Kyle Wiggers, Author at TechCrunch

A timeline of Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI — and the fallout

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 01:54:46 +0000

In a dramatic turn of events late Friday, ex-Y Combinator president Sam Altman was fired as CEO of AI startup OpenAI, the company behind viral AI hits like ChatGPT, GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, by OpenAI’s board of directors. Then, the company’s longtime president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, resigned — as did three senior OpenAI researchers. […]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella suggests that Sam Altman might return to OpenAI

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 01:22:36 +0000

In interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg TV tonight, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made it clear that it’s possible Sam Altman, who was fired from his role as CEO at OpenAI by the AI startup’s board of directors on Friday, could return to OpenAI in some capacity. That’s despite the fact that Altman announced this morning […]

Investors are souring on OpenAI’s nonprofit governance model

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 22:34:34 +0000

OpenAI was never quite like other generative AI startups — or other startups period, for that matter. Its governance structure is unique and what ultimately led to the abrupt ousting of CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Even after it transitioned from a nonprofit to a “capped-profit” company in 2019, OpenAI retained an unusual structure that […]

Most of OpenAI’s employees threaten to quit if Sam Altman isn’t reappointed CEO

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 14:55:46 +0000

The OpenAI saga continues. This morning, Ilya Sutskever, the AI startup’s chief scientist and board director, published a mea culpa of sorts on X (formerly Twitter). Sutskever was among those who pushed to abruptly remove former Y Combinator president Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI and demote Greg Brockman, the company’s president, from his position […]

LucidLink lands $75M for its on-demand file streaming tech

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 14:00:30 +0000

LucidLink, a startup offering a platform that enables teams to work on files without having to download or sync them, today announced that it raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Brighton Park Capital with participation from Headline, Adobe Ventures and Baseline Ventures. The tranche brings LucidLink’s total raised to $90 million […]

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 07:00:39 +0000

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies for more wide-ranging needs. While there is a more…nefarious side to ChatGPT, it’s […]

Sam Altman won’t return as OpenAI’s CEO after all

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 06:19:07 +0000

Capping off a tumultuous weekend at OpenAI that culminated in investors — and a contingent of employees — attempting to convince the company’s board to hire back former Y Combinator president Sam Altman after firing him on Friday, Altman won’t be returning as CEO, according to a report in The Information. Citing an internal memo […]

OpenAI’s board is no match for investors’ wrath

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 18:05:45 +0000

On Friday, the board of OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT and other viral AI-powered hits, did something unexpected but seemingly well within its right: it removed the company’s CEO, Sam Altman. But judging by how the situation’s unfolded, it seems that OpenAI’s investors and partners — and many of its employees — were more […]

OpenAI fires CEO Sam Altman, Airbnb acquires GamePlanner.AI, and Epic battles Google over antitrust

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 21:15:08 +0000

Howdy, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter that recaps the major tech industry happenings over the past week (or so). Microsoft’s Ignite conference, where the tech giant pitched its vision of a “copilot”-powered future, flooded the channels midweek. But there was plenty of note besides. In this edition of WiR, we […]

Who is Mira Murati, OpenAI’s new interim CEO?

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 23:15:42 +0000

In a surprising move, OpenAI today abruptly fired Sam Altman, its CEO and a member of its board of directors, and installed CTO Mira Murati as interim CEO. But who, exactly, is Mira Murati? Murati, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from Dartmouth College, previously worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs and then […]

Sam Altman ousted as OpenAI’s CEO

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:41:13 +0000

Sam Altman has been fired from OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that acts as the governing body for OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, GPT-4 and other highly capable generative AI systems. He’ll both leave the company’s board of directors and step down as CEO. In a post on OpenAI’s official blog, the […]

Meta brings us a step closer to AI-generated movies

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 19:37:02 +0000

Like “Avengers” director Joe Russo, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that fully AI-generated movies and TV shows will be possible within our lifetimes. A host of AI unveilings over the past few months, in particular OpenAI’s ultra-realistic-sounding text-to-speech engine, have given glimpses into this brave new frontier. But Meta’s announcement today put our AI-generated content future […]

Microsoft brings Copilot to Windows 10

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:00:17 +0000

Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot experience, is heading to Windows 10 in preview Starting with Windows 10 version 22H2, which will be available soon to users participating in Microsoft’s Windows Insider program, Windows 10 will gain more or less the same Copilot capabilities as Windows 11. Users will be able to ask Copilot questions and for […]

Codegen raises new cash to automate software engineering tasks

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:00:17 +0000

Jay Hack, an AI researcher with a background in natural language processing and computer vision, came to the realization several years ago that large language models (LLMs) — think OpenAI’s GPT-4 or ChatGPT — have the potential to make developers more productive by translating natural language requests into code. After working at Palantir as a […]

Microsoft launches a deepfakes creator at Ignite 2023 event

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 23:30:19 +0000

One of the more unexpected products to launch out of the Microsoft Ignite 2023 event is a tool that can create a photorealistic avatar of a person and animate that avatar saying things that the person didn’t necessarily say. Called Azure AI Speech text-to-speech avatar, the new feature, available in public preview as of today, lets […]

Microsoft renames Bing Chat to Copilot as it competes with ChatGPT

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 23:20:47 +0000

Everything’s coming up Copilot — including Bing. Today at Microsoft Ignite 2023, the company renamed Bing Chat, the AI-powered chatbot it launched on Bing earlier this year, to Copilot in Bing. Meanwhile, the premium, corporate-focused version of Bing Chat, which was previously called Bing Chat Enterprise, has also been rebranded to Copilot. Why the name […]

Microsoft unveils new AI tools Copilot Azure, Copilot for Service and Copilot Studio at Ignite event

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 23:15:32 +0000

Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI technologies, promises to be a big moneymaker for the company, with one analyst predicting that it could generate $10 billion in annualized revenue by 2026. Despite a staggered and somewhat confusing rollout, 40% of companies in the Fortune 100 were testing Copilot by fall, according to Microsoft CEO Satya […]

Martian’s tool automatically switches between LLMs to reduce costs

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:38:12 +0000

Shriyash Upadhyay and Etan Ginsberg, AI researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, are of the opinion that many large AI companies are sacrificing basic research in pursuit of developing competitive, powerful AI models. The duo blame market dynamics: when companies raise substantial funds, the majority usually goes toward efforts to stay ahead of rivals rather […]

Amazon brings its home robot to businesses

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:07:46 +0000

In an acknowledgement that cracking the home robotics market is hard, Amazon is bringing its Astro robot to a decidedly more corporate audience. The company today announced Astro for Business, which repurposes Astro as a security robot for small- and medium-sized business customers. Astro for Business adds several new capabilities to Astro, including the ability […]

Microsoft extends generative AI copyright protections to more customers

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:00:16 +0000

Microsoft is expanding its policy to protect commercial customers from copyright infringement lawsuits arising from the use of generative AI — but with a caveat (or several). Today during Ignite, Microsoft said that customers licensing Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed service that adds governance layers on top of OpenAI models, can expect to […]