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Ready Player Me, a platform to build dynamic cross-game avatars for virtual worlds, raises $56M led by a16z

TechCrunch

His quick response promising better avatars for the actual launch speaks to just how much appearances do matter in these situations. “Our bigger vision is to connect the metaverse through avatars,” said Timmu Toke, co-founder and CEO, Ready Player Me, in an interview. It can also work off 3D images.

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Daily Crunch: Former Apple employee pleads guilty to stealing autonomous vehicle design details

TechCrunch

Facetime : While Mark Zuckerberg is promising better metaverse avatars, Estonia-based Ready Player Me is delivering. Andreessen Horowitz led the company’s recent $56 million raise into the company that is building dynamic, animated game avatars for virtual worlds, Ingrid writes. The TechCrunch Top 3.

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‘Deepfake’ that supposedly fooled European politicians was just a look-alike, say pranksters

The Verge

Parliamentarians from the UK, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia had all arranged video calls with a hoaxer claiming to be Leonid Volkov, chief of staff to imprisoned Russian anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny. They did so by cold-calling and emailing their targets from fake addresses, using a real picture of Volkov as their digital avatar.