Tech

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it’s developing AI-powered smart glasses for its delivery drivers. The idea behind the glasses is to give delivery drivers a hand-free experience that reduces the need to keep looking between their phone, the package they’re delivering, and their surroundings. The e-commerce giant says the glasses will allow delivery drivers to scan packages, follow turn-by-turn walking …

Also, the micromobility startup spun out of Rivian, has landed a commercial deal with Amazon to supply the e-commerce company with thousands of its new pedal-assist cargo quad vehicles that are big enough to carry more than 400 pounds of packages and small enough to use a bike lane. Under the multi-year collaboration, the two companies will work on customizing …

Ever wonder if you’re talking to a real person online or just another bot? As bots increasingly outnumber humans online, leading to an explosion of deepfakes and AI-driven fraud, one company has a solution straight out of sci-fi: scanning your iris to verify your humanity.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Adrian Ludwig, Chief Security Officer and …

Cloud monitoring and security platform Datadog has solved an age-old joke: What’s up, dog? Datadog’s answer is not, “Not much, you?” Rather, the company launched a web dashboard that shows developers the status of dozens of services and tools like AWS, Cloudflare, OpenAI, and Slack — essentially letting them check whether major software providers are functioning properly. The tool is …

Several years ago, as a skunkworks team of engineers inside Rivian set out to develop an electric micromobility vehicle, one question loomed: “What do we build in-house?” Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in an interview recounting the early days of Also, which spun out of Rivian earlier this year. “We realized the only way to do this well …

Controversial dating safety apps, Tea and TeaOnHer, have been pulled from the Apple App Store. The apps’ removal was first spotted by the app store intelligence provider Appfigures, which told TechCrunch the two apps were removed from the App Store on Tuesday in all markets but remain live on Google Play. Reached for comment, Apple confirmed the apps’ removal, saying …

Some Instagram users are feeling cheated out of a new feature, as the photo and video sharing app on Wednesday announced the launch of custom icons — but only for its teen users. Teens can now choose from a set of custom icons that turn the traditional Instagram logo into new variations that can be used as the app’s icon …

Dating app giant Tinder announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its facial-verification feature to more users in the U.S.  The facial-verification feature, known as Face Check, requires new users to verify their identity by submitting a short video selfie. This initiative aims to reduce impersonation on the platform and ensure that people are not connected to bots or fake accounts. …

General Motors will add a conversational AI assistant powered by Google Gemini to its cars, trucks, and SUVs starting next year, the U.S. automaker said Wednesday during an event in New York City.  The Google Gemini rollout is one of several tech-centric announcements made at the automaker’s GM Forward event, and it will be one of the first to get …

Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, wrote in a memo to staff on Wednesday that the company will cut about 600 jobs from its superintelligence lab, according to a report from Axios. Meta declined to comment, but told TechCrunch that Axios’s reporting is accurate. As Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other companies race to build the most powerful AI systems, …