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When Stable Diffusion, the text-to-image AI developed by startup Stability AI, was open sourced earlier this year, it didn’t take long for the internet to wield it for porn-creating purposes. Communities across Reddit and 4chan tapped the AI system to generate realistic and anime-style images of nude characters, mostly women, as well as non-consensual fake

Roku wrote in a new SEC filing that it plans to cut 200 jobs in the U.S. as it braces for economic headwinds. Thanks to the workforce reduction, the company expects to incur a non-recurring charge of between $28 to $31 million, mainly because of severance payments, employee benefits contributions, other related expenses and notice

Disney+’s adorable new short film, “Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies,” premiered on Saturday, November 12. From Lucasfilm and Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, the hand-drawn short film will excite many fans as it features Grogu — a.k.a Baby Yoda or The Child — from the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian” and the coal dust

Today, Apple announced the launch date and price of its upcoming subscription service for Major League Soccer (MLS) fans, “MLS Season Pass.” Starting February 1, 2023, subscribers in 100+ countries and regions can get MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app for $14.99 per month during the season or $99 per season. Notably, Apple

Descript, the audio and video editing platform founded in 2017 by former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, has raised $50 million in a Series C round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, a tranche through which OpenAI and its partners, including Microsoft, are investing in early-stage companies. Descript is the second startup to receive a cash

YouTube today is addressing one of creators’ chief complaints with filming videos for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts: to date, the music and sounds added to videos could only be 15 seconds in length, even though Shorts themselves can be as long as 60 seconds. Now, thanks to revised licensing deals, YouTube says the majority

Want to kick your ex off your Netflix account without having to change your password? A new Netflix feature will make that possible. Today, Netflix is launching “Manage Access and Devices,” which allows account owners to remotely log out of devices they don’t recognize or no longer want signed in. The addition could help Netflix

Spotify today is expanding its video podcasting capabilities to creators in more than 180 markets worldwide, which means the functionality is now available in nearly all the markets where Spotify’s podcast creation software, Anchor, is currently available. The feature first entered wider testing last year, then officially launched in April to a handful of key markets,

A new startup from the founders of Acast today announced a $3.4 million seed round of funding to “de-wall” digital content including ebooks, audiobooks, and news articles. After recently severing ties with Acast, a popular podcasting platform they founded some eight years ago, Karl Rosander, Måns Ulvestam, and Markus Ahlstrand have turned their attentions to Sesamy,

Today, Amazon Prime Video announced the launch of “Sports Talk,” a live daily programming block dedicated to 12 hours of sports-talk content. Broadcasting Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. ET on Prime Video, viewers in the U.S. can access seven new shows on Sports Talk without a Prime membership. It will also be available

Hulu is expanding its Live TV line-up with 14 new channels, such as Hallmark Channel, The Weather Channel, Comedy.TV, JusticeCentral.TV, TheGrio Television Network, and six channels from the music video network Vevo. The new channels bring the total to over 85 channels, which include entertainment, live sports, and national and local news. Today, November 14,

Hey, friends! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the top TechCrunch headlines from the past seven days. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here. Ready? Let’s go. most read Twitter had a week so strange that it could easily make up this entire newsletter, so

YouTube is introducing a new “Live Q&A” feature that is designed to make it easier for creators to interact with viewers during livestreams. When creators start a Q&A, the prompt will appear as a pinned message in the chat. Viewers can then submit their questions and creators can select one and pin it, so viewers

After Netflix’s historic launch of an ad-supported tier, a very unexpected move from the streamer, Netflix will make history again with its first-ever livestreaming event starring comedian Chris Rock. The company announced on Thursday that Rock’s live comedy special is set to stream in early 2023, with more details to be announced later. “Chris Rock

DeviantArt, the Wix-owned artist community, today announced a new protection for creators to disallow art-generating AI systems from being developed using their artwork. An option on the site will allow artists to preclude third parties from scraping their content for AI development purposes, aiming to prevent work from being swept up without artists’ knowledge or

Amagi, which offers cloud broadcast and targeted advertising software to scores of media and entertainment giants, has raised a large new funding round as it looks to expand its tech offerings and invest in an AI-powered personalization stack. General Atlantic led a new round of over $100 million, which included about $20 million in secondary

Roku announced today that the home screen menu will now include a new “Sports” tab that gives sports fans instant access to sports events, upcoming events and on-demand sports-related content. The feature on the Roku Home Screen has already begun to roll out to some users and will be gradually added to all Roku devices

Peacock announced that on November 30, its Premium Plus subscribers will get 24/7 access to their local NBC station in all of NBC’s 210 markets, including live TV programming like local news, sports, weather and entertainment. Subscribers will soon be able to livestream popular programs like “The TODAY Show,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”

Disney reported results for the final quarter of its 2022 fiscal year today, revealing a total of 164.2 million Disney+ global subscribers, an increase of 12 million subs from 152.1 million in Q3. The flagship streaming service was only expected to gain 9.35 million subs. Across Disney’s streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ had a

Movie theater attendance is down, largely thanks to the pandemic, but chains like AMC still need to make money. If meme stocks aren’t a reliable business plan, why not find another use for a giant room with a huge screen and lots of seats? In partnership with Zoom, AMC Theatres will launch a product called

The growing trends of hiring and running remote workforces, and more recently the major upheaval of restructuring across a number of industries, have redefined and disrupted the concept of teams at work. Even as some return to the office, many of us don’t see each other face-to-face, and even if we have checked in together

Today, Netflix is launching a new interactive game called “Triviaverse” that allows subscribers to test their knowledge and compete against an all-knowing “Trivia master” using their TV remote. In the game, players are challenged to answer questions as quickly as they can before time runs out and beat high scores to earn badges. “Triviaverse” is

YouTube is expanding the reach of its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, with today’s announcement that it will begin rolling out Shorts on TV to its global users. The company’s updated smart TV app will now allow users to view the popular vertical videos in an optimized experience that’s designed to feel more consistent with what

GIPHY Arts, the Giphy division dedicated to GIF art and artists, launched a free exclusive app on Roku today that allows users in select regions to view GIPHY Clips–30-second original short clips with audio—with their Roku devices. The new “Public Axis” channel is Giphy’s first app for connected TVs and brings short-form video content made

Amazon has introduced a new price tier for Prime Video in India, making the on-demand video streaming service even more affordable as it races to court customers in the South Asian market where it competes with giants including Disney’s Hotstar, Netflix and Times Internet-backed MX Player. The e-commerce group is offering the yearly subscription to

After Warner Bros. Discovery reported its third-quarter earnings results yesterday, the company told investors and analysts in a call that the forthcoming combined HBO Max/Discovery+ streaming service will now launch in the U.S. earlier than previously announced. CEO David Zaslav said the yet-to-be-named service is now getting a spring 2023 launch instead of in the

Netflix is bringing the “Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales” game to its platform with new gameplay based on the content from Season 4 of the show. Users will be able to play as new characters features in Season 4 in this no-ads game as the company continues its push towards gaming. Users have to solve puzzles

Update: It appears that the launch might’ve been premature. According to a tweet by Esther Crawford, a product lead at Twitter, the new Twitter Blue plan isn’t live yet but some users are seeing notifications as part of a live test.  Just days after newly minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk floated changes to Twitter’s system

Hey, all — welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we sum up the most read TechCrunch stories from the past week. And oof, what a week it was. Want this newsletter in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Signed up? Let’s just dive right in. most read Mass layoffs at Twitter:

Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter CEO less than one year ago, finally addressed the layoffs that impacted approximately 50% of the company he co-founded in 2006. The workforce reduction, led by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk, impacted thousands of people – and key teams working on human rights, accessibility, AI ethics and curation.