Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
After a second-quarter earnings beat, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared his thoughts on the company’s AI strategy, cautioning investors that AI chatbots can’t yet be thought of as the “new Google.” That is, AI chatbots, while potentially driving new leads to the travel and services business, aren’t entirely a replacement for the referrals that the dominant search engine brings. At least not at this time. “I think we’re still kind of feeling out the space,” the exec told investors on the Q2 earnings call. “The thing I want to caution is I don’t think that AI agents — I don’t…
Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it beat its quarterly revenue estimates, even though the company faced widespread backlash for choosing to embrace generative AI over human workers. Duolingo stock rose almost 30% on the news. In April, CEO Luis von Ahn shared that Duolingo would become an “AI-first” company, phasing out its use of contract workers. He also discouraged teams from hiring more employees, unless the team is unable to automate more of its work. With the use of generative AI, Duolingo introduced 148 new language courses, more than doubling its previous offerings. “Without AI, it would take us decades…
When shopping for a new TV, screen size is one of the first things you’ll need to settle on. Though large TVs have their benefits, not everyone wants a massive panel. If you need something more manageable, a 55-inch TV is a good middle ground. This size is small enough to fit in a variety of rooms but still large enough to showcase the benefits of 4K resolution. Some of the best 55-inch TVs start at less than $300, and many brands sell 55-inch versions of their top models with all the bells and whistles you’d get on a larger…
Eli Lilly, the maker of Zepbound and Mounjaro, said its experimental GLP-1 pill successfully helped adults with obesity lose weight in a Phase 3 trial, as the company moves closer to submitting the drug for approval from the Food and Drug Administration.In a news release Thursday, the drugmaker said the oral medication, called orforglipron, helped adults lose an average of 27.3 pounds in a 72-week trial.The pill showed “significant efficacy, and a safety and tolerability profile consistent with injectable GLP-1 therapies,” the release added.The results shared by Eli Lilly, which have not been peer reviewed and published as of Thursday…
X owner Elon Musk told advertisers in a live discussion on Wednesday that the platform plans to introduce ads in Grok’s responses, as reported by the Financial Times. The move would help power X’s struggling ads business following the departure of former CEO Linda Yaccarino. “Our focus thus far has just been on making Grok the smartest, most accurate AI in the world and I think we’ve largely succeeded in that,” Musk said during the broadcast. “So we’ll turn our attention to how do we pay for those expensive GPUs.” Musk told advertisers that X would allow marketers to pay…
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — There was a time, not that long ago really, when Joscelyn Roberson would combat the nerves that inevitably popped up before a major gymnastics meet by reminding herself of one very simple fact.“I could be like, ‘Oh no one’s watching me,’” the 19-year-old said with a laugh. “Like they’re watching Simone (Biles). They’re watching Jordan (Chiles). They’re watching Suni (Lee) and Jade (Carey). Like, they are not watching me.”Well, they are now.Biles, Lee, Carey and Carey are all on sabbatical from elite gymnastics, perhaps for good. And when Roberson salutes the judges during the first night…
AI startup Perplexity is powering a new AI-powered search engine on Truth Social, President Donald Trump’s social media platform. The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on its iOS and Android apps planned for “the near future.” Trump Media said in a press release that Perplexity’s tech provides “direct, contextually accurate answers with transparent citations” which will help Truth Social “exponentially increase the amount of information available” to users. Nonetheless, the social media platform maintains control over which sources of information the AI search engine draws…
Elad Gil isn’t just ahead of the curve — he practically lives there. Before most of the world had even asked ChatGPT its first question, Gil was writing early checks into companies like Perplexity, Character.AI, and Harvey. And that’s just a slice of the story. His track record includes seed or Series A investments in more than 30 unicorns and involvement with some of the most iconic names in tech — Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Notion, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, and many more. This October, Gil takes the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco for a fireside chat…
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A plane belonging to an air ambulance service provider crashed in a residential area just outside Kenya’s capital on Thursday, killing at least six people, according to a local official and the aircraft’s owner.AMREF Flying Doctors said that the mid-size jet, a Cessna Citation XLS, took off from an airport in Nairobi and was heading to the territory of Somaliland when it crashed.The service provider didn’t provide the number of casualties or a possible cause, saying in a statement that it was “cooperating fully with relevant aviation authorities and emergency response teams to establish the facts…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is vowing to “fix” the federal program for compensating Americans injured by vaccines, opening the door to sweeping changes for a system long targeted by anti-vaccine activists.Health experts and lawyers say updates are needed to help clear a backlog of cases in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, created by Congress in 1986 as a no-fault payment system for presumed vaccine injuries.But they also worry Kennedy’s changes will reflect his history as a leader in the anti-vaccine movement, which has alternately called for abolishing the program or expanding it to cover unproven…