TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Lucid Group

🚙 SUV sign-up: EV company Lucid Motors has officially started taking preorders for the Gravity, an electric SUV that is heading into production at the end of this year. Those interested just need to put down a $1,000 refundable deposit for the vehicle, which starts at a whopping $94,900. Read more

🎮 A different kind of video game villain: Activision Blizzard said last month that it had found and fixed a bug that was accidentally banning legitimate Call of Duty players for "cheating." That's not the whole story, though: A hacker was exploiting the bug to get thousands of accounts banned. Read more

💬 Moderation for Mistral: Mistral launched a new moderation API that can be programmed to look for specific categories, including discrimination, violence, or other kinds of threats, and can be applied to raw or conversational text. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Ulysses

🤖 Restoration robots: Seagrass is an important part of marine ecosystems, but seagrass meadows are rapidly deteriorating thanks to climate change. Ulysses just raised $2 million in funding for its robots that work underwater to restore seagrass populations. Read more

🥊 Another Automattic update: In today's Automattic news, the company confirmed that it created a new website called WP Engine Tracker that shows how many sites have moved away from WP Engine since the feud. Read more

🎨 We love a custom theme: Microsoft announced today that it is launching a new feature that will allow users to tap generative AI to make custom AI themes for their Outlook accounts. The update is only available to people who have personal or business access to Copilot. Read more

✋ Protecting the youth: Roblox announced a whole host of new safety features that are meant to protect the game's preteen users. Features include banning kids under 13 from unrated experiences and other potentially hairy situations. Read more

🎶 More music sharing: TikTok announced a new "Share to TikTok" feature today that will make it easier for people to share music from Spotify and Apple Music to the video-sharing platform. Users will be able to share songs, playlists, and albums. Read more

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Around the web

👑 Pour one out: Elwood Edwards, the voice behind AOL's iconic "You've got mail" greeting, has died, a day shy of his 75th birthday. Rest in peace to an internet king. Read more