Friday, May 31, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM and a Happy Friday to you all! Today, we've got a concerning study about political deepfakes, SpaceX trying to recycle its ships, Temu getting the whip in the EU, Stripe going invite-only in India, and more. — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Launch your deepfakes in time for the elections: It is still way too easy to clone voices of political figures — a study has found that AI companies like Invideo AI, Veed, ElevenLabs, Speechify, Descript and PlayHT don't stop you from recreating political personalities' voices and getting them to say whatever. It's a terrifying reality that we just have to live with as we near a contentious election in the United States. Read More

2. Reduce, reuse, re-Starship: Elon Musk's SpaceX is getting ready to send its Starship rocket back into space so it can suss out whether its reusable heat shield can handle going into the atmosphere a second time. If successful, it could lead the company a step closer to the holy grail of reusable space launch vehicles. Read More

3. EU cracks down on Temu: Chinese e-commerce marketplace Temu, a simultaneous source of both temptation and ick, has come under greater scrutiny in the EU. The European Commission has designated Temu as a 'very large online platform' (VLOP), meaning it'll have to comply with much stricter rules. Read More

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Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: Cylib

The EV battery recycling space is ripe for disruption, and Cylib wants to carve out a niche for itself. The German startup has raised €55 million from backers like World Fund and Porsche Ventures to bring its battery recycling capabilities to industrial scale in Europe. Read More

Stripe reins in ops in India: Fintech giant Stripe said Indian businesses will no longer be able to sign up for new accounts through its website, and will instead need to request an invite. The company says this is due to an evolving regulatory landscape in the country, as India's central bank has changed up the rules for financial service providers quite a bit in the past couple years. Read More

Spain tells Meta to stay out of its elections: Spain has banned Meta from launching features that would have collected data on voters in Spain ahead of next month's elections. The country's data protection authority, the AEPD, means business: It's using emergency powers from GDPR to protect its own territory. Will the U.S. do something similar to protect its own elections? LOL, no. Read More

Meet your Disrupt speakers: Are you coming to TechCrunch Disrupt this October in San Francisco? You totally should, because the lineup is pretty sick, if we may say so ourselves. We're bringing together voices from across the industry to talk about cool topics like connecting startups with banks, real-world genAI applications, how to stand out in the age of AI, and so much more. Read More

Around the Web

Is Siri finally going to be useful?: Apple's next operating system for iPhones, iOS 18, will apparently bring an overhauled version of Siri that's powered by AI, reports Bloomberg. Honestly, it's about time, because Siri is as useful as a brick most of the time. I'm excited to see how integrations with ChatGPT and potentially, Gemini, will turn out. Read More

Google says its AI Snippets aren't hallucinating: Hilarious examples of Google's AI Snippets feature getting things absolutely wrong are the rage these days, but Google contends its model isn't hallucinating when it tells you to use glue to get cheese to stick to pizza. Rather, it's just picking the top web results and misinterpreting nuance, reports 9to5Google. Read More

Threads gets more features: Threads is rolling out a redesigned desktop site that gives you TweetDeck-like features, allowing you to customize your homepage, reports The Verge. That'll definitely make it easier for users to wean themselves off X. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Westend61 / Getty Images

Your Startup Ad Here: Boston-based OneScreen is bringing billboards into the current era in a bid to help more startups get noticed. The company's software helps startups find the right placement for their physical ads, like billboards and subway ads, based on demographic, historical and geographic data. Read More