Ivan Mehta

Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web. You can reach out to him at im[at]ivanmehta[dot]com

Ivan Mehta

Latest from Ivan Mehta

Google said today it’s adding new AI-powered features such as a writing assistant and a wallpaper creator and providing easy access to Gemini chatbot to its Chromebook Plus line of…

Google adds AI-powered features to Chromebook

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion in a new funding round, it said today, as Musk shores up capital to aggressively compete with rivals including OpenAI, Microsoft…

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B from Valor, a16z and Sequoia

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

Google is launching a Gemini add-on for educational institutes through Google Workspace.

Google adds Gemini to its Education suite

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will…

Reddit reintroduces its awards system

The company said it is increasing the on-device capability of its Google Play Protect system to detect fraudulent apps trying to breach sensitive permissions.

Google adds live threat detection and screen-sharing protection to Android

Meta’s newest social network, Threads, is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months.

Threads finally starts its own fact-checking program

Google has built a custom Gemini model for search to combine real-time information, Google’s ranking, long context and multimodal features.

Google is adding more AI to its search results

Online travel agency Expedia is testing an AI assistant that bolsters features like search, itinerary building, trip planning, and real-time travel updates.

Expedia starts testing AI-powered features for search and travel planning

Over the weekend, Instagram announced that it is expanding its creator marketplace to 10 new countries — this marketplace connects brands with creators to foster collaboration. The new regions include…

Instagram expands its creator marketplace to 10 new countries

AI-powered tools like OpenAI’s Whisper have enabled many apps to make transcription an integral part of their feature set for personal note-taking, and the space has quickly flourished as a…

Buy Me a Coffee’s founder has built an AI-powered voice note app

Plinky lets you solve the problem of saving and organizing links from anywhere with a focus on simplicity and customization.

Plinky is an app for you to collect and organize links easily

Reddit — now a publicly-traded company with more scrutiny on revenue growth — is putting a big focus on boosting its international audience, starting with francophones. In their first-ever earnings…

Reddit tests automatic, whole-site translation into French using LLM-based AI

Bluesky has launched a new product roadmap for the coming months. The decentralized social network said on Tuesday that it is planning to introduce direct messages, support for videos, improved…

Bluesky to add DMs, video support and in-app custom feed curation

Meta is encouraging more users to post to its X rival Threads. In its latest experiment, the company is providing an easy toggle for users to cross-post from Instagram to…

Threads is testing cross-posting from Instagram globally

Working with brands is one of the primary ways artists and content creators can earn substantial income today. However, it’s not easy for creators to connect with brands, and companies…

Photo editing app VSCO launches marketplace to connect photographers with brands

Apple announced new iPads — two iPad Air models and the iPad Pro with M4 processor — at its “Let Loose” event on Tuesday. However, one of the important updates…

Apple finally places front camera on iPad on the landscape edge — like it should be

Bias in AI image generators is a well-studied and well-reported phenomenon, but consumer tools continue to exhibit glaring cultural biases. The latest culprit in this area is Meta’s AI chatbot,…

Meta AI is obsessed with turbans when generating images of Indian men

Last November, Adam D’Angelo found himself at the epicenter of one of the biggest controversies in the tech industry. The board of OpenAI — the $80 billion startup leading the…

Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo talks about AI, chatbot platform Poe and why OpenAI is not a competitor

Today, after months of testing, Google is rolling out labels in the Play Store to denote official state and federal government apps in more than 14 countries. This new label…

Google will now show labels in Play Store to denote official government apps

SoundCloud has launched a new set of playlists under the “Buzzing Playlists” moniker to highlight up-and-coming tracks from artists.

SoundCloud takes on Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature with new ‘Buzzing Playlists’

Users on TikTok can once again create music clips using tracks from Universal Music Group’s catalog, which features some of the biggest names in music today: Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish,…

TikTok gets Tay and Billie back with new UMG content licensing deal

Airbnb is introducing a summer update with new features for group booking as the company experiments with AI in customer service.

Airbnb releases group booking features as it taps into AI for customer service

Appointment scheduling service Calendly has redesigned its browser extension in a bid to improve schedule management and make scheduling faster.

Calendly revamps its browser extension as it seeks to do more than schedule meetings

After many users complained about their alarms ringing silently on iPhones, Apple told TechCrunch that it is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. Serpately, Wall Street…

Ring the alarm bells, the iPhone alarm isn’t working

The Browser Company, makers of the Arc web browser, released its Windows version today. The company started testing the Windows client in December, and it said that more than 150,000…

The Browser Company releases Arc for Windows

Yelp announced a new AI-powered chatbot today for consumers that helps them connect with relevant businesses for their tasks. The company joins a long list of organizations leaning into AI…

Yelp is launching a new AI assistant to help you connect with businesses

Meta’s Threads social network passed the 150 million monthly users mark recently, but the company is not slowing down its growth engine. To increase engagement, the social media giant is…

Meta confirms launch of a bonus program for creators on Threads

Threads and Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced today that Threads is launching a new feature that lets users filter out words and phrases from their feeds and mentions. The “Hidden…

Threads launches custom mute filters, teases controls for quote posts