OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, a startup tries a humanoid robot and Salesforce knocks it down

TGIF, my TechCrunch pals. It’s that time of the week again – Week in Review time, where we recap the last five days in tech news. As always, a lot happened, so let’s dig in without delay.

Well, maybe with a slight delay. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that TechCrunch Early Stage, TechCrunch’s annual Founder’s Summit, is fast approaching — April 20, to be exact. Taking place in Boston this year, Early Stage will host sessions with advice and takeaways from top experts and provide opportunities to meet entrepreneurs taking on amazing journeys. Believe me, it will be worth the detour.

Disrupt, TechCrunch’s flagship conference, will also be GOOD worth the detour. (And I’m not just saying this because yours truly will be participating – I swear!) This year, Disrupt will feature six new stages with industry-specific programming tracks, inspired by our popular TC Sessions series. Experts in climate, mobility, fintech, artificial intelligence and machine learning, business, privacy and security, hardware and robotics will be present and will have ideas fascinating to share.

So, registered for both events? Great. Now here’s the week in review!

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ChatGPT as an API: OpenAI has introduced an API that will allow any business to integrate ChatGPT technology into their applications, websites, products and services. (As a reminder, ChatGPT is the free text-generating AI that can write code, emails, essays, and more.) Snap, Quizlet, Instacart, and Shopify are some of the early adopters.

Become human: A startup, Figure, sneaked out this week promising a versatile bipedal humanoid robot. (brian announced the startup’s existence in September, in case you missed it.) The alpha version of the Figure robot, which the company completed in December, is currently being tested at its Sunnyvale offices. It focuses on a wide range of manual tasks for now.

Warrantless surveillance: Zack reports that the Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigative Unit have repeatedly failed to obtain the correct legal documents during invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings were released last week by the Inspector General of Homeland Security, which oversees the US Federal Department and its many law enforcement units, who said agencies often use cell site simulators without obtain the appropriate search warrants.

Salesforce revolves around: This week, Salesforce announced its fiscal fourth quarter results, including revenue that beat expectations and guidance that preceded street estimates. It was a much-needed victory for the company, which was facing increasing pressure from activist investors, including Elliott Management.

Hydrogen powered: The Universal Hydrogen start-up took off this week with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever seen. The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but – as To mark written – this showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. (Many technical and regulatory hurdles stand in the way, however.)

Pause your sequence: Ivan reports that Snapchat will let users pause their Snap streaks — where you send your friend a snap once every 24 hours — so they don’t have to worry about breaking them if they decide not to access the app for a while.

New non-profit organization for AI: A community-based AI research group, EleutherAI, forms a nonprofit foundation. Funded by donations and grants from backers including AI startups Hugging Face and Stability AI, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Lambda Labs and Canva, the nonprofit plans to seek out issues around large language models on OpenAI’s ChatGPT model.

Ending the “succession”: The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered this week, and it looks like the series is ending with an epic mic drop. Like Lauren writing, the HBO series was not only hugely successful, garnering 13 Emmys and five Golden Globes, but it was also an interesting commentary on the media industry. Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong admitted to drawing inspiration from many places, including Rupert Murdoch’s playbook.

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Like Elon Musk’s meddling with Twitter, the TechCrunch podcast machine never stops. This week on Equity, Mary Ann, Beca And alexander came together to skim through the week’s biggest startup and enterprise news, including what’s happening in the land of NFTs, AI vs. crypto in hype cycles, and Amazon’s unlikely partnership. And on The TechCrunch Live Podcast, Matt Burns spoke with Tonkean CEO and Co-Founder Sagi Eliyahu and Foundation Capital Partner Joanne Chen about solving leadership blind spots and the best ways for founders to work with their board.

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