Happy weekend, folks, and welcome back to the TechCrunch Week in Review. Henry here, standing in for a vacationing Kyle Wiggers, who is standing in for a parental-leaving Greg Kumparak. Listen, we’ve got a deep bench, and both blokes will be back very soon. Until then, check out just a few of the top stories from the week.
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Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown: The streaming giant has grown tired of its customers sharing passwords with friends and loved ones around the world. So this week it announced guidelines designed to keep the passwords close to home. Literally inside the walls of the abode of the account holder.
Monetized ChatGPT: OpenAI this week launched a pilot subscription for its text-generating AI. For $20 a month, subscribers can access more than what the base level gets: access to ChatGPT during peak hours, faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements.
Human or AI?: That is the question, and apparently OpenAI wants to help. The company launched a tool that is designed to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text, but the success rate is only around 26%. OpenAI did say, though, that when used with other methods, it could help prevent AI text generators from being abused.
Bypassing FB 2FA: Meta created a new centralized system so users could manage their logins for Facebook and Instagram, but a bug could have allowed malicious hackers to switch off 2FA just by knowing a user’s phone number. Yikes. A security researcher from Nepal discovered the bug and reported it to Meta Accounts Center last September. And he got paid.
Salesforce layoffs hit: In January, the company announced the imminent reduction of 10% of its workforce. Not everyone was notified at the time, however. This week, hundreds more of the company’s staff found out the fate of their jobs.
“Spill the tea”: Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell lost his job at Twitter as its global head of Social & Editorial three months ago and promptly got to work on a new app. Called Spill, the app has already attracted a seed round and 60,000 handle reservations. The app is due to launch in alpha during the first quarter of this year.
Google Fi breach: The company said its cell network provider, Google Fi, confirmed a data breach, which, based on the timing of the notice, was likely related to the recent security incident at T-Mobile that allowed hackers to steal millions of customers’ information.
audio roundup
This week out of the TechCrunch Podcast Network, Equity covered the usual slate of venture and startup funding news, and Mary Ann spoke with Hans Tung, investor and managing partner of GGVC, a venture firm with more than $9 billion in assets under management. On Found, Darrell and Becca talked to Rosie Nguyen, a co-founder and the CMO of Fanhouse, about her journey from content creator to founder and how her experience as a creator informs every product decision at Fanhouse.
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TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. I doubt you’ll regret it. Just check out the highlights from this week:
Not quite secondarily: Becca reports on data this week that shows secondary deals are breaking away from the downturned venture market this year.
Open source startups: Paul Sawers examines a report out this week that explores which commercial open source software startups are growing fast and raising cash.
Go team: Ever wonder which slide is the most important slide in a startup’s pitch deck? Why, it’s the team slide and Haje expresses his surprise at just how many startups fail to tell a good story about their teams. And speaking of pitch decks, Haje brings Laoshi’s $570K angel deck breakdown to you.
Dear Sophie: Immigration Sophie Alcorn answers the question, What H-1B and other immigration changes can we expect this year?