Much has changed for Jenny Wang, the founder who’s bringing “Clueless” fashion tech to life. 

Last year, her company, Alta, raised $11 million in a round led by Menlo Ventures to let users create digital closets and try on their clothes with their own virtual avatars. It’s a tech once seen only in movies, most notably in “Clueless,” where Cher styles and plans her outfits using computer technology. Alta is similar to that, allowing users to plan and style outfits using the latest AI innovations.

A slew of big names participated in Atla’s round last year, including models Jasmine Tookes and Karlie Kloss, Anthropic’s VC arm Anthology Fund, and Rent the Runway cofounder Jenny Fleiss. 

TechCrunch caught up with Wang during New York Fashion Week to talk about how the company has expanded since that round.

For starters, the product is officially in the app store; Time and Vogue named it one of the best innovations of last year, and Wang said more than 100 million outfits have been generated on the platform since its launch in 2023.  It has partnerships with Poshmark and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, with more partnerships to be announced soon.

“Alta’s own app also features thousands of brands that users can shop from,” Wang said. 

Right now, the company is focused on building app and website integration experiences for brands, she said, where customers can try on a designer’s clothing using a personalized Alta Avatar. This week, the company unveiled its first integration collaboration, teaming up with Public School, a storied New York City brand. 

“Shoppers can style looks from the new collection on their own Alta avatar,” Wang said. 

She met the Public School team — Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne — through the founder of Poshmak, who is also an angel investor in both companies. 

“Public School designers Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne had been looking for an AI partner and virtual try-on avatar solution, and Dao-Yi has been an Alta app user himself,” Wang said. 

Public School actually went on hiatus for a few years, with this NYFW marking its grand re-debut. When asked, the founders of the brand said they rediscovered their voices and what they wanted to say.

“We have to look at tech as a partner in the business today,” Chow told TechCrunch, adding, “It’s not 2015 anymore,” so the team wants to take advantage of the latest technological developments. “We want to be thoughtful on how we use tech and AI,” he continued, “not as a design tool but as a tool to extend our storytelling and a tool to interact with the consumer and have them experience the brand even if they can’t do so in person.”

Wang said this is one of the first instances of a designer embedding personal avatar and styling technology into its own website. Near the bottom of Public School’s product page, there is an icon that says Style by Alta. Clicking that takes the customer to Alta for them to then style their avatars and test out how Public School clothing would look on them, should they purchase. 

Users on Alta’s standalone app can also access Public School through Alta’s app. Wang said the goal is for Alta to integrate more experiences like this into other brands and websites, so Alta users can try on clothes on other websites even while outside the Alta app. 

“Right now, a user would have to add a potential purchase into their Alta wishlist, then style outfits and try on their avatar, versus being able to do that directly on the brand website.” (For every site but Public School, that is.) “The goal is to bring their community on a new journey to engage with and shop the brand.” 

Many major fashion brands, like Zara and Balmain, have already experimented with digital avatars. Wang said what makes Alta different here, especially compared to Zara, is that Alta avatars can put on at least 8 items within seconds, whereas Zara avatars can wear only four and often take around two minutes. 

Overall, demand for virtual avatars has increased. Wang considers Alta both still the “Cluless”  technology that it started out with, and a digital avatar business. 

“The consumer Alta app is the ‘Clueless’ closet, while the enterprise Alta experience allows shoppers to style pieces and try the outfits on their pre-existing Alta avatar,” he said. Eventually, Wang said she wants Alta to be the “personal identity layer for the future of consumer AI and shopping.”

For agentic commerce to truly work, she said, “We need a data layer that understands the shopper’s style preferences, such as their closet, past purchases, and their avatar, likeness, and body, which is Alta.”

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition pays homage to the Winter Olympics. The purple category is tough, as always — and today it expects you to hunt out hidden words inside longer words. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Lillehammer is another one.

Green group hint: Great White North.

Blue group hint: Think Chloe Kim.

Purple group hint: Look for a hidden word.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Previous Winter Olympic hosts.

Green group: Canada men’s hockey players.

Blue group: Snowboarding terms.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of winter sports equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is previous Winter Olympic hosts. The four answers are Albertville, Chamonix, Oslo and St. Moritz.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Canada men’s hockey players. The four answers are Celebrini, Crosby, Marner and McDavid.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is snowboarding terms. The four answers are cork, frontside, goofy and McTwist.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of winter sports equipment. The four answers are cheapskate, chopstick, Lipinski and milestone.

If you’ve spent more than five minutes on TikTok, you’ve probably heard someone rave about Lola Blankets. They’re draped over couches in Get Ready With Me videos, folded at the foot of perfectly made beds, and name-dropped in podcast ads.

I wanted to be skeptical, but the hype is sadly real; we tested the blankets at WIRED and have included them in multiple gift guides and roundups, from the Best Weighted Blankets to the Best Housewarming Gifts to the Best Gifts for Mom.

From February 14 through February 16, Lola Blankets are 45 percent off with code WINTER45. No exclusions. This is the kind of discount that makes the math very compelling. Buy two, one for yourself and one as a present for a loved one, or a furry loved one (see below).

Lola Blankets come in two styles: the Original and the Weighted Blankets. WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell adores the Original (in Malibu Blue). It comes in an assortment of colors, patterns, and collaborations, plus five sizes: baby, medium, large, Lola XL, and travel. The double-sided fabric is an Oeko-Tex Standard 100-certified faux fur blend of 95 percent polyester and 5 percent spandex, with four-way stretch. It’s zero-shed, stain-resistant, and double-hemmed for durability. I can confirm that durability matters. Mine has survived everyday use and the affections of my cat, who has fully claimed it as her throne BTW.

Courtesy of Lola Blankets

Lola Blankets

Weighted Lola

• China’s strontium optical clock now participates directly in international atomic time calculation
• Optical clocks operate at higher frequencies than caesium, allowing finer measurement resolution
• Accuracy claims reach one second over billions or tens of billions of years

China has received formal international recognition for an ultra precise optical lattice clock after its calibration data was accepted into the global timekeeping system.

The approval allows the country’s NIM-Sr1 strontium atomic optical lattice clock to participate directly in the calculation of International Atomic Time, a role previously dominated by a few nations using caesium based standards.

Elon Musk is “actively” working to make xAI’s Grok chatbot “more unhinged,” according to a former employee who spoke to The Verge about recent departures from Musk’s AI company.

This week, following the announcement that Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring xAI (which previously acquired his social media company X), at least 11 engineers and two co-founders said they’re leaving the company. Some said they’re departing to start something new, and Musk himself suggested this is part of an effort to organize xAI more effectively.

But two sources who left the company (at least one of them before the current wave) reportedly told The Verge that employees have become increasingly disillusioned by the company’s disregard for safety, resulting in global scrutiny after Grok was used to create more than 1 million sexualized images, including deepfakes of real women and minors.

One source said, “Safety is a dead org at xAI,” while the other said that Musk is “actively is trying to make the model more unhinged because safety means censorship, in a sense, to him.”

They also reportedly complained about a lack of direction, with one saying they felt xAI was “stuck in the catch-up phase” compared to competitors.

• OpenAI has officially disabled GPT-4o in ChatGPT
• A lot of users are feeling emotional and upset about the switch
• There’s an official #keep4o campaign underway

We knew the moment was coming, and now it’s happened: OpenAI has officially disabled the GPT-4o model inside ChatGPT, pushing all users towards the GPT-5 alternatives, and it’s hitting a lot of users hard.

A substantial chunk of ChatGPT users prefer the more emotional and warmer ChatGPT-4o experience, as it’s more suited to AI companionship and bonding. Now it’s no longer available, there’s been a widespread outpouring of sadness and anger.

The smart doorbell provider faced blowback for its Super Bowl TV ad last Sunday.

The Amazon-owned home security camera provider Ring has cancelled an upcoming partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance tech provider to US police forces.

The pair agreed last October to collaborate on Ring’s ‘Community Requests’ feature, which allows Ring users to share footage with local police when requested, if they choose to do so.

In a statement yesterday (12 February), Ring said that after “a comprehensive review”, it found that “the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated”, and therefore was cancelling the partnership.

The smart doorbell platform attracted controversy this week around an ad broadcast during TV coverage of the Super Bowl on 8 February publicising another Ring feature, ‘Search Party’, which was unrelated to Flock.

The ad showed multiple Ring cameras throughout a neighbourhood being activated in unison to search for a missing pet. Online criticism of the feature notes that this network of surveillance could also be used to track people.

Flock’s best-known offering to US police forces is a network of cameras nationwide that can record and identify car registration plates and upload them to a centralised database which can be accessed by police to track vehicles.

The company recently denied that it works with the US federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after reports emerged alleging that the agency was using the company’s technology as part of its operations. “ICE does not have direct access to Flock cameras, systems, or data,” read a Flock statement.

Both Ring and Flock said that because their planned integration never launched, no video belonging to Ring customers was ever sent to Flock.

Ring added: “We remain focused on building tools that empower neighbours to help one another while maintaining strong privacy protections and transparency about how our features work.

“We’ll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety and privacy.”

Flock said it “remains dedicated to supporting law enforcement agencies with tools that are fully configurable to local laws and policies”, and that it would continue to engage directly with “public officials and community leaders”.

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• Holographic tape operated inside a production LTO library without infrastructure changes
• Live application software accessed holographic media using standard tape library workflows
• Cartridge dimensions matched LTO, allowing robotic handling without modification

A UK startup has tested a holographic tape storage system inside a working LTO tape library, showing that it can run within existing data center setups.

The test by HoloMem involved real software writing data to the system and reading it back through normal tape library operations.