building-collapse scene in the Argentine series “The Eternaut.” Rivals are moving in the same direction.Amazonis building in-house AI teams for film and TV projects, whileDisneyhas struck a deal with OpenAI. Not everyone is on board. Workers across the film industry have raised concerns about potential job losses and whether AI companies are compensating creators fairly for training data.
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Zendesk acquires agentic customer service startup Forethought
Zendesk is acquiring Forethought, a company that builds software to automate customer service interactions, thecompanies announced on Wednesday. The deal is expected to close by the end of March. While AI agents, particularly for customer service, may be all the rage now, Forethought was years ahead of its time. In fact, it wasthe 2018 winnerofTechCrunch Battlefield, our iconic startup pitch competition. For context, ChatGPT didn’t launch until late 2022. Following its Battlefield win, Forethought landed marquee customers like Upwork, Grammarly, Airtable, and Datadog, it said, and by 2025 was supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Forethought raised total funding of $115 million from backers like Blue Cloud Ventures, NEA, Industry Ventures, Neo, Village Global, and Sound Ventures, as well as angels like May Habib (Writer), Scott Wu (Cognition), Karan Goel (Cartesia), and Gwyneth Paltrow, the company said when itraised a $25 million round last year. Forethought AI co-founder and chairman Deon Nicholas called the acquisition a milestone in aLinkedIn post. “More than seven years ago, we set out with a simple but ambitious idea: AI could transform the customer experience. When we first launched Forethought at TechCrunch Disrupt, that vision felt bold—even a little crazy. Today, AI agents aren’t just transforming customer experience. They’re transforming every industry imaginable,” he wrote. Shortly before the acquisition was announced, Nicholas appeared onTechCrunch’s Build Mode podcast, where he discussed how he prepared to win Battlefield, how he landed his first customers, and what comes next for agentic tech, like browser control. By the way,applications for the 2026 TechCrunch Startup Battlefield are currently open. Zendesk, best known for its self-help customer service products, says it will continue to support Forethought’s existing customers and integrate the startup’s technology into its own AI products — including more specialized agents, self-improving AI, voice automation, and more autonomous capabilities. The company says the acquisition accelerates its product roadmap by more than a year. Zendesk has been privately held since November 2022, when it was acquired by a consortium led by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and Permira in a$10.2 billion deal. Not disclosing terms of this newest deal is pretty consistent with its pattern over time. Zendesk has made roughly a dozen acquisitions since its founding in 2007, and the few times it has disclosed a price, the figures were modest, including$29.8 millionfor live-chat company Zopim in 2014, and$45 millionfor analytics firm BIME in 2015.
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Ford’s new AI assistant will help fleet owners know if seatbelts are being used
Ford rolled out an AI assistant this week that can monitor and analyze millions of data points to help its Ford Pro commercial customers boost their bottom line. The bet, and one that most other automakers are making, is that there’s money to be made in software. Ford Pro AIdebuted at Work Truck Week in Indianapolis and is now available to all of its U.S.-based Pro telematics subscribers. The AI assistant is included in the subscription. Ford doesn’t disclose how many U.S. subscribers it has; it has more than 840,000 global subscribers. Ford Pro, which generated $66.3 billion in revenue in 2025, is a sensible target for the company as it seeks ways to give its paying customers more value. But it’s not its only one. Fordannounced earlier this yearat CES 2026 that it’s developing an AI assistant for owners of its passenger cars and trucks that will debut in the company’s smartphone app, before expanding to its vehicles in 2027. Ford emphasized to TechCrunch that this is not a mere chatbot. Instead, the company said its proprietary systems give subscribers detailed information about fuel consumption, seatbelt use, and vehicle health, not just a bunch of diagnostic error codes when something is wrong. It can also provide managers with information on idle times, speeding, and acceleration events across the fleet. Like its consumer AI assistant, Ford Pro AI is built off of Google Cloud and uses a number of AI agents. The secret sauce, per Ford, is its use of internal data from each customer’s fleet to reduce the potential of AI hallucinations and errors. Ford Pro, a business division that sales to Super Duty large trucks as well as commercial, government and rental customers, has become a moneymaker for the automaker. The Ford Pro business division reported a net income of $6.8 billion in 2025,according to its earnings report. The company said Ford Pro paid software subscriptions grew by 30% in 2025. Even as Ford rolls out AI tools for its customers, executive leadership has warned of impending job cuts because of the technology. Last year, CEO Jim Farleypredicted AIwould halve the number of white-collar jobs in the United States. In January, Farleysaidthat the U.S. needed essential workers to build and support the infrastructure needed to reach its AI moonshot goals.
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