Microsoft

Microsoft has benefited substantially from the rise of AI. Its partnership and close relationship with OpenAI has continued through 2024, as it looks to establish its Copilot chatbot as a go-to tool across its software and hardware offerings, even dedicating a button to it on future Windows device keyboards. TechCrunch covers those developments, and its other recent moves like unbundling Teams and Office and successfully defeating an antitrust challenge against its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

A researcher has found a bug that allows anyone to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts, making phishing attempts look credible and more likely to trick their targets.  As of this…

Security bug allows anyone to spoof Microsoft employee emails

FTC Chair Lina Khan was the youngest person appointed to her position when she assumed the job in 2021. But once her term ends in September —  after which she’ll…

FTC Chair Lina Khan on startups, scaling, and ”innovations in potential lawbreaking”

For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn’t isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s and eventually patented its modified version…

Enveda raises $55M to combine ancient remedies with AI for drug discovery

LinkedIn has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on data gleaned from their participation in LinkedIn Groups. The move comes more than three months after…

LinkedIn to limit targeted ads in EU after complaint over sensitive data use

Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights nonprofit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data…

Microsoft hit with EU privacy complaints over schools’ use of 365 Education suite

Microsoft, Meta, Intel, AMD and others have formed a new group to design next-gen interconnects for AI accelerator hardware.

Tech giants form an industry group to help develop next-gen AI chip components

Microsoft’s Copilot, a generative AI-powered tool that can generate text as well as answer specific questions, is now available as an in-app chatbot on Telegram, the instant messaging app.  Currently…

Microsoft’s Copilot is now on Telegram

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, was working improperly for several hours on Thursday in Europe. At first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it…

Bing’s API was down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…

Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup…

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.

Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system, launches Copilot+ PCs

Microsoft announced on Tuesday during its annual Build conference that it’s bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets. The partnership will allow Microsoft to bring Windows 365 and local…

Microsoft’s new ‘Volumetric Apps’ for Quest headsets extend Windows apps into the 3D space

Microsoft’s big focus at this year’s Build conference is generative AI. And to that end, the tech giant announced a series of updates to its platforms for building generative AI-powered…

Microsoft upgrades its AI app-building platforms

Microsoft wants to put its Copilot everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft renames its annual Build developer conference to Microsoft Copilot. Hopefully, some of those upcoming events…

Microsoft’s Power Automate no-code platform adds AI flows

Microsoft wants to make its brand of generative AI more useful for teams — specifically teams across corporations and large enterprise organizations. This morning at its annual Build dev conference,…

Microsoft intros a Copilot for teams

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Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

7:21 am PDT • May 17, 2024
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

Microsoft will launch its own mobile game store in July, the company announced at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Xbox president Sarah Bond shared that the company plans to…

Microsoft is launching its mobile game store in July

Microsoft and OpenAI have announced a $2 million fund to combat the growing risks of AI and deepfakes being used to “deceive the voters and undermine democracy.” This year will…

Microsoft and OpenAI launch $2M fund to counter election deepfakes

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Cloud revenue accelerates 21% to $76 billion for the latest earnings cycle

The numbers are in, and the cloud infrastructure market grew at a brisk pace this quarter driven by increasing interest in generative AI.

10:11 am PDT • May 3, 2024
Cloud revenue accelerates 21% to $76 billion for the latest earnings cycle

Microsoft has reaffirmed its ban on U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI tech. Language…

Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition

Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotics AI. At the end of February, the Windows maker spearheaded a massive $675 million Series B in…

Microsoft taps Sanctuary AI for general-purpose robot research

The UK is launching initial enquiries into Amazon and Microsoft over partnerships with AI companies Mistral, Anthropic, and Inflection.

UK probes Amazon and Microsoft over AI partnerships with Mistral, Anthropic and Inflection

CISA said the latest theft of government email — blamed on Russian government hackers — presents “a grave and unacceptable risk” to U.S. federal agencies.

US says Russian hackers stole federal government emails during Microsoft cyberattack

Can AI eat the jobs of the developers who are busy building AI models? The short answer is no, but the longer answer is not yet settled.

TechCrunch Minute: Google’s Gemini Code Assist wants to use AI to help developers

The tech giant secured a cloud storage server that was inadvertently spilling Microsoft internal data and credentials to the open internet.

Microsoft employees exposed internal passwords in security lapse

The tech world is incredibly focused on AI and its applications today, but artificial intelligence is hardly the only place where progress is being made. If you want to get…

TechCrunch Minute: Quantum computing’s next era could be led by Microsoft and Quantinuum

Microsoft has announced a new London hub for its recently unveiled consumer AI division. It will be fronted by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer Microsoft recently picked up from…

Microsoft AI gets a new London hub fronted by former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffmann

Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction. Using Quantinuum’s ion-trap hardware and Microsoft’s new qubit-virtualization system, the team was able to run more than 14,000…

Microsoft and Quantinuum say they’ve ushered in the next era of quantum computing