Spotify is rolling out a new AI product aimed at improving the experience for music fans in partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG). Billboard reports that Spotify users will be able to create covers and remixes of songs by participating UMG artists and songwriters. The update was announced during Spotify’s Investor Day presentation on May 21 and is made possible by a licensing deal that covers recorded music and publishing rights, enabling Spotify to release generative AI music tools. Spotify sees this as an opportunity to increase exposure and revenue for UMG artists. “Solving hard problems for music is what Spotify does, and fan-made covers and remixes are next. What we’re building is grounded in consent, credit, and compensation for the artists and songwriters that take part. Through each technological transformation, we have worked together with Sir Lucian and his team to evolve the music ecosystem into a richer, more beneficial experience for fans and a more rewarding...

Waymo will pause operations in several cities. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Waymo, owned by Alphabet Inc., is an autonomous ride-hailing service that calls itself the “world’s most experienced driver.” The company, co-led by Tekedra Mawakana, says its technology uses detailed custom maps, real-time sensor data, and AI to determine its position on the road at all times, rather than relying solely on GPS.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Waymo (@waymo) Waymo has served more than 20 million riders and completes more than 400,000 rides a week. However, it will pause operations in Atlanta after one of its robotaxis drove through a flooded street, according to TechCrunch. “Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with. During a period of intense rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and stopped,” the company said in a statement, per TechCrunch. The vehicle has since been recovered...

will.i.am was an early investor in several tech companies, including OpenAI. In 2025, Fortune estimated his net worth at $50 million, attributing it to his music career and investments in early-stage companies such as Tesla, Pinterest, and OpenAI. “I did some pretty cool investments in the past,” will.i.am told Fortune. He described OpenAI as one of his smartest investments to date. OpenAI launched in 2015 with support from billionaires such as Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, as well as Amazon Web Services and other industry giants. Hoffman played a significant part in will.i.am’s investment in AI, according to Forbes. Hoffman initially wanted the musician to invest in OpenAI’s rival, Inflection AI, which he co-founded with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “One day, Reid called me and said, ‘There’s this guy you should meet named Mustafa. I know you’re interested in AI, and there’s not that many people from the industry that have the vernacular and understanding of the...

Wyclef Jean has big plans ahead for his music career. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Jean, a Haitian-born musician, took a blast to the past to reflect on making music in his basement, where he built a studio. One of Hip-Hop’s best-selling albums, The Fugees’ 1996 album “The Score,” was created there. According to BET, the album, which includes “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “Ready or Not,” sold 22 million copies. “‘The Score,’ one of the, you know, the biggest Hip-Hop selling albums, is done out of a basement. So, which is normal today. For a young kid to have a computer, be in their room, and literally lay out the entire music,” Jean told Yahoo Finance. “ We was doing this 30 years ago inside of a basement and making it cool to do music in your bedroom. ‘Ready or Not,’ I did that in my small little bedroom in the Booga basement in the hood.” Now, that many years later, Jean is not only planning to release a new album but also to explore nearly every genre he has...

YouTube has taken a page from Sora’s playbook. Sora’s Remix tool, which was developed by OpenAI, used natural-language commands to edit pre-existing videos, allowing users to add, remove, or edit objects in a video, according to information shared in a YouTube video. Sora also had a “Cameos” feature , which allowed users to create and use their likenesses in AI-generated videos. However, those features are no longer available on Sora, and its web app shut down on April 26, 2026, according to the company. YouTube, owned by Google and reaching 3 billion users, is now picking up the mantle by rolling out its own “Remix” feature for Shorts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the feature at its Google I/O event Tuesday, May 19. Remixing with Gemini Omni According to The Hollywood Reporter, users will be able to write prompts and remix an original short to change its style or add themselves to the video, without altering the video’s original context. YouTube will leverage Gemini Omni,...

A class action lawsuit was filed against The Walt Disney Co. over its use of facial recognition technology. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the lawsuit was filed in federal court in California over allegations that The Walt Disney Co. violated privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws by using its facial recognition technology on guests at park entrances. The complaint said that Walt Disney Co. “does not adequately disclose the use of their biometric collection, so consumers — which almost always include children — have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” according to the outlet. “While Disney publicly states ‘[t]he security, integrity, and confidentiality of your information are extremely important to us, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable,’ it appears visitors cannot discern which of the entrances into Disney Theme Parks actually are the ones to clearly avoid to ‘opt-out’ of facial recognition,” the filing said, per USA Today....

Ruka Hair has raised new funding to scale its mission of ensuring hair and beauty solutions work for the textured-hair community. Ruka Hair Ruka Hair Co-Founder and CEO Tendai Moyo was 17 when she went to a corner shop in Swindon, England, on the hunt for hair extensions, she explained in an interview with Translate Culture. She recalled seeing inexpensive hair extensions and later realizing the industry had changed little over the years. “I was a strategy consultant prior to this, and the industry hasn’t changed very much. It’s still really hard to find high-quality hair extensions that work for Black women. Success for us is about creating a brand that brings Black women joy,” Moyo said in the video. “ For too long in this space, getting your hair done is painful. When you’re a kid, it comes with a lot of t ears. I t’s expensive, you’re spending money on products that don’t work, and oftentimes, you don’t really know what you’re doing because you haven’t had that expert access. So...

Canadian-born streamer Agent 00 has forged his own lane. At 12 years old, he begged his mother to buy him a Kodak camera, he said in a YouTube video. He started taking pictures of his loved ones, took part in video competitions, and even began editing Call of Duty montages. He also started uploading NFL videos to a clip channel. One video in particular of Marshawn Terrell Lynch racked up 70,000 views, he said. That avenue came to a halt due to a copyright strike, he said during a live interview at the University of California, Berkeley, for the Microsoft Windows Campus Creator Tour. “Then I had to find my own hustle,” he explained. He started editing videos for others, providing commentary, and then sharing gaming content on YouTube, with NBA 2K putting him on the map. “I played The Last of Us. I was really good at that. I had some good videos there. Anything from like Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, you know, and stuff like that. Eventually, I landed on NBA 2K,” he said during the live...

Data centers continue to use public water supplies without authorization, leaving residents in water-stressed communities to bear the consequences. During the first week of May, two separate data center developments were found using restricted public water sources in areas already struggling with limited water availability, Fortune reports. Residents were the first to notice the problem and alert regulators, reporting issues such as low water pressure in Fayette County, Georgia, and dust suppression efforts in Tucson, Arizona. Data Center Water Disputes Emerge in Georgia and Arizona In the Annelise Park subdivision in Fayette County, GA, residents began noticing declining water pressure last year, per Fortune. An investigation by county utilities uncovered two industrial-scale water connections serving Project Excalibur, a 615-acre data center campus owned by Blackstone and developed by Quality Technology Services (QTS). County officials notified QTS in May 2025 that one meter had...

An NBA dinner led Tristan Thompson to invest in a major AI company. In an interview on “Market Bubble,” Thompson, a fourth overall draft pick in 2011 who last played during the 2024-25 season, reflected on a specific time in the league that led him to strengthen his investment portfolio. The unrestricted free agent recalled attending several dinners that gave him opportunities to sit down with individuals in Silicon Valley when playing against San Francisco’s Golden State Warriors. He heard discussions around the future of technology, particularly AI. That led him to invest early in Anthropic, an AI safety and research company that developed Claude and is currently in discussions to raise $30 billion at a $900 billion valuation , according to Bloomberg. “I was like, ‘Hey, man, I like what you’re, what you’re talking about. You sound like you’re cool. You sound, like, transparent.’ … I’m like, ‘All right, man, here’s a check. I wanna get in the game.’ And then from there, they just...

Josiah Faison is leveraging tech to help people preserve their stories. The Maryland native originally planned for a career in financial management. During his sophomore year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), his grandmother became terminally ill with cancer. Faison wanted to ensure her lived experiences would continue to live on. This prompted him to search online for different ways to capture the family history. He was met with no luck. So, he planned to create a time capsule that would include letters and recordings detailing her life. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was unable to make it home, and his grandmother passed away. “All my family’s history was lost. All the stories that she’d been trying to preserve, all the stories she had done to me, were all just gone . That caused me to actually change gears,” Faison told AFROTECH™. Faison workshopped the idea, which centered on history preservation through photography, video, and audio. In the summer of his...

Google is repositioning its software strategy from an operating system model to what it calls an “intelligence system,” rethinking laptops with the launch of the Googlebook. According to a blog post from Alex Kushcer, Google’s senior director of laptops and tablets, the Googlebook is the first laptop designed completely for Gemini Intelligence. The device builds on the foundation of the Chromebook lineup and expands its integration with Android apps and Google’s Gemini AI assistant , aiming to create a more unified experience across devices. Inside Googlebook One of the major features of the Googlebook starts with the cursor, which Google says hasn’t seen much meaningful change over the years, despite being one of the most frequently used tools on a laptop. The Googlebook will feature a Gemini-integrated Magic Pointer. To use it, users simply move the cursor over items on the screen, activating Gemini to provide quick, contextual suggestions. The Googlebook also includes “Create...

As debates surrounding AI continue across industries, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are using the technology to help improve cancer treatment outcomes. According to Cedars-Sinai, investigators at the California-based health system co-developed an AI-powered platform to predict, on an individual basis, which of two chemotherapy options may be more effective for pancreatic cancer patients. Andrew Hendifar, MD, medical director of Pancreatic Cancer at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and first author of the study, noted that a major challenge in treating advanced pancreatic cancer is that there is currently no conclusive data showing which of the two approved chemotherapy regimens works best for each patient. As a result, physicians often begin treatment with one regimen, monitor the patient’s response, and switch therapies if necessary. Hendifar noted that the approach can be harmful because ineffective chemotherapy may further weaken a patient’s health instead of improving it. “If...

Inventor Tahira Reid Smith came up with a new way to enjoy a beloved hobby in the Black community. Reid Smith knows Double Dutch all too well. Raised in The Bronx, NY, she was fond of the pastime. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that she even sketched a Double Dutch machine when she was 8 years old. That drawing — which consisted of two poles and three buttons with a third grader jumping at its center — earned her first place in her school’s drawing competition. That very concept would later evolve into an invention. Reid Smith’s educational pursuits led her to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering by 2004, according to her LinkedIn profile. She then obtained a Ph.D. in design science from the University of Michigan in 2010. Her time, particularly at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, brought her childhood sketch full circle under her late professor, Burt Swersey. The outlet reports Swersey gave Reid...

Brandon Hill has raised millions in funding guided by the mission of ensuring “every supermarket in America autonomous,” he said on LinkedIn. For many founders, their lived experiences help shape the ventures they go on to create. Hill is a third-generation grocer with grandparents who owned a small store in Oklahoma and parents who’ve had careers in the grocery industry , Fortune reports . In 2020, Hill first stumbled upon the grocery industry’s outdated administrative systems while visiting his parents in Minnesota. He found a stack of various paper invoices and wholesale catalogs. “I looked at these books, and I said, ‘Okay, what is this? A relic or a souvenir from you guys when you guys were my age?’ And they said, ‘No, this is how grocery stores operate here in 2020,’” Hill explained, according to Fortune. This informed Vori, an AI-powered grocery startup for independent grocers. It launched in 2019 in East Palo Alto with a team of Stanford engineers from SpaceX, Google, and...