Tech

Alexa responds with “All systems operational” in the new Brief personality mode on an Echo Show. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Tired of Alexa’s constant chatter? Wish Amazon’s voice assistant would just get to the point without all the extra stuff? Maybe I’m just speaking for myself? Anyway, relief is finally here. Amazon is rolling out a new option to …

Enterprise software giant Atlassian is rolling out a new way for humans and AI agents to work together that it hopes will help teams produce “10x the work without 10x the chaos.” Atlassian announced “agents in Jira” on Wednesday. This update gives users of the company’s project management software Jira the ability to assign and manage work for their digital …

Electric trucking startup Harbinger has acquired autonomous driving software company Phantom AI, in an effort to vertically integrate more technology and create new revenue streams for the young company. The acquisition, which is Harbinger’s first, is part of the startup’s plan to steadily expand its portfolio beyond the electric truck chassis it’s been building and selling for the last year. …

Spotify is rolling out a new feature that’s meant to make transitions in between tracks even smoother. If you’ll recall, the streaming service released the ability to create customized transitions within playlists in August last year. It gave people a way to create uninterrupted progressions and eliminate awkward silences between songs. Now, Premium users will be able to make sure …

The video editor in Adobe Firefly is getting a new feature called Quick Cut that uses AI to edit footage and B-roll to create a first draft of the final video based on user instructions. Typically, you have to upload your footage and B-roll into a video editor, and manually arrange transitions. With Quick Cut, users can describe what they …

Amazon is introducing a new feature that will allow users to change the personality of its AI assistant, Alexa+. On Wednesday, the company launched three new Alexa+ personality styles — Brief, Chill, and Sweet — that will change the AI assistant’s tone. In the Brief style, Alexa will respond with shorter, direct responses, while the Chill style will see Alexa …

Dakotah Rice is stepping back into the founder’s seat. On Wednesday, he announced that his new company, the AI-native insurance brokerage Harper, has raised $46.8M million in a combined Series A and seed round. Previously, he founded the investment company Poolit, which closed in 2023. He spoke openly to TechCrunch about the collapse of that company, saying he never figured out …

After graduating from Cornell University, Christophe Gerlach spent nearly two years investing exclusively in HR tech startups for General Atlantic. Investing was exciting, but Gerlach was yearning to get back into entrepreneurship. While at Cornell, Gerlach (pictured above, right) built and sold a food delivery startup alongside classmate Pedro Bobrow (pictured above, left), a Brazilian native. Then in late 2022, Gerlach …

Uber is one step closer to going airborne. On Wednesday, the company previewed its air taxi booking service ahead of an expected launch in Dubai later this year. The inaugural Uber Air program will let travelers book Joby Aviation’s electric air taxis through a familiar process in the Uber app. The experience of booking an air taxi will be much …

Ahead of a full release at Mobile World Conference (MWC), Honor has teased the MagicPad 4 that it calls the world’s thinnest Android tablet. The new model is just 4.8mm thick (not counting that camera bump), a full millimeter thinner than the MagicPad 3 and slightly less than the 5.1mm iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S11, the company revealed. …