xAI has released Grok for Intune, a standalone version of its Grok AI assistant app designed for organizations using Microsoft Intune to manage devices. The app supports Intune Mobile Application Management, enforces company app protection policies, and requires sign-in with a work email. It is now available on the App Store and includes Grok's standard features like chat, image and video generation, voice mode, and live camera analysis.
9to5mac.com
· 2026-10-01
A Tokyo court found that a TikTok account used AI to replicate the voice of veteran anime actor Kenjiro Tsuda in narration videos posted between July 2024 and late 2025, ruling this violated his publicity rights. The court declined to order removal of the videos since the anonymous account had already been deleted. Tsuda's legal team had argued the account's 200,000-plus followers were drawn by hearing a recognizable star's voice narrate lurid content, while TikTok countered the voice was merely generic.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-01
A CNET reviewer spent several months testing Amazon's Alexa Plus, Google's Gemini for Home and Apple's Siri AI for weather forecasting accuracy in a high-desert city with microclimates. The test found Alexa Plus gives the longest, most detailed responses—including wind, air quality and 'feels like' temperatures—but occasionally mispredicted rain and tended to overestimate high temperatures.
cnet.com
· 2026-10-01
ElevenLabs completed a $300 million tender offer letting employees sell vested shares at a $22 billion valuation, double the $11 billion mark it hit in February when it raised $500 million. The sale was co-led by institutional investors Wellington and T. Rowe Price, and marks the company's second such secondary transaction after a $100 million tender at $6.6 billion in September 2025.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-30
Amazon announced a major update to its Alexa Plus AI assistant, adding a dedicated hub on Fire TV devices, improved reasoning, and the ability to factor in cultural context and viewing history when answering questions. The assistant will also gain support for follow-up questions and threaded conversations, and will extend to the Fire TV mobile app. Amazon says some features roll out in November, with others arriving in 2024.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-30
Fireflies.ai has launched a new feature called Fireflies Talk, letting users dictate text into any desktop app on Mac or Windows using a keyboard shortcut. The feature is included in existing subscription plans rather than sold separately, and the company says dictation transcripts are stored locally with no recordings kept.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-29
Fideuram chairman Paolo Molesini was deceived by a fake WhatsApp message posing as Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina and a follow-up call using an AI-generated voice impersonating a law firm partner. Believing the request was legitimate, Fideuram wired €95 million to accounts in China and Hong Kong before staff spotted irregularities. Authorities in Italy, Portugal and China helped recover €53 million, and Molesini has since resigned.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-28
DetectifAI, a San Francisco startup founded by Tarini Padmanabhuni, has built AI models designed to run directly on smartphones to flag AI-generated voices in real time during calls and voice messages. Padmanabhuni started the company after her grandfather was scammed out of money by a deepfake voice impersonating his brother's kidnapping. The company is pitching its software to phone manufacturers to embed detection directly into device operating systems rather than relying on cloud-based analysis.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-28
Android Authority found code in a Google Messages beta build enabling voice notes to start with a single tap on the waveform icon, replacing the current two-step process of tapping and then hitting a microphone icon. The feature is reportedly in limited testing and not yet widely rolled out.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-28
Boston startup Modulate has closed a $25 million funding round led by Future Ventures, with Hyperplane and Lakestar also participating. The company, founded in 2017 by Mike Pappas and Carter Huffman, runs over 100 models split between signal extraction (detecting emotion, tone, and synthetic voices) and analysis models that assess conversational intent and policy compliance for enterprise voice agents.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-28
ElevenLabs released two new speech models, v4 and v4 Turbo, adding expanded expression control, faster voice cloning from just 10 seconds of audio, and support for over 90 languages, up from 70. The company said quality improved most notably in Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin and Cantonese, and the new models offer lower latency aimed at voice agent applications.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-28
A hands-on comparison of ChatGPT Voice and Gemini Live found both offer real-time spoken responses with multiple voice options, powered respectively by OpenAI's GPT models and Google's Gemini models. The tester noted ChatGPT Voice speaks with more expressive, human-like verbal quirks like stutters and filler sounds, while Gemini Live sounds flatter. ChatGPT Voice was also observed searching the internet more readily, correctly identifying a recent Gemini release that Gemini Live itself denied existed.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-27
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