Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Brazil’s competition watchdog has ordered WhatsApp to put on hold its policy that bars third-party AI companies from using its business API to offer chatbots on the app. The agency has also started an investigation against the company to determine if the policy is anti-competitive. “According to the investigations, there is possible anti-competitive conduct of an exclusive nature that arises from the application of the New WhatsApp Terms (“WhatsApp Business Solution Terms”) imposed by Meta to regulate the access and offer, by providers of artificial intelligence tools, of its technologies to WhatsApp users,” the Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE) said. CADE said it would investigate if Meta’s terms are exclusionary to competitors and…
Artificial intelligence is moving quickly into drug discovery as pharmaceutical and biotech companies look for ways to cut years off R&D timelines and increase the chances of success amid rising cost. More than 200 startups are now competing to weave AI directly into research workflows, attracting growing interest from investors. Converge Bio is the latest company to ride that shift, securing new capital as competition in the AI-driven drug discovery space heats up. The Boston- and Tel Aviv–based startup, which helps pharma and biotech companies develop drugs faster using generative AI trained on molecular data, has raised a $25 million…
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City nurses returned to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.Union officials say roughly 15,000 nurses walked off the job Monday morning at multiple campuses of three hospital systems: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai.The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.New York City, like the U.S. as a whole, has had an active flu…
Big Law has a complicated relationship with artificial intelligence. The tools that make lawyers more efficient could result in fewer billable hours.Nick Fleisher learned that the hard way at McKinsey, where he helped elite law firms roll out tech tools, often with little enthusiasm from the lawyers expected to use them.”It was like pulling teeth,” Fleisher said.That work led Fleisher to leave McKinsey and start a company in August. His startup, Sandstone, is aimed squarely at in-house legal teams instead of law firms, and Sequoia Capital is backing the idea.The Brooklyn-based startup has raised $10 million in a seed funding…
An app that asks a blunt question — “Are you dead?” — has become a hit in China.The app, called “Si Le Me” (Chinese for “are you dead”), requires users to “check in” by pressing a button. If they fail to do so for two consecutive days, the app alerts an emergency contact.Designed for people living alone, “Si Le Me” has surged to become the most popular paid download on China’s Apple App Store this week. It costs 8 yuan, or $1.15, to download. The app was launched in mid-2025, but its downloads only surged in early January, according to…
Oprah Winfrey, 71, says she views GLP-1 medications as a “tool” to help her manage obesity.The “food noise” went away within hours on the first day she took a GLP-1 medication, she said.”I have regret that I didn’t discover it in 2013,” Winfrey said.Oprah Winfrey, 71, says growing older has made her more appreciative of her health, especially after using GLP-1s to manage obesity.In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Winfrey spoke about how learning that obesity is a disease helped her stop seeing her weight as a personal failure.”I’m not going to, but I could weep right now for…
When Justin Kim, co-founder and CEO of Hupo, first launched his company about four years ago, it wasn’t selling AI-powered sales coaching to banks, finance services, or insurance companies. The company originally began as Ami, a mental wellness platform focused on how people manage pressure, form habits, and change behavior over time. “I’ve always been a big sports fan – basketball, football, Formula One, MMA – and what draws me to all of them is performance. In my free time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what actually drives human performance. People are very different, but across sports,…
LAS VEGAS – Just beyond the flashing slot machines and cigarette-saturated casino air, thousands of the health obsessed gathered in a convention hall here to demonstrate their hacks for living longer lives. They infused ozone into their blood streams, stood on vibrating mats, swallowed samples of supplements and took scans of their livers.The gathering of wellness clinic operators, doctors and antiaging enthusiasts last month offered a vivid snapshot of a booming industry built upon the promise of longer, healthier and more vibrant lives. At the center are customers, fed up with or skeptical of the current health care system, who…
By Michael Erman and Deena BeasleySAN FRANCISCO, Jan 12 (Reuters) – An extension study of Amgen’s experimental obesity drug MariTide found that it helped people maintain weight loss while a second mid-stage trial in diabetes patients showed that it lowered their blood sugar and weight, the company said on Monday.The findings were announced by CEO Bob Bradway in a presentation at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.Amgen said in June that MariTide helped overweight or obese patients shed up to 20% of their body weight in its 52-week Phase 2 study. Most patients, however, experienced gastrointestinal side effects…
In early tests with a review unit of Bee, we found the device itself was easy to use. It’s just a press of a button to turn recording on or off. In the app, you can configure whether a double press bookmarks a section of the conversation, processes the current conversation, or both, and you can set whether a press and hold gesture lets you leave a voice note or chat with the AI assistant. (Bee’s companion app currently reminds you to enable voice notes, so we did.) Like many other AI products and services, such as Plaud, Granola, Fathom,…