Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Google on Wednesday launched its more affordable AI Plus plan in India as it seeks to compete on pricing with other low-cost AI offerings, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Go subscription. For new users in India, Google is offering AI Plus for ₹199 ($2.21) per month, for the first six months, after which you’ll have to pay ₹399 ($4.44) a month. The AI Plus plan gives users higher limits for Gemini 3 Pro and image editing model Nano Banana Pro; access to video generation in the Gemini and Flow apps; expanded access to deep research in NotebookLM; and 200GB of storage across…

Meta is planning to raise prices for its virtual reality devices, executives said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider.Metaverse leaders Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns told employees that the company must “make a shift” in its business model to ensure long-term sustainability. This will include measures such as price increases, accounting for new costs like tariffs, and extending the replacement cycle of its in-market devices, per the memo.”Our devices will be more premium in price going forward, but we’ll have a healthier business to anchor on and free ourselves from feeling existential about any singular device’s success,” Aul…

LONDON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Roche said on Wednesday its experimental oral drug giredestrant reduced the risk of breast cancer recurrence by ​30% compared with standard endocrine therapy, in what it said marked ‌the first big advance in hormonal treatment for the disease in over 20 years.The Swiss ‌drugmaker said detailed results from the phase III lidERA trial showed at three years, 92.4% of patients in the giredestrant arm were alive and disease-free versus 89.6% in the standard-of-care arm.The company had last month published only a ⁠brief summary of the ‌results, saying the primary goals were met.”When you talk about…

A Tel Aviv startup that uses AI agents to automate HR processes like onboarding and compensation has raised $24 million in funding.The HR platform from Shapes essentially offers an app store of AI-based HR tools.”It means that you can manage your employees your own way. You can install different apps and agents in order to do the job for you,” Shapes cofounder and CEO Arnon Nir told Business Insider.For example, an AI agent can proactively notify a member of HR that an employee is at risk of leaving, based on data points such as low salary, high performance, and recent…

A startup nabbing a $14 billion investment from one of the top tech companies seems like a good thing. The reality is a lot more complicated.Scale AI has faced a turbulent five months since Meta purchased a 49% stake in the startup, write BI’s Charles Rollet and Ben Bergman. Once a leader in the field of stress testing and perfecting AI models for Big Tech, Scale AI has faced pay cuts, poaching, and pivots since the Meta deal.It’s representative of how dealmaking with big players can be a double-edged sword in the age of AI.For some, like Scale AI cofounder…

London — Sperm from a donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive nearly 200 babies across Europe, an investigation by 14 European public service broadcasters, including CBS News’ partner network BBC News, has revealed.Some children conceived using the sperm have already died from cancer, and the vast majority of those who inherited the gene will develop cancer in their lifetimes, geneticists said.The man carrying the gene passed screening checks before he became a donor at the European Sperm Bank when he was a student in 2005. His sperm has been used by women trying to…

AWS executive Sarah Cooper has launched several companies and held roles at NASA and AWS, but she’s only ever formally interviewed for three jobs.Instead, Cooper told Business Insider that her career moves often begin with writing a proposal about the work she wants to pursue, either to a VC, a cofounder, or an executive leader, and that becomes the role she steps into.”I have a million ideas,” Cooper said. “It’s a blessing and a curse.”Cooper has seen a high rate of success with her proposals. She used them to invent both her previous and current roles at AWS.Cooper was previously…

In Silicon Valley, where bold technical bets abound, few bets look bolder than trying to break the grip of Nvidia’s CUDA, a software stack that’s quietly become the operating system of the AI boom.That’s what Modular, a startup founded by software gurus from Apple and Google, is trying to do.Cofounders Chris Lattner and Tim Davis have spent decades building the software plumbing that sits beneath the modern tech industry. Lattner is famous for creating Apple’s Swift programming language. He also built the software underpinning Google’s TPU AI chips, with Modular cofounder Tim Davis.They’re now aiming that expertise at CUDA itself.…

This summer, after Meta made a $14 billion investment in Scale AI and poached its 28-year-old founder, Alexandr Wang, and after A-list clients like OpenAI and Google halted work with the startup, a worker for Scale AI anxiously asked ChatGPT what it thought of his company’s fate. He knew the chatbot well, having tested it for vulnerabilities. Its prognosis was grim.”Scale AI will no longer exist as a credible independent entity within 24 months,” ChatGPT, which isn’t any kind of official authority, wrote. “Its infrastructure will be repurposed for Meta’s internal needs. Its client base will evaporate. Its role as…

Last month, “Walk My Walk” hit number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. The moody stomp-clap tune, with lyrics like “Every scar’s a story that I survived, I’ve been through hell, but I’m still alive,” has been played more than 8 million times on Spotify. The song wasn’t performed by a human artist — Breaking Rust, despite having the face of a handsome, rugged man in a cowboy hat on its Spotify profile, is an AI project. But there is a real person claiming that Breaking Rust’s work is a copycat: Blanco Brown, an artist who mixes country…