Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

A platform for chatting and role-playing with AI-generated characters, Character.AI announced in a blog post on Monday that it is rolling out a slate of multimedia features. These features include AvatarFX, Character.AI’s video-generation model, plus Scenes and Streams, which allow users to create videos featuring their characters and then share them on a new social feed. “Character.AI started as 1:1 text chat and today we’re evolving to do so much more, inspired by what our users have told [us] they want to see on the platform,” the company wrote in the blog post. Character.AI began rolling out AvatarFX to subscribers…

Jony Ive is hoping to change the tech world again after pioneering some of Apple’s most popular products, including the iPhone — and he has the full support of Steve Jobs’ widow.Investor and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is a longtime friend of Ive and a financial backer of his design collective, LoveFrom, which he formed after departing Apple in 2019. Ive is now embarking on another technology journey with one of the most recognizable men in Silicon Valley, OpenAI’s Sam Altman.Ive and Altman announced May 21 that OpenAI would acquire Ive’s hardware startup, IO, to collaborate on an unknown AI…

Updated 1:13 p.m. Pacific: A Salesforce spokesperson told TechCrunch that Moonhub has not, in fact, been acquired (by the company’s definition of the term). Rather, Moonhub is shutting down, and only some of the company’s team — not the whole team, as MoonHub implied in its post about the news — will be joining Salesforce. The original story follows. Salesforce has quietly snapped up Moonhub, a startup building AI to vet and hire talent. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. In a post on Moonhub’s website on Monday, the company said that its entire Menlo Park, California-based team will…

(Reuters) -Elon Musk’s Neuralink said on Monday that it had raised $650 million in its latest funding round as its brain implant device enters clinical trials.”This funding helps us bring our technology to more people — restoring independence for those with unmet medical needs and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with brain interfaces,” Neuralink said.It has started clinical trials for the device, which has a chip that processes neural signals that can be transmitted to computers or phones, in three countries.According to the company, five patients with severe paralysis are using Neuralink to control digital and physical devices with…

Tomatoes distributed in three southern states are now the subject of a possibly deadly recall, according to the Food and Drug Administration.The recall, first announced by the FDA on May 2 for potential salmonella contamination, has now been upgraded to the most severe warning the federal agency issues.Williams Farms Repack LLC, based in Lodge, South Carolina, said the affected tomatoes were packaged and sold to wholesalers and distributors between April 23-28 under the name H&C Farms Label, the FDA reported.In a notice published online May 28th, the FDA labeled this a Class I recall − the highest recall risk level issued…

IBM on Monday said that it has acquired Seek AI, an AI platform that allows users to ask questions about enterprise data using natural language, for an undisclosed sum. Seek CEO and founder Sarah Nagy said that the startup’s technology will be a key part of Watsonx AI Labs, IBM’s new NYC-based AI accelerator, which IBM also announced today. “[W]e’ll scale our platform, deploy mission-critical solutions for IBM clients, empower the next generation of AI developers, and grow our team significantly,” Nagy wrote in a LinkedIn post. IBM’s acquisition of Seek comes as the former looks to grow its investments…

Millions of people are now using ChatGPT as a therapist, career advisor, fitness coach, or sometimes just a friend to vent to. In 2025, it’s not uncommon to hear about people spilling intimate details of their lives into an AI chatbot’s prompt bar, but also relying on the advice it gives back. Humans are starting to have, for lack of a better term, relationships with AI chatbots, and for Big Tech companies, it’s never been more competitive to attract users to their chatbot platforms — and keep them there. As the “AI engagement race” heats up, there’s a growing incentive…

PARIS (AP) — Top-ranked Jannik Sinner’s latest dominant performance at the French Open was a 6-1, 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 17 Andrey Rublev on Monday night to reach the quarterfinals and extend his Grand Slam winning streak to 18 matches.Sinner is a three-time major champion who won the U.S. Open last September and the Australian Open this January. Now he’ll try to get to the semifinals at Roland-Garros for the second consecutive year and faces 62nd-ranked Alexander Bublik on Wednesday.Here is just how good Sinner has been in Paris over the past week-plus: He hasn’t lost a set and…

CNN  —  Jonathan Joss, an actor who voiced the character of John Redcorn on “King of the Hill” and appeared as Ken Hotate on “Parks and Recreation,” has died following a shooting incident, according to police in San Antonio, Texas. He was 59. According to a spokesperson for the San Antonio Police Department, officers were dispatched Sunday to a location on Dorsey Drive in San Antonio, Texas, for a reported shooting in progress. Officers found Joss “near the roadway of the location,” where they “attempted life saving measures” until paramedics arrived. The actor was pronounced dead by emergency service responders.…

The gubernatorially appointed boards that oversee Texas universities soon could have new powers to control the curriculum required of students and eliminate degree programs. The legislation sent Monday to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott marks the latest effort among Republican-led states to reshape higher education institutions that they assert have been promoting liberal ideology. It follows similar moves in Florida and Ohio. The state actions come as President Donald Trump’s administration also has injected itself into higher education, leveraging federal funding and its student visa authority to clamp down on campus activism and stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Some…