What's in this week's issue?

For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category.

In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, recent Crunchbase data found. Five of the six venture rounds of more than $1 billion raised in the first half of 2024 were raised by AI companies.

Many other AI startups were able to raise mega-rounds of more than $100 million. U.S. startups raised two of the billion-dollar rounds in the first half of this year and nearly two-thirds, 64%, of the mega-rounds.

Here are the U.S.-based AI companies that raised $100 million or more so far in 2024.

AI chatbots like Amazon’s AI voice assistant Alexa, Snapchat’s My AI, and Microsoft’s Bing have frequently shown signs of an “empathy gap” that puts young users at risk of distress or harm, according to a study on Thursday that proposes the urgent need for “child-safe AI”.

The research from the University of Cambridge calls on developers and policymakers to prioritise approaches to AI design that take greater account of children’s needs.

Children are likely to treat chatbots “as lifelike, quasi-human confidantes” but when the technology fails to respond to their unique needs and vulnerabilities, it can affect the kids, showed the study, published in the journal Learning, Media and Technology. This is evident from the cases where Alexa instructed a 10-year-old to touch a live electrical plug with a coin.

Easy Cloud News

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AI News

• 🇰🇷 South Korean beauty buffs can now thank AI for the perfect foundation shade (link)

• 👩‍🏫 MIT News: What are AI agents? (link)

• 🌦️ Figma disables its AI design feature that appeared to be ripping off Apple’s Weather app (link)

• 🕹️ Meta plans to bring generative AI to metaverse games (link)

• 🔌 As the AI boom gobbles up power, Phaidra is helping companies manage datacenter power more efficiently (link)

AI Tools

• ✍️ Redact: Create LinkedIn posts in 30sec with your own writing style (link)

• 💭 DreamFlare: We empower creators and spread joy (link)

• 💡 Tableau: Turn trusted data into actionable insights (link)

• 🐂 Bullhorn: An industry-leading staffing software built for recruitment agencies (link)