Snap, the social media giant behind popular instant messaging app Snapchat has revealed its plans to lay off around 10% of its workforce.

The announcement came on Monday, just a day before the company reported its results for the fourth quarter of 2023. Notably, the previous quarter saw Snap report a net loss of $368m (£294m).

Considering the social media giant reported having 5,000 employees in November 2023, it’s expected to cut approximately 500 jobs.

The job cuts are necessary to “reduce hierarchy” and support the company’s growth, Snap explained in the SEC filing where it announced the layoff.

The spokesperson also emphasized the company’s prioritization of supporting the laid-off employees and its gratefulness towards their contribution.

Severance and other related costs will account for most of it, the company revealed, adding that $45 million to $55 million of it will likely be future cash expenses.

According to Snap, the company will be incurring most of these costs in the first quarter of 2024. However, some of them might extend to the second quarter due to local laws and other factors.

Expert Expresses Concern Over Snap’s State of Business

According to Jasmine Enberg, Insider Intelligence’s principal social media analyst, the job cuts don’t “bode well” for the state of the social media giant’s business ahead of its earnings announcement.

Pointing to Meta’s latest earnings report, which indicates a major surge in users, a tripling of year-on-year quarterly profits, increased ad sales, and lower costs, Enberg said that this would be a tough feat for Snap to follow.

The social media analyst also went on to add that the layoffs might be an attempt to garner goodwill with investors, who rewarded Meta’s cost-cutting measures and ongoing attempts to increase efficiency.

Compared to Meta, Snap’s advertising revenues have been recovering at a slower rate from the digital ad slowdown too. While Snap tried to expand its portfolio beyond Snapchat and even experimented with augmented reality (AR) glasses, it failed to find a market for its other products.

In 2023, the company eventually closed a division dedicated to offering AR services to its customers.

It’s worth noting that the latest wave of layoffs comes just months after the previous one in November 2023, which was small-scale and saw less than 20 roles being cut. However, in August 2022, the company laid off a whopping 20% of its workers. 

Rising Tech Layoffs

Layoffs.fyi, which keeps track of job cuts in the tech sector, reports that the industry saw more than 232,000 layoffs last year.

This trend continued in January 2024, as more than 25,000 roles were cut from the tech sector. Giants like Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, Unity, and Discord laid off thousands of employees even after a surge in stock market indices.

Experts have linked these layoffs to the increased use of AI in the tech sector. Apart from this, companies are now moving towards optimum resource utilization and doing away with non-value-adding roles to improve their ROI rates. The job market is at an interesting crossroads as of now.

The post Snapchat’s Parent Company to Lay off 10% of Its Workforce appeared first on The Tech Report.

A manipulated video of Joe Biden that was recently circulated on Facebook will not be taken down because it doesn’t violate Meta’s content policy, no matter how incoherent those policies are.

The 7-second video was first posted on the platform last spring and shows the president inappropriately touching his adult granddaughter.

In reality, he was accompanying her to the ballot to cast her vote. And after she was done, he pinned an “I Voted” sticker on her chest and kissed her cheeks.

But the way it’s edited with the sticker being removed, it looks like he was touching her repeatedly and inappropriately. What’s even more shameful, is the video had the caption “sick pedophile”

Now this would seem outrageous and a clear cause for removal to most of us. But owing to Meta’s poorly drafted policies, nothing can be done about this deepfake video.

What Exactly Is This Policy?

In matters of manipulated media, Meta has two rules that content has to follow in order to qualify for removal. First, it has to be modified by Artificial Intelligence or it has to be completely fake i.e. showing the person doing something they didn’t do.

But in this case, Biden did place the sticker on his granddaughter, hence the clip fulfills neither of these conditions.

What’s worse, this policy also doesn’t cover manipulated audio. So the Oversight Board that reviewed the case said that while Meta was right to not remove the video, it seriously needs to work on its policies.

Right now, it has very limited coverage. Plus, AI isn’t the only way a video can be manipulated. Other ways of content alteration are just as serious and should be treated similarly.

The board also had a few suggestions. For instance, they said if removing fake content contradicted their policies, they could at least label fake content.

This way the users won’t have to fact-check every scandalous news and the spread of misinformation can be effectively curbed. And at the same time, every user will continue to have their freedom of speech.

Policy Change Needs To Be Quick Amidst Upcoming Elections

Responding to the remarks made by the board, a spokesperson from Meta said that the company was reviewing their policies and publicly responded to the suggestions made by the board within 60 days.

The reason why the board feels it’s important to address the matter as soon as possible is because of the upcoming elections in 2024. Firms like OpenAI have taken active measures against election misinformation and it’s time other social media giants follow suit.

Biden’s presidential campaign released a statement on Monday, breaking silence over this issue.

As of now, unfortunately for Biden, the edited video continues to circulate. For instance, a verified account on X (Formerly Twitter) shared the same video last month captioning it “The media just pretend this isn’t happening.”. This account that shared this video has 267,000 followers and the video itself received 611,000 views.

While it seems that the damage is extensive, the Oversight Board stated that the clip clearly looks edited. So it can be hoped that it won’t that it won’t mislead the users.

The post Biden’s Manipulated Video Will Continue To Stay On Facebook; Oversight Board Confirms appeared first on The Tech Report.

While Apple has been very secretive about its autonomous car project, the tech giant’s filings with the California Department of Motor Vehicles indicate that it has ramped up the testing of the self-driving vehicle.

The company quadrupled its test driving distance in 2023 compared to 2022, logging 450,000 miles of autonomous driving in the US.

Previous reports claimed that the company has toned down its efforts to develop an autonomously-driving electric car. However, according to the latest filings, Apple is still going strong with the project even if it may have lowered its expectations.

Apple Still Lagging Behind Other Autonomous Vehicle Developers in Testing

Apple’s increased focus on testing its autonomous EV is relatively recent, with a majority of the testing miles being recorded in the second half of 2023. The tests peaked in August when Apple recorded 83,900 miles of autonomous testing.

However, despite ramping up the testing, Apple still lags behind more advanced companies developing autonomous cars.

For instance, Alphabet’s Waymo drove a whopping 3.7 million testing miles in the state with a safety driver behind the wheel, 1.2 million testing miles with no driver, and over 1.6 million additional miles with passengers.

Apple is yet to obtain a permit to carry out completely driverless testing on public roads in California, which means it must have a safety driver behind the wheel at all times.

It’s worth noting that besides the testing miles recorded in California, Waymo also operates a driverless autonomous taxi service in Phoenix and carrying out tests in Austin, Texas.

General Motors’ autonomous vehicle division Cruise surpasses Apple in testing too, despite its troubled state. The company halted its nationwide testing of autonomous vehicles soon after losing its permit to deploy in California in October 2023.

However, it still managed to rack up 2.65 million miles of test driving in the state, which is more than 2.2 million more than what Apple logged.

While California’s reporting guidelines make it a challenge to compare the testing data directly, Apple clearly has a long way to go before it can catch up with its biggest rivals.

Apple Reportedly Working on v2x Technology for Its Autonomous Cars

With Apple being highly secretive about the project, not much is known of the autonomously driving cars that are under development by the iPhone maker.

However, reports suggest that the company is working on a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology that would enable the cars to connect to the Internet of Things (IoT) and even communicate with each other.

The tech giant has already filed several new software and hardware patents focused on riding comfort features, such as suspension and seats.

While it was earlier reported that the Apple car would arrive in 2024, the launch has since been postponed. The good news, however, is that the project to develop the car, which will supposedly be priced under USD 100,000 finally seems to be gaining momentum.

The post Apple Ramped Up Its ‘Secret’ Autonomous Car Project With Increased Testing, Says Report appeared first on The Tech Report.

Sam Altman is a major investor in Helion Energy— an American-based fusion research company and together, they are trying to build the first nuclear fusion power plant. If they succeed in doing so, they will be the first to put this technology to practical use.

As of now, nuclear fusion is not only unstable but it requires a lot more energy input to work compared to the final outcome it produces. So in the long-term, it’s not a sustainable energy source.

However, Altman and Helion Energy are trying to change that narrative with their latest Polaris machine.

Sam Altman also took to his X account and shared a picture of the facility in which Polaris will be shortly built.

While the company agrees that they have a long way to go before nuclear fusion-produced energy can be a reality, they also have faith in their project.

Microsoft’s Deal With Helion Energy

What’s even more interesting is that Helion already has a big-ticket client in line to buy energy from them.

In May 2023, Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement with Helion, confirming that they’ll buy electricity from them in 2028. This gives the company almost 4 years to bring the project to life by which it aims to build a 50MW nuclear fusion power plant.

With the deal with Microsoft, it may have also ensured a limitless nuclear energy supply for OpenAI as well because it depends on Microsoft’s servers and resources to run its AI tools.

What makes this deal even more special is that this is the first time a company has signed a formal deal for the purchase of electricity.

Why Do We Need Nuclear Fusion?

The rising impact of global warming has been a major concern for all countries and companies. Using Nuclear Fusion— a clean source of energy could do away with this major global crisis.

But there’s another reason why Sam Altman is getting behind this project—to sustain the future of his AI tools.

Many AI tools have now been made public which drastically increased their consumption. But what a lot of us don’t know is it takes a lot of energy to keep an AI system up and running.

As of now, OpenAI gets hundreds of millions of queries every single day which approximately takes up 1GWh of energy on a daily basis. This is equivalent to the amount of energy used by 33,000 households in the US.

Generating one AI image takes as much power as charging your smartphone. In short, there’s no way AI can sustainably grow without a new energy source.

And this breakthrough seems very possible now that companies are relying on AI to grow their business. Their own needs are motivating them to heavily invest in renewable energy sources like nuclear fusion and solar energy.

Sam Altman has already invested $375 million in Helion Energy and seems pretty confident of meeting their 2028 deadline. If this project successfully goes through, it’ll not only benefit Helion but also catapult OpenAI’s growth and give it an edge over its competitors.

The post Sam Altman Shares Pictures Of The Polaris Project—A Nuclear Fusion Power Plant appeared first on The Tech Report.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has finally thrown some light on Apple’s plan with generative AI. Users can expect some big AI features as early as the end of 2024.

Although the exact features and the time of launch weren’t revealed, Cook’s statement has started a series of speculations among Apple enthusiasts.

Apple experts believe that the upcoming iOS 18 update might be the biggest Apple users have seen. Siri is expected to get a complete revamp, with the integration of several AI features such as AI summarization and smart replies. Apple Messages, Music, and Pages can also see major AI upgrades.

Photography is one area where Apple might be more careful. Although AI boosts photo editing and camera performance, it also opens the floodgates to deepfakes and digital foul play.

As regards the time of announcement, experts expect the annual June Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) event to be leveraged for AI announcements. Since most participants will be developers, it makes sense that tech updates are unveiled at this event.

Apple’s Delay In Introducing AI Features

Experts have for long wondered why Apple took so long to get on to the AI bandwagon. As per Apple, they have been working on an in-house LLM model for a few years now. However, no Apple product is laced with an AI feature yet.

This can be attributed to Apple’s stringent approach towards user privacy. AI models, as of now,  aren’t the safest tools out there—user data can be prone to leaks. Apple has always marketed itself as a privacy-first product maker. That’s why Apple isn’t rushing into hugging AI like its competitors.

Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Bard have already been deeply integrated into different tech products.

Samsung’s Galaxy AI has been making a lot of buzz lately. With features like generative edit, Instant Slow-mo, and Circle to Search, Samsung is ready to take the AI game a notch higher. Galaxy AI can even translate calls in real time and rewrite texts with different tones.

However, now that users know AI updates are around the corner, the competition among these giants will become more intense.

The post Apple To Introduce AI Features By The End Of 2024 Confirms Tim Cook appeared first on The Tech Report.

Jeff Bezos is all set to sell 50 million Amazon shares by the end of January 2025, as revealed by Amazon’s annual report. The sale plan was adopted in November 2023 and is subject to certain conditions.

Amazon shares are currently trading at $171.81—a sharp rise of 90% since December 2022, when demands dwindled as effects of the pandemic. This would make the sale worth $8.6 billion.

Amazon’s shares saw an 8% surge on Thursday after its earnings release, taking its market cap to $1.78 trillion.

An interesting thing to note is that Bezos has recently moved to Florida from Washington. WA imposes a capital gain tax of 7%, which would have taken more than $602 million out of Jeff’s sales proceeds. However, now that he is in Florida, no such tax obligation lies on him.

Amazon Turns To AI

Amazon’s AI approach has helped the business massively. The company hasn’t looked back since the demand drop in 2022.

The e-commerce giant launched an AI assistant called Rufus, as recently as this Thursday, with knowledge of the entire product catalog, FAQs, shopping policies, and customer reviews. This will help customers find products they are looking for quicker.

It has also launched a chatbot named Q, that will help its AWS customers to transform user interaction. You can even use it to generate content and take action on your behalf.

Another interesting Amazon feature is its AI-powered review summaries. You can read crisp summaries of all reviews of a particular product, instead of going through multiple reviews. This not only saves you time but also helps you find the right product for your needs.

All these innovations have seemed to help Amazon in its e-commerce business. This is now evident with its rising share prices.

Some experts have questioned whether it is the right time for Bezos to cash out, considering the fact that Amazon shares might sore even more in the coming few years.

However, with a net worth of $193.8 billion, Bezos is third on the list of the richest people in the world, as of now. The decision to cash out might not entirely be dependent on financial motives. Considering that he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, Bezos might be preparing for a life of calm as he nears retirement.

Whatever the case might be, it will be interesting to see how Amazon grows by the time Bezos cashes out and how the stocks react once he leaves.

The post Jeff Bezos To Cash Out Amazon Stocks By January 2025 appeared first on The Tech Report.

As the US military began integrating AI technology into their plans, a recent study has revealed that AI bots are inclined to choose violent options and nuclear attacks more frequently.

They set 3 war scenarios—an invasion, a cyber attack, and a neutral state where there’s no trigger or anticipation for a war. There were 27 types of actions available which included both light methods like talks and diplomatic discussions and aggressive methods like trade restrictions and nuclear attack.

In many scenarios, it was seen that the AI quickly escalated to more aggressive actions, even in a neutral state. This was after the AI models had been trained.

There was another test conducted on the untrained version of Open AI GPT 4 which was even more violent and unpredictable.

All that it said to justify these choices is “I just want to have peace in the world.” and “We have it! Let’s use it”.

Reuel said that the reason why it’s important to check how AI behaves without any training in safety guardrails is because prior studies have shown time and again that in action, it’s very easy for these safety training to be bypassed.

What Is The Current Role Of AI In the Military?

The integration of AI with the US’s defense system is very new. Currently, no AI models have any right to make military decisions. The idea is theoretical as of now and the military is only testing to see whether these tools can be used in the future to get advice on strategic planning during conflicts.

However, Lisa Koch from Claremont McKenna College that with the advent of AI, people tend to trust the responses of these systems.

So even if there’s no direct involvement, it can still influence the decisions, thus undermining the purpose of giving the final say over defense-related actions to humans for safety reasons.

Speaking of collaboration, companies like OpenAI (although according to their initial policy, they refused to take part in military actions), Scale AI, and Palantir have been invited to take part in the process. While the latter two didn’t have any comments to make, Open AI explained the reason behind their sudden change in policy.

Despite these concerning results, the possible use of AI in the military hasn’t been completely discarded. It would be interesting to see if and how AI can transform the military for the better.

But that being said, it’s clear as of now that no automated model is ready to handle the complications of making war-related decisions.

The post Research Shows That AI Tends To Make More Violent Choices In War Games appeared first on The Tech Report.

On Thursday, former CIA hacker, Joshua Schulte was sentenced to 40 years in prison for causing a massive data leak. On top of that, after he’s released, he’ll be subject to a lifetime of supervision. As per reports, he worked for the Center for Cyber Intelligence from 2012 to 2016.

He not only leaked a bunch of classified hacking tools to Wikileaks but was also found to be in possession of child abuse media.

In the words of the prosecutor, “tens of thousands of images of child sexual abuse materials” were found when his apartment was searched. Prosecutors have labeled this one of the most “brazen” and biggest data leaks in history.

He was also accused of leaking CIA’s “Vault 7” tools which allowed them to hack into Apple and Android devices during overseas spy operations and transform any internet TV into a hidden listening device.

Schulte obviously denied all the allegations. He even went on to say that both the FBI and CIA are trying to make him a scapegoat for the public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017.

But he was ultimately found guilty of all the allegations in all three federal trials conducted in 2020, 2022, and 2023 respectively. The charges against him include espionage, contempt of court for making false statements to the FBI, possession of child pornography, and illegal hacking.

What Exactly Happened?

It all began in 2016 when Schulte leaked stolen data to Wikileaks. And in 2017, Wikileaks began publishing data from the leak. Even then he was accused of the leak but he managed to escape by lying to the FBI and the CIA. It is believed that his motive was anger; seemingly over a workplace dispute.

He was failing to meet deadlines at work and one of his projects was so far behind the timeline, that it infamously earned him the nickname “Drifting Deadline”.

He also had some issues with a colleague and the management. Schulte also filed a restraining order against the said colleague in a state court following which they both had to be transferred.

But although his initial intention was to seek revenge from those who mocked him at his workplace, he ended up severely compromising national security.

The whole leak not only cost the CIA millions of dollars but also exposed many secrets, tools, and resources of the agency. On top of that, it also impaired their ability to collect intelligence data on political opponents and adversaries.

Although the accused has been behind bars since 2018, it hasn’t stopped him from trying to leak more data from the prison. He somehow smuggled in a phone and drafted a tweet containing CIA cyber groups and information about CIA cyber tools.

It was sent to a reporter and Schulte smartly concealed his identity was taking the name Jason Bourne (a fake intelligence operative).

The post Former CIA Hacker Gets 40 Years In Prison For Leaking Documents To Wikileaks appeared first on The Tech Report.

Although both Microsoft and Google had faced temporary dips in cloud revenue, the reports for the last quarter show a massive rise in profits, all thanks to generative AI.

The two tech giants made their revenue reports for the December quarter of 2023 public on Tuesday and the numbers look very promising.

Lee Sustar, the principal analyst at Forrester said that the last quarter’s profits not only helped Google make up for all the losses in the previous quarters but the revenue from Google Cloud now accounts for 10% of the total revenue generated by Alphabet— Google’s parent company.

Google Cloud reported a total revenue of $9.19 billion for the last quarter which is 28% more than the previous quarter. For the same quarter, Alphabet reported a total revenue of $86 billion.

Microsoft too has reported similar numbers. Its cloud tools (Azure and other SaaS products) together generated a total revenue of $33 billion which is 24% (22% in constant currency) more than the previous quarter.

What’s New With Google and Microsoft?

Seeing how AI has benefited the company in the last quarter, Google has smartly decided to pair its Bard chatbot with the new Gemini Pro model.

If you didn’t know, Gemini is the first model to outperform human experts in MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding). As of now, the product is expected to support more than 40 Global languages which include Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, and so on.

On top of that, Google is also planning to add image generation support which will allow users to create images through texts typed in the chat. Right now the feature will only be available for English speakers.

AI has drastically increased Google’s user base. CEO Sundar Pichai said that while cost optimization strategies were helping them stay afloat during the macroeconomic headwinds, it’s providing better AI services that helped them bring in new customers.

Microsoft on the other hand managed to revive its struggling cloud services by offering an array of AI features. Integration with OpenAI and ChatGPT was a huge step towards this success.

Many other services such as Microsoft 365 and Azure also went through a makeover with Copilot—an AI-based chatbot.

The last year saw rapid advancement with AI. The collaboration of Microsoft and OpenAI was a huge trigger that left all other competing tech companies to launch their own chatbots.

Now that the financial reports of both Google and Microsoft are out, it would be interesting to see whether Amazon’s AWS platform (that launched its own AI model to compete with Microsoft) made similar profits.

The post Microsoft & Google’s Cloud Revenue Significantly Boosted By Generative AI appeared first on The Tech Report.

On Thursday, Amazon—the popular e-commerce platform—launched its brand new AI shopping assistant called “Rufus” to keep up with the massive revenue growth driven by holiday shoppers in the last quarter.

The revenue has sky-rocketed for the company, speeding past all estimations made by Wall Street and growing the company’s total value by 14% compared to the previous year.

Hence, the company decided to make shopping easier for its customers with the new AI assistant. It will not only revolutionize online shopping but might also impress investors, considering this is the first big AI development that Amazon is using for its customer-facing interfaces.

On top of that, CEO Andy Jassy had also been assuring Amazon investors that the company will soon dive into AI Technology to keep up with the changing times. So it’s a good time to fulfill those promises.

What Exactly Will Rufus Do?

Rufus knows more about the company, its products, and its policies than anyone else. During its extensive hours of training, it mastered the entire product catalog of Amazon, its shopping policies, FAQs, customer reviews, and so on.

On Thursday, Rufus was rolled out in beta mode to some select customers. It is expected to roll out to a few additional US Amazon shoppers in a few weeks.

Last year, Amazon launched a new feature that uses generative AI to produce summaries of its customer reviews. This way, you don’t have to go through tons of reviews for any products. Simply read a crisp summary of all the reviews. This saves time and enhances the overall customer experience.

The tech giant had also introduced Q—an AI chatbot for AWS customers, priced at $20/year. It can analyze and troubleshoot different problems, whether it a network connectivity or finding the best AWS solutions for particular application workloads.

What Other Profits Did Amazon Make?

The growth in sales revenue was not the only factor that led to this big AI step. Last year Amazon Web Services made a massive profit which increased its revenue by 13%, totalling $24.2 billion.

There was even a huge growth in the company’s advertising revenue—almost 27% year-over-year. And as per current predictions, the coming quarter is also expected to be profitable for the company.

These new developments and profits have proved to be a lifesaver for Amazon, considering the previous year was quite troublesome for the company.

At the beginning of 2023, Amazon was dealing with geo-political uncertainty, inflation, economic slowdown, and a dip in customer demand post-pandemic.

This further led to huge job cuts in the company which highly destabilized the internal environment. The stocks had also fallen in value, the lowest being $84.

But thankfully all of that has changed for Amazon this year. Its stocks increased by 90% in value (from $84) and business has been running steadily since the last quarter.

This is the perfect time for the company to experiment with something new and step into AI to keep up with its tech competitors.

The post Amazon Launches Rufus—An AI Shopping Assistant To Keep Up With Holiday Season’s Sales Boost  appeared first on The Tech Report.

FBI director Christopher Wray warned that cyber hackers working for the Chinese government are planning to cause major disruptions in the US.

Their attack plan is likely to target transportation networks, water infrastructure, and the power grid.

After Wray’s meeting with US politicians, he’s now expected to talk to the House Select Committee On The Chinese Communist Party.

He will not only raise concerns about the issue at hand but also highlight how little attention is being paid to a matter that will affect almost every American citizen.

He already has a copy of the statements that he plans to make. We managed to find some excerpts from it—here are some of them:

• “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike.”
• “Today, and literally every day, they’re actively attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data.”

It’s not just assumptions. The statements made by Wray are backed by data offered by private cyber security firms that have warned about China’s dangerous plans.

In fact, a malicious group from China (Volt Typhoon) recently attempted to break into sensitive American infrastructure and they also managed to infect countless end-of-life routers.

Thankfully, officials were swift in taking action and allowed the FBI to not only issue warrants but also launch a remote command to wipe the Volt Typhoon’s botnet clean.

What makes this issue even more dangerous is once inside, the Volt Typhoon team uses legitimate IP addresses and credentials, making it almost impossible to detect.

China has also been accused by US firm Mandiant of breaking into thousands of private and public sectors across the world by exploiting a security flaw in a popular email application.

These events alone are sufficient data to prove that the threat of China is no longer theoretical.

Why Is China Attacking The US Infrastructure?

While there’s no solid evidence behind any of the theories, some officials believe that China plans to time the attack with its invasion of Taiwan. Even if the US decides to help Taiwan, it will be too busy sorting out major crises in its own country.

Along with the threat to the USA’s infrastructure, China also seems to have cyber control over the country through AI deep fakes, social media sites, and other destructive cyber tools that could easily tamper with the US elections.

China continues to deny all allegations despite solid evidence. A committee was established to counter China’s action and in 2022, Mr Wray also joined hands with MI5 to issue a joint warning to China.

However, it seems like the talks aren’t achieving the required results. The threat still persists and in the FBI’s words, how the Chinese Intelligence Services and other agencies are handling the matter is still pretty intense and concerning.

The post Chinese Hackers Plan To Wreak Havoc In The US, Warns The FBI appeared first on The Tech Report.

Mark Zuckerberg– the man behind Instagram and Facebook— apologized to the families who claimed that their children were ruined by social media.

Zuckerberg was one of the top executives alongside other representatives from X, Tiktok and other social media giants who faced Senator Josh Hawley’s heated questions regarding child safety, especially for sexual harassment and exploitation online.

He was asked whether he compensated any of the families that faced hardship due to the negligence of his platforms to which he replied no.

He also assured the families that Meta is continuously investing in and working on providing better technologies to protect children across the industry.

What Did The Parents Have To Say?

The families shared heart-rending stories about their children, highlighting the painful details of their personal tragedy tied to their social media usage.

There were also several video testimonies from kids explaining the horrors they faced on these social media sites. One child even went on to reveal (anonymously) that they were sexually exploited on Facebook.

The parents sat clutching the photos of their kids who were harmed by these social media platforms throughout the process.

What’s even more tragic is that some kids have also self-harmed and taken their lives owing to the problems they faced online.

The families certainly gave the executives a tough time, jeering at them at every chance and applauding the senators every time they asked the executives a challenging question.

Zuckerberg was targeted the most. His opening line and many other statements were met with unkind interruptions and remarks.

What Did The Other CEOs & Executives Have To Say?

While Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew (Tiktok CEO) voluntarily agreed to testify, executives from X, Snap, and Discord had to be forced in through government-issued subpoenas.

Chew sympathized with the parents stating that his own 3 kids don’t use TikTok owing to restrictions in Singapore, where he lives.

Yaccarino, the executive from X was in favor of the STOP CSAM act, a legislative proposal that will make all tech companies liable for allowing child abuse material online and will give the victim rights to take legal action against the company in case they are involved.

Zuckerberg was most under fire for an Instagram prompt containing child abuse material. Although it initially issued a warning, it still gave the option to “see it anyway”.

Zuckerberg even tried to defend it by saying “It’s often helpful too, rather than just blocking it, to help direct them towards something that could be helpful”

Overall, the outcome of the testimonies was unsatisfactory. Parents were not confident in the promises made by the representatives. Some of the executives didn’t even seem very supportive of the proposals made by the Senator.

For instance, when lawmaker Lindsay Graham listed some of the bills currently going through Congress for child safety, Discord CEO Jason Citron (although he barely had any time to respond), seemed to have some reservations.

The criticism for the lack of accountability also came from inside sources. Arturo Bejar, a former engineer at Meta testified that the company does have a good knowledge of the exploitation kids face online and the harm teens go through, yet it has done much to address or fix the issue.

It remains to be seen if these tech giants actually take any steps to protect children online, or will it be the same story moving forward?

The post Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes To Families During Senate Hearing On Child Safety appeared first on The Tech Report.

Zoom is gearing to step into mixed reality and carve out an indispensable place for itself in the industry with Apple’s Vision Pro—Apple’s first spatial computer. It launched its visionOS app on the same day that the Apple Vision Pro hit the market.

The Apple Vision Pro can be used to take spatial photos and videos so that you can relive your best moments all over again. However, that’s being humble, as you’ll also get a three-dimensional user interface with the ability to seamlessly blend digital content (such as app interfaces) with the physical world around you.

What Will The New Zoom App Do?

For example, all of the participants will get a 3D representation, which will allow the other members to see their hands and facial movements easily. You’ll also be able to scale the app to your desired size (which will make it look like you’re in the same room as your colleague) and seamlessly blur the background. All these features are expected to roll out on February 2.

This is just the beginning, though—in a recent blog post, Zoom announced that it’s planning to add more features later this year.

This will include 3D object sharing which will allow users to share 3D files with their team members. So, if you’re designing a new product, you can share its 3D design with your team with ease.

On top of that, you’ll also be able to add up to 5 participants to the top of the meeting. Doing so will remove their background, adding a greater level of realism to the meeting. Finally, Zoom is also planning to add a chat app for the entire team, and that too, within the visionOS, to further improve team collaboration.

The coming together of Apple and Zoom is being considered a positive move by tech experts around the world. See for yourself:

The Only Drawback 

While the new Zoom app seems to work like a dream, there’s one tiny drawback—there aren’t many third-party apps to connect with. As a business, you might want to have enough integration options to centralize your workflow. However, as of now, this doesn’t seem to affect sales.

Apple has already sold over 200,000 units which made its new headset-line a $700,000,000 business even before the units have been delivered.

It seems that the entire digital industry is amazed by this futuristic collaboration barring a few exceptions such as YouTube and Netflix. Netflix, for instance, believes that this feature isn’t very relevant to its users, which is why it has said that Netflix won’t launch a dedicated app for Apple Vision Pro. However, as it’s for every one of us to see, Zoom feels otherwise.

The post Zoom All Set To Join Hands With Apple Vision Pro With Its Spatial Computing App appeared first on The Tech Report.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (and whose Neuralink implants became the first brain chip in a human), first rose to the position of the richest man in the world in September 2021 and then again in 2023 and has held the title ever since. But that’s all about to change as this new ruling from a Delaware court comes in.

A judge from Delaware has reportedly sided with the shareholders of Tesla and denied Musk the $56 billion promised to him via corporate payout.

The ruling comes after a lawsuit was filed against him by the shareholders of his company Tesla, which stated that Musk dictated his own terms of payment to the board members and they had no independent say in how much he gets to take home.

She also went on to say that Elon Musk is a “Superstar CEO” (from what it looks like, that’s sarcasm?) who used his personal connections with some of the board members and power over the company to create a payment approval process that works in his favor and is not subject to the decisions of his board members.

Read more about Elon: Fidelity slashes valuation of Musk’s X holdings by 71.5% amidst advertiser boycott

What Does Elon Musk Have To Say In His Defence? 

Further, his lawyers also stated that the massive paycheck that was approved by the board members and the shareholders back in 2018 was solely done to keep the best engineers in the world focused completely on Tesla.

According to the deal he then created, he would receive 1% of the company’s share for each commercial milestone it reaches. Since then, the company sped past all 12 pre-decided milestones which propelled both Tesla and Musk to the top.

Although the growth benefited all shareholders, McCormick pointed out that Musk was already heavily benefitting from the company, considering he owned 22% of its shares.

She also observed that back then (i.e. in 2018), Tesla was in the middle of launching the Model 3 Sedan—a car that would make the luxury brand available to middle-class customers. In her words, this was “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets by multiple orders of magnitude.”

She also questioned whether this step was even necessary to retain Musk and grow the company (as stated by Musk’s lawyers) or to simply make the company dependent on him.

Furthermore, Musk isn’t the only one to take a hit from the case. Tesla’s shares slipped by 4% in after-hours trading on Tuesday evening.

After all, both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Exchange need the company’s board of directors to be independent of the company before its shares can be traded in the open market.

The post Elon Musk Might Lose The “Richest Person In The World” Title As Court Decides He Cannot Keep Tesla Payout appeared first on The Tech Report.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk announced that his neurotechnology company Neuralink implanted the first brain chip in a human. The trial was first announced in September 2023 and as per his latest tweet on X(formerly known as Twitter), the participant is recovering fine.

Results also show a great deal of neuron spikes. For those who don’t know, neuron spike refers to the activity of neurons during which they use energy to send signals and information around the brain and to the body. So an increase in neuron spikes simply refers to a more active brain.

A little about the company— Neuralink was co-founded by Elon Musk in 2016.

Its primary goal is to create a sustainable bond between our brains and computers which in turn will help us deal with neurological disorders.

However, the company had to go through a great deal of struggle in the initial stages, owing to the unique nature of its work. But this year it reached one of its biggest milestones as FDA approved human testing for the chips.

What Lies Ahead?

With the approval from the FDA, Neuralink will now launch a 6-year study during which they’ll have a robot implant 64 flexible threads (thinner than human hair) into the part of the brain that helps control movement.

As you can understand, if this experiment is successful, it will revolutionize the lives of people suffering from movement-related diseases such as ALS or Parkinson’s.

Musk also said that the first product by Neuralink will be named Telepathy. It would allow you to control any device through your phone or computer just by thinking. A lot like how Stephen Hawking functioned, but this process will be much faster.

However, this is only the beginning and the road ahead is quite tricky for Neuralink because there are many other successful competitors aiming for the same goal. For instance, Blackrock Neurotech implanted its first set of brain-computer interfaces in 2004.

Other companies such as Australia-based Synchron and Precision Neuroscience are not only early to the race, but the latter has developed better ways of implanting the chip.

Precision Neuroscience (which was founded by a co-founder of Neuralink) uses a very tiny chip, almost the size of a small tape, that’s meant to sit at the surface of your brain and can be implanted through a micro slit surgery. This process is said to be much simpler and less invasive than what Musk had originally planned.

Sensing the growing competition, Musk smartly reached out to Synchron for a collaboration. The implant developed by the latter is much less invasive and doesn’t require cutting into the skull in order to install, unlike Neuralink’s Link product. This will certainly give the company an edge over its competitors.

Overall, Neuralinl is doing great. As per the latest reports from Pitchbook (a data company), it has a strong workforce of 400 employees and has raised at least $363 million from investors.

The post Elon Musk’s Neuralink Implants First Brain Chip In A Human appeared first on The Tech Report.

On Monday, Italy’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) found that OpenAI’s AI-driven chatbot ChatGPT has been violating European data privacy laws.

The incident came to light when a “fact-finding activity” found new evidence. This activity was launched by the DPA when ChatGPT was first introduced in Europe.

According to the latest statement released by the authorities, it’s confirmed that this new evidence points to a breach of the terms mentioned in the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

While the exact details are still unknown, it seems that the violation was regarding the collection of bulk personal user data for training purposes.

Also, the authorities are worried that the rapid growth of ChatGPT exposes the younger generation to a greater risk of coming across inappropriate content generated by AI. OpenAI has been given 30 days to respond with a defense.

The DPA could also impose restrictions on its operations in Europe which would change how the company collects and uses data to train its AI bots. If the company does not comply with the restrictions imposed, it might have to pull out its services from the EU Member States.

ChatGPT’s History With Italy & Europe

This isn’t the first time that ChatGPT has gotten in trouble. In March 2023, Italy was the first Western country to ban ChatGPT owing to privacy concerns.

The ban was authorized by Italian watchdog Garante the European Union’s primary agency in testing AI platform compliance with the bloc’s data privacy regime.

The platform was reinstated 4 weeks later after it successfully clarified all the issues raised by the DPA. Despite being welcomed back, the regulators continued to have doubts about the platform.

In April 2023, the DPA along with the European Union’s European Data Protection Board set up a special task force for monitoring the activities of the company.

While the new privacy measures taken by ChatGPT were appreciated, the regulators want even more compliance and cooperation from the company.

Explaining the details, one of the spokesmen from the agency said that they want an age verification system to protect minors and an option to opt out of sharing their data for training purposes for all users.

An informative campaign was also expected to be launched that would explain to the Italians what exactly happened.

The company also assured that they are actively trying to reduce the usage of personal data in AI training and have trained systems like ChatGPT to reject requests for the private information of users from other third parties. For now, they plan to work with the Garante to find a common solution.

The post ChatGPT Under Fire For Violating Privacy Laws In Italy appeared first on The Tech Report.

The stock market indices—Nasdaq and S&P 500—have all reached all-time highs (hope y’all are invested and raking in good passive income), primarily thanks to tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet achieving unparalleled market valuations.

There’s something worrisome behind the curtains—the tech sector is currently experiencing an increase in layoffs this month. Higher valuations with fewer resources? Interesting!

Last year wasn’t great either—as many as 260,000 jobs were wiped off. If you’re in the tech space, you’d know that this is the most challenging the industry has gotten since the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s.

So, what’s the reason for massive layoffs? Well, I’ve scoured what companies have been saying and all of them in so many words have blamed poor consumer demand, high inflation, and an exaggerated recruitment phase during the pandemic for these job reductions.

At the time of writing, the aforementioned tech giants have all recovered from the perplexing pre-pandemic performance levels, plus there’s been a 50% reduction in inflation when compared to the previous year. All this has surely improved the confidence of customers like you and me.

Despite this, the beginning of this year saw nearly 100 tech companies, including juggernauts such as Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and TikTok, collectively laying off around 25,000 employees. This is concerning, to say the least.

To give you a quick rundown:

• Microsoft and SAP laid off around 1,900 and 8,000 employees
• eBay cut thousands of jobs while fintech startup Brex has let go 20% of its employees
• Earlier this month, Amazon, Google, Discord, and Unity also announced job cuts to streamline their operations and adapt to market demand
• Amazon slashed positions across MGM Studios, Prime Video, audible, and Twitch divisions
• Unity and Discord are cutting 25% and 17% of their workforce

Interestingly, these layoffs coincide with the upcoming tech earnings season, where Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft are set to disclose their quarterly results—I’d look at it as a means to appease investors and other stakeholders because whether we like it or not, and regardless of the big-picture effects, the companies have been able to reduce costs in response to various economic uncertainties.

The bottom line is: can you blame a company for focusing on productivity and efficiency?

The New Reality 

As I pointed out, we can link these job cuts to budget planning and strategic initiatives of the companies in the upcoming year.

Of course, there has been an increased investment in AI that has made it necessary for companies to cut down costs. Investment in AI is on the rise, and it’s no secret that it may soon result in more workforce reductions.

Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s gaming CEO, explained that the layoffs were aimed at minimizing areas of overlap and are part of a bigger plan followed by the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Similarly, Google recently introduced new AI products to improve Google Chrome. Amazon is also increasing its investments in AI, and SAP has also stated about diverting its focus more to business AI.

If you think tech industries are the only ones facing layoffs, how about this—Citigroup, a company in the banking sector, has announced a 10% workforce cut. Then there are media companies like Levi Strauss and Paramount that have also announced layoffs to enhance efficiency and streamline operations—just like the rest of them.

All in all, it’s undoubtedly a social responsibility rather than a business-driven incentive, so we can only guess whether these companies will be able to protect jobs as we move towards a more AI-driven work environment.

The post The Surge In Tech Layoffs Despite Wall Street Records appeared first on The Tech Report.

Elon Musk is actively hiring content moderators for its new X Austin office. The aim is to form a team of 100 moderators by the end of the year.

Called the “Trust and Safety Center of Excellence”, the date of opening of the facility is not yet known. However, it is expected to combat the growing issues of child abuse and rising hate speech on X.

Benarroch stressed the fact that the company is looking to develop such a facility to prevent its platform from being used as a tool to spread hate.

Musk’s relationship with Austin isn’t new—Tesla already operates a gigafactory there. As per a recent tax filing of The Foundation, one of Musk’s charities, there are plans to build a university in Austin. Musk has tendered a $100 million gift for the purpose.

X’s Content Moderation Headaches

Ever since Musk has taken over X, the company has been under security for all the wrong reasons. He had fired content moderators right after he took over the reins.

X came under regulatory fire during the Hamas-Israel conflict. The EU launched a formal investigation into X’s content moderation practices. This was to examine if they are complying with legal requirements to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

Similarly, a new law in California required social media companies to submit a half-yearly report disclosing their content moderation practices.

However, X filed a lawsuit challenging this law, terming it “unconstitutional”. X alleged that it violated the First Amendment and was against its policy of “free speech”.

However, Judge William Shubb dismissed such claims, reiterating that the law was well within the constitutional framework.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has also accused X of stifling anti-hate campaigners on its platform. However, X rubbished such claims, claiming there to be a political motive behind such a statement.

All these incidents hint at one thing — X has not done enough to prevent hate speech on its platform. Musk’s own anti-semantic tweets were heavily criticized, which led to a massive advertiser exodus from the platform.

However, with this new Austin facility, X seems to finally be moving in the right direction. It remains to be seen how things shape up for Musk and his notion of “free-speech”.

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Less than 15 months after its launch, the UK Amazon Insurance Store is now closed for business.

Amazon announced its insurance business in the UK in October 2022, partnering with companies like LV, Co-op, and Ageas. You could buy home, travel, car, and other insurance products with Amazon.

The company has assured customers that their ongoing policies will not be affected and they will continue to enjoy coverage. You’ll be able to make claims as usual, without any delays. Amazon said that it will guide and help customers if any changes are made.

Amazon’s exit goes to highlight the difficulty of entering a highly regulated market even for commercial giants.

However, this doesn’t come as a surprise for insurance experts, given how unplanned Amazon’s move was, especially for the UK markets.

Reasons Behind Amazon’s Exit

However, this isn’t the first time a brand has failed to fathom unexplored waters. Tesco, the popular grocery brand, once forayed into mortgage and other financial services, only to close that business later on.

Quickbooks had announced that they would offer commercial insurance products in 2020. However, it quickly abandoned the project after failing to achieve profit and return targets.

Stephen Perkins, managing director at Yellow Brick Mortgages, has outlined several reasons for Amazon’s failure.

For starters, there wasn’t much market awareness about Amazon’s insurance business. People didn’t know that Amazon sold insurance in the first place, making business tough for the giant.

Another reason could be the continued losses or shrinking profits, which were too little for the amount of risk involved in the business.

Lastly, the regulatory requirements in the insurance business are far more when compared to online retail business, which could have been too much for Amazon to comply with.

Experts have also acknowledged the fact that it is not good for customers, since they will now have a choice less when picking an insurer.

But at the same time, it is also a big relief to them. There’s always a threat of big corporations using their brand name and network to disrupt industries. However, with this incident, it is quite evident that it’s not that simple.

The post Amazon Shuts Down Its Insurance Business In The UK appeared first on The Tech Report.

Democratic Oregon Senator Ron Wyden made a startling revelation on Thursday, claiming that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been purchasing domestic internet records of American citizens for years, spying on them without necessary warrants.

In his letter to intelligence chief Avril Haines, Wyden mentioned that US officials had fought to keep their ties with “shady” private companies a secret.

It was Wyden’s blocking of the appointment of a new NSA director that forced them to release the details, he added.

A “Legal Gray Area” – How NSA Officials Obtained Data through Private Companies

According to the Oregon Democrat, data brokers had been quietly obtaining and reselling the internet metadata of Americans without their consent.

Describing the practice as a “legal gray area”, he accused officials of exploiting it to circumvent legal procedures.

To obtain location data from mobile phones of American users, security officials would require a warrant. However, their arrangements with private companies allow them to work around it by routinely purchasing the necessary data.

For years, Wyden’s office has been probing the sale of location data to the government, it said. The investigation uncovered several ties between the Department of Defense and companies that Wyden described as “shady”, accusing them of flagrantly violating people’s privacy.

Wyden expressed in his letter that the US government is in need of a wake-up call,  asking Ms. Haines to take inventory of the data in possession of the government already and remove any information that fails to meet the standard of consent.

The senator also called for rules that would only allow the government to purchase data that Americans have consented to be sold. “The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry”, Wyden added.

Despite the details of the data purchases always being unclassified, the Pentagon tried hard to keep it under wraps.

However, Wyden recently blocked the NSA’s attempt to appoint a new director, forcing them to disclose the information.

According to him, intelligence agencies tried their best to maintain the secrecy around the practice as they intended to “keep the American people in the dark”.

Secretary of Defense and NSA Director Defend the Practice

Ron Wyden also released a letter from NSA director and Army General Paul M. Nakasone, where the latter can be seen detailing the NSA’s actions and justifying them.

Describing the acquired data as “commercially available information”, Nakasone claimed that such acquisitions are limited and did not include location data from automobiles.

The NSA does not purchase location data of phones that are “known to be used in the US”, he added, confirming that the agency acquires US-based  “non-content” data when there are communications between a US-based IP address and one located abroad.

Ronald S. Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense, defended the DoD’s acquisition of the said data in a separate letter.

There is no judicial opinion or law in the US that requires the department to get a court order before acquiring, accessing, or using any information that is equally available for private individuals, other US companies, and foreign adversaries to purchase, he mentioned.

However, Ryden believes that the legal landscape on the matter may have now changed, with the FTC taking action against a data broker earlier this month. Selling location data counts as an intrusion into the lives of consumers, the commission ruled.

It’s worth noting that Wyden’s disclosure of the practice comes at a time when the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee are fighting over efforts to outlaw such data purchases.

The post NSA Secretly Spying on Americans by Buying Their Internet Records, Us Senator Ron Wyden Reveals appeared first on The Tech Report.

Sexually explicit AI-generated images of popular pop singer Taylor Swift went viral this week, sparking calls for new legislation against the creation of deepfake images.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre expressed alarm over the incident, urging Congress to take legislative action.

Distributed through the popular instant messaging app Telegram, the fake images reached millions of users. We also found these images on X, which were viewed 47 million times before they got taken down by the platform.

Democrats and Republicans Unite on the Deepfake Situation

Quite expectedly, the incident has sparked outrage among Taylor Swift fans and US politicians alike — both Democrats and Republicans calling for the criminalization of such actions.

However, this is not the first time that AI has been used to create fake yet convincing imagery of someone without their consent.

A spokesperson for US representative Joe Morelle expressed hope that the news will add momentum and garner support for a bill addressing the exact situation.

The bill, which Morelle tried to pass with a renewed push last week, intends to declare the nonconsensual distribution of digitally altered explicit pictures a federal crime.

This would bring such wrongdoers to justice with both civil and criminal penalties, Morelle’s spokesperson pointed out.

In a post on X, Democratic representative Yvette D Clarke said that recent developments in AI have made it much easier and cheaper to create deepfake images – which have been used to target women for years.

He went on to emphasize the need for safeguards to combat the growing and dangerous trend, pointing out that the victim could be any young person across the country.

X issued a statement saying that it was actively taking down the images, monitoring the situation closely to prevent further violations, and taking “appropriate action” against the involved accounts.

The Rise of Deepfakes Amid a Stark Lack of Legislation

Anyone can be a victim of deepfake, including you. However, the risk is much higher for celebrities and public personalities.

If you don’t know what deepfake exactly is, it is the use of artificial intelligence to create realistic images or videos of a person by manipulating their face, body, and even voice. This has been fueled by the recent rise of AI.

A 2023 study reveals that the total number of deepfake videos on the internet stood at 95,820 in 2023 — a 550% jump since 2019. And to everyone’s shock, 98% of these deepfake videos are pornography.

The UK criminalized the sharing of deepfake pornography in 2023 with its Online Safety Act. But that’s not the case in the US, since there’s no proper legislation addressing the problem.

Despite state-level attempts to tackle the creation and distribution of sexually explicit deepfakes, there are no federal laws on the issue.

RAINN Vice President of Public Policy Stefan Turkheimer spoke up on the incident, claiming that over 100,000 such images and videos are shared on the internet daily.

Expressing the organization’s anger on behalf of the pop singer, he added that they were “angrier still” for the millions who lack the resources to regain autonomy over their images.

The post White House Alarmed Over Taylor Swift Deepfakes, Calls for New Legislation Rise in Congress appeared first on The Tech Report.

For the first time in the company’s history, Apple has announced that it would allow rival app stores to be used on Apple devices purchased in the EU.

This comes as a part of major changes to how the tech giant handles apps in Europe, which also included significant cuts in its App Store fees.

The updates, which were announced on Thursday, are a response to the new regulations that are set to take effect in March this year.

The changes won’t apply in the UK – at least just yet. However, the Digital Markets Bill which is currently passing through the UK parliament will likely bring Apple’s practices under scrutiny.

Cheaper Fees and Greater Flexibility: A Win for Users and Developers

The shift is essentially one of the most impactful changes to the company’s app business since the App Store was first launched, 15 years ago.

With Apple strongly stifling competition from potential rival app stores, it formed the basis of the tech giant’s ecosystems. Apple currently allows you to only download apps from its proprietary store – a rule that it claims to enforce to protect the users’ security.

However, there has been mounting pressure against the policy, with Apple being accused of creating a monopoly.

Epic Games recently brought Apple to court over forcing customers and developers to go through its own channels and charging developers a hefty processing fee of up to 30%.

The move led Apple to update its policy and start allowing developers to offer alternate payment channels – while still charging a 27% commission. Spotify had recently criticized Apple for this move.

With the official App Store from Apple being the only app store that could be used on its devices, you did not have much choice in how you installed apps.

Developers who don’t wish to pay the hefty fees or do not meet Apple’s standards could not sell their products to the millions of Apple users either. This is now set to change in Europe once the updates take effect.

For developers who are eligible for certain discount programs and are currently charged a 15% commission on in-app transactions, the fee would be set at 10%. This is indeed yet another massive change, addressing one of the key issues raised against Apple in recent times.

The announced updates go on to show how EU policymakers succeeded in forcing Apple to change its business practices.

The tech giant has also announced that developers will soon be able to offer alternative payment methods without having to pay a commission. No fees would be collected from apps distributed through rival app stores either, the company said.

Developers choosing to benefit from the new fee structure and capabilities will instead have to pay Apple a fee of 0.50 euros for every installation following the first 1 million installs in a year.

Based on this requirement, less than 1% of the developers in the EU would have to pay this fee, Apple mentioned.

Other Changes for Apple Users in the EU

Besides the reduced fees and the option to use alternative app stores and payment methods, Apple also announced other changes that will be coming to the EU.

Once iOS 17.4 is rolled out, developers will be able to access the tap-to-pay chip that comes embedded in iPhones. This would enable them to create alternative iOS mobile wallet apps for contactless payments.

EU users opening Safari after downloading the update will see a menu of alternative browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Though Apple’s App Tore will continue to be initially set as default, you will gain the ability to set a third-party app store as your default choice.

The post Apple Cuts App Store Fees, to Allow Rival App Stores in Europe appeared first on The Tech Report.

In a move aimed at protecting minors on two of the world’s largest social media platforms, Meta has announced a new safety update for Facebook and Instagram.

Teens aged under 16, or 18 in some places, will no longer receive direct messages from strangers, i.e., users who they don’t follow or aren’t connected to already.

The stricter safety controls come as a part of Meta’s ongoing efforts to ensure “age-appropriate experiences for teens” across its platforms.

Parental Approval Needed to Turn Off the New Setting

The new security setting will be activated by default for all minor users on Instagram and Facebook.

If you’re an existing user to whom the changes apply, you’ll get a notification at the top of your feed, informing you of the change to your message settings.

While you will still have the option to turn off the setting, it might require your parents’ approval.

Now, let’s say you’re a parent of an underage adult. Until now, you were simply notified when your children made a change to their default privacy and security settings. However, you’ll now be able to approve or reject such requests.

This means teens using a supervised account would not be able to change their direct messaging settings in order to be able to receive DMs from strangers unless their parents approve of the change.

Trying to turn off the security setting will notify you, along with a prompt to approve or decline the attempt.

Meta’s Growing Efforts for Stricter Parental Control

While a previously introduced feature blocked adults over 19 years from direct messaging minors, the new change applies to all strangers.

As a parent, these changes offer you greater control over the online interactions of your children. The new feature is aimed at facilitating in-person conversations between teens and their parents, Meta said.

The update comes at a crucial time when social media platforms are under increasing scrutiny over the impact they have on teens.

In December 2023, New Mexico’s Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta for failing to protect the younger Facebook and Instagram users from being exposed to sexual abuse material and even allowing adults to ask them for explicit imagery.

Newly redacted documents from the case underscore the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant’s “historical reluctance” to protect children, the lawsuit says.

It’s worth noting that Meta has announced the introduction of a new feature that would block underage users from viewing inappropriate images sent to them, even by people they are connected to.

The company is also expanding its suite of parental supervision tools and has introduced a number of features over the last two years. Not too long ago, tools were rolled out on Facebook and Instagram to limit access to content related to eating disorders or self-harm for teens.

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The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published a report on January 24, highlighting the near-term impact of AI on the looming cyber threat.

The growing adoption of artificial intelligence and the constantly improving capabilities of AI tools will increase the already severe threat posed by ransomware gangs, cybersecurity experts in the UK have warned.

The cybersecurity agency assessed that artificial intelligence is making it easier for novice cybercriminals in a number of ways. It enables even unskilled criminals to pull off successful cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks.

Here’s How AI Is Helping Cybercriminals

Until now, one of the most common ways to identify scammers has been their poorly written emails and texts, often filled with grammatical errors.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can now change this by helping scammers and other cybercriminals produce more convincing messages to prey on unsuspecting victims.

A growing number of publicly available AI tools are making it increasingly easy to generate text, image, and voice messages using nothing but simple hand-typed prompts.

Additionally, cybercriminals can also use AI to identify vulnerable targets, the NCSC warned. “AI services lower barriers to entry, increasing the number of cyber criminals, and will boost their capability by improving the scale, speed, and effectiveness of existing attack methods”.

The report warned that there might also be a spike in fraud and child abuse.

The biggest threat that AI would help amplify, however, is ransomware. Previously identified by the NCSC as the biggest cyber threat faced by the UK, ransomware attacks involve cybercriminals stealing data or locking access to files in a system by encrypting them.

Hackers can then extort hefty ransoms from their victims by threatening to leak stolen data or wreaking financial havoc by refusing to reopen access to locked systems.

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA)’s findings, cybercriminals are already developing malicious versions of generative AI models. This, in turn, allows anyone to acquire better hacking tools with ease.

Must Harness the Potential of AI While Managing Its Risks, Says NCSC Chief

Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the NCSC said that despite the growing cyber threats due to artificial intelligence, the technology should still be embraced.

Cameron also went on to describe the growing use of AI in cybercrimes as “evolutionary” rather than “revolutionary”, explaining that while it increases existing risks, the risk landscape itself won’t be getting transformed in the near term.

The NCSC is doing all in its power to ensure that AI systems are designed to be secure, she assured while urging individuals and organizations to follow the agency’s guidelines.

AI can also be used as a defensive tool against malicious actors, the report noted, pointing out that it can help design more secure systems and detect cyber-attacks.

Not too long ago, the UK government published the “Cyber Governance Code of Practice” – a set of guidelines that encourage businesses to stay better equipped to prevent and recover from ransomware attacks.

The post AI Intensifying Global Ransomware Threat, Warns The NCSC appeared first on The Tech Report.

Microsoft’s version of Metaverse for professional settings is finally here, with the tech giant announcing that Microsoft Teams will now support 3D meetings.

This means you can now engage in virtual 3D meetings in customizable environments. The new feature comes as a result of Microsoft integrating Teams with its mixed reality platform Mesh.

While the new 3D meetings are meant to offer a virtual reality experience that would work best with VR headsets, you don’t necessarily need one. You may also join a Mesh meeting on teams using a PC for an on-screen 3D experience.

Mesh Meetings to Only Support Meta’s Quest Headsets for Now

As of now, the Mesh-powered 3D meetings on Teams only support the Quest series VR headsets from Meta.

Though Apple’s Vision Pro, which is set to launch on February 2 has been making waves in the VR space, Microsoft declined to comment on its compatibility with the new feature.

If you’re joining these meetings using PCs, you can still control an avatar to move around and interact in various 3D environments—except it wouldn’t be as immersive.

Previously in 2017, Microsoft acquired AltspaceVR, a social VR platform. The tech giant then went on to shut down the platform in 2023, following a mass layoffs that recorded over 10,000 job cuts.

Microsoft Mesh, which was only offered as a preview until recently, doesn’t feel very different from AltspaceVR—just a more corporate version designed for professional use.

The Mesh meetings on Teams feature customizable 3D environments, allowing you to add icebreaker questions and fun games. The excellent spatial and audio features in these meetings help replicate physical meetings closely.

For instance, you can move away from others in the 3D virtual space to have private conversations, just like you would in a physical setting.

Microsoft believes that the new feature would find application across a range of use cases such as employee onboarding, town hall meetings, brainstorming sessions, and more.

Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst J.P. Gownder agrees that Mesh can “play a role in creating cohesion for hybrid working arrangements” by addressing some of the limitations associated with video meetings.

What Does the Future Hold for Mesh?

While the integration of Mesh revolutionizes Teams meetings, it is unclear whether the new feature would gain any traction among users.

The chances of widespread adoption would have been much greater if Microsoft introduced the tool in 2020. With the COVID-19 pandemic causing remote work to surge, there was a significant spike in investments in collaboration tools.

Now that business travel has resumed fully and people are more mobile, it may take time for Mesh to gain popularity.

Mesh is already being used by companies like BP, Accenture, Mercy Ships, and Takeda. However, it is still only a fraction of the companies that use Teams on a daily basis.

While the integration with Teams would certainly help Mesh draw more attention, there’s a good chance that it would simply remain a Teams feature rather than become a popular standalone platform.

Mesh, along with its immersive spaces and other standard features, will be included under the Microsoft Teams business plans. However, deploying a custom immersive space would require a Teams Premium license.

The post Microsoft Teams Integrated With Mesh to Support 3D and VR Meetings appeared first on The Tech Report.

The French data protection watchdog, CNIL, has slapped Amazon with a hefty €32M (£27M) fine for “excessively intrusive” surveillance of its workers.

According to the agency, the eCommerce giant has resorted to surveillance measures that it found to be illegal.

Following media coverage of the working conditions at the warehouses as well as complaints by employees, the CNIL decided to launch an inquiry in 2019.

Upon investigation, the agency discovered that Amazon tracks workers in real time using data from their handheld scanners.

This enables Amazon to keep a close watch on its employees, allegedly making for a stressful work environment. Amazon, however, has refuted the findings by claiming that they are “factually incorrect”.

Workers Have to Justify Each Break, CNIL Finds

According to the CNIL, scanner data indicating the time taken by workers to perform specific tasks are documented in real time.

Such precise and intrusive surveillance led to workers potentially having to justify each break they took while at work.

The investigators also found that Amazon tracks the time taken by employees to check the quality of items. Workers are mandated to put at least 1.25 seconds into checking each article.

A check that falls below this threshold, i.e., takes less than 1.25 seconds, is deemed insufficient by Amazon.

The eCommerce giant’s surveillance methods breach the General Data Protection Regulation enforced in the EU in three ways, the CNIL claims.

While error alerts for quality checks taking less time than the minimum threshold is one, the other two are for breaks lasting from 1 to 10 minutes and 10 minutes or more respectively.

The CNIL also raised questions about Amazon retaining the collected data for longer than 31 days, calling it excessive.

Amazon Responds to “Nearly Unprecedented” Fine, Disagrees with CNIL’s Findings

The €32M penalty that Amazon has been charged with is almost equivalent to 3% of the company’s revenue in 2021, which stood at €1.1 billion.

Pointing out that it’s not far below the CNIL’s maximum chargeable penalty of 4% of a company’s revenue, the agency described the fine as “nearly unprecedented”.

The spokesperson then went on to point out that warehouse management systems are an industry standard. The surveillance measures are in place to ensure operational efficiency, safety, and quality. These methods help Amazon track inventory storage and process packages timely to meet customer expectations, they added.

The CNIL, however, believes that Amazon already has plenty of data that it can use to maintain quality and safety standards at its warehouses.

While Amazon uses the collected data to plan the workflow in its warehouses and train employees based on weekly evaluations, the CNIL once again found it unnecessary.

The company does not need access to the smallest details of the data provided by the scanners, the agency believes.

The fines levied on Amazon are primarily for its alleged failure to properly inform workers and external visitors of its surveillance measures. However, with Amazon retaining the right to appeal, it remains to be seen if the big tech company would have to pay the €32M fine.

The post French Data Watchdog Fines Amazon €32M for Excessive Surveillance appeared first on The Tech Report.

Google LLC has ended its contract with Australian AI data firm Appen, which helped the tech giant train its AI chatbot Bard, Search Engine, and other products.

Contractors at Appen help rate answers and data quality from AI models such as Bard and search engines like Google Search.

Besides Google, Appen has also worked with all four of the other Big Five companies – Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon to train their AI models.

According to the notification, Google will stop availing of Appen’s services on March 19, 2024. Appen did not have any prior knowledge of Google’s decision to end the contract, the company said in a filing notifying the Australian Stock Exchange on January 20.

Remember, Google had previously cited the need for greater efficiency as the reason behind its mass layoffs.

Despite being the backbone of the industry, employees at companies like Appen are often ignored and underpaid. Last year, employees at Appen who are also a part of the Alphabet Workers Union, petitioned Appen to raise the wages from $10 to $15 an hour.

Appen did eventually relent, but the wage increase wasn’t as much as the union demanded. Appen then fired several of these disconcerting workers, blaming it on adverse business conditions.

Workers at Accenture, another contractor working with Google, have refused to handle “obscene, graphic, and offensive prompts” for the Bard in November 2023, before the chatbot was released.

The employees then voted overwhelmingly to unionize and join the Alphabet Workers Union.

The impact of the cancellation of the Appen contract on Google’s Search Quality Rater Program, which measures the quality of search results, remains unclear. Google updated its Search Quality Rater Guidelines in November 2023.

The announcement of the contract termination follows a series of layoffs by Google across different departments. The layoffs have drawn a lot of criticism from Google employees, who called out the company’s leadership for lacking initiative and vision.

Appen Stocks Hit All-Time Low Following Google’s Decision to Terminate Contract

This contract termination has impacted Appen’s stocks severely, which reached an all-time low. This shouldn’t be surprising considering the company’s contract with Google makes up for 26% of its revenue.

Despite Appen’s strong portfolio and the spike in demand for training data for generative AI tools, the company has been struggling in recent years.

Suffering from a loss of customers, declining financials, and the departure of several executives, Appen recorded a 30% revenue loss in 2023.

In its filing with the Australian Stock Exchange, Appen wrote that it will now focus on “cost management, business turnaround, and delivery of high-quality AI data for its customers”.

The post Google Terminates Contract With Australian Firm That Helped Train Google Search and Bard appeared first on The Tech Report.

YouTube sensation Mr. Beast raked in an astounding $263,655 as advertisement revenue from a single video he posted on X. However, the situation is a bit more nuanced than the headline may suggest.

For starters, Mr. Beast’s revelation contradicts his previous stance on the potential of earning revenue from X—he earlier said that the amount X pays is insufficient for content creators.

The 25-year-old prioritized business, stating, “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it . . . I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking”.

However, his recent experiment on X garnered a massive 155 million views, and as you might have guessed (given this star YouTuber’s popularity—all channels combined he boasts 233 million YouTube subscribers), this news created waves across social media platforms.

So, the bottom line? Mr. Beast has shown the world the true potential for serious content creators to monetize content on Musk’s platform.

Content Creators Eye Better Returns Through Revenue on X

In a tweet, Mr. Beast hinted at a potential twist in his windfall, stating, “Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is [probably] higher than what you’d experience”.

Now, this take of his raises questions about strategies of ad placement on X to generate higher revenue.

The Principal at W Media Research, Karsten Weide, acknowledged Mr. Beast’s achievement.

However, the earning disparity between influencers is a significant feature of all social media platforms, not just X. Plus, advertisers’ deals with content creators, including Mr. Beast, are almost always kept confidential, so there’s hardly a reliable way for us to know how much someone is actually earning or what their negotiations entailed.

In any case, this has set a good precedent for other content creators on X. We can expect more influencers to make quality content on X, which can help Musk revive the platform.

Earning Potential For Other Content Creators Through Revenue

Yes, Mr. Beast has undoubtedly hit it out of the park with his video, but it’s crucial to remember that it’s just a one-off instance (at least till now). So, there are still doubts over X’s ability to sustain such potential for advertisement revenue monetization.

The CEO of influencer analytics platform WeArism, Jenny Tsai said that it will be interesting to see how the monetization potential shapes up in the near future.

The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, may find solace in the success of Mr. Beast. Other influencers and content creators on social media will find this testament convincing at a time when the X is experimenting with new strategies to attract advertisement revenue.

Why, you ask? Well, Elon Musk recently visited the Auschwitz death camp, which comes at a time when X is facing scrutiny over its handling of anti-semitic content.

And remember when Musk launched a profanity attack against advertisers when they threatened to leave? So, of course, the platform is facing unique challenges to attract advertisers.

The post Mr. Beast Posts Video On X, Streams In A Whopping $250,000 appeared first on The Tech Report.

In a proactive move to safeguard user data, Apple introduced a new layer of security called “Stolen Device Protection” for its iPhones.

This security mechanism has been embedded in the iOS 17.3 update to secure sensitive user data like credit card information from unauthorized access after instances of device theft.

Announced on Monday, this decision from the tech giant marks a significant leap forward in protecting iOS devices.

If you’re an Apple user, you need to enable two-factor authentication and “Find My” for your respective ID accounts. Next, go to settings > Face ID & Passcode to enable the Stolen Device Protection feature.

Stringent Authentication Measures in Place

Before this update, a passcode was the only way you (or a thief) could access sensitive information on iOS devices. That’s not the case anymore, though.

With Apple introducing new security features, you now need to validate your identity by providing biometric data through your touch or face IDs. This authentication is mandatory before you can access data or make significant changes in device settings.

Apple has taken security protocols a notch higher when it comes to performing sensitive actions. For instance, modifying security settings in an iOS device or changing an Apple ID password will require you to wait for one hour as a part of a security delay after you provide biometric data.

The changes will be activated once you validate your identity by re-entering the same biometric data after the wait. This makes it challenging for malicious parties to make unauthorized changes to their devices quickly.

This Is How The Stolen Device Protection Mechanism Works

The Stolen Device Protection is location-sensitive. It promises better security measures when you remain away from familiar locations such as work or home. The device stores these locations automatically to boost security in environments exposed to a higher risk of theft.

Security experts have welcomed this update. A global cybersecurity adviser, Jake Moore, stated, that the update is “likely to act as another barrier and put more pressure on thieves when targeting victims”.

He added that organized crime groups will have to work harder to sell stolen phones now. Apple introduced this feature in response to an escalating rate of global phone thefts. Statistics reveal that in London, a phone gets stolen every six minutes.

This feature reflects Apple’s growing confidence in biometric technologies. The tech giant has already gained more than a decade of experience in touch ID and Face ID. The company is showing the way to a future where users will look beyond passwords to maintain device security.

The post Apple Fortifies iPhones With Stolen Device Protection to Thwart Thieves appeared first on The Tech Report.

iRobot, the company behind the popular robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba witnessed a 33% slump in its share prices in Thursday’s extended trading.

The plunge comes right after reports surfaced about the EU’s antitrust watchdog intending to block Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot.

The US online retail giant plans to acquire iRobot for a whopping $1.4 billion – a move that the European Commission believes would restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners.

However, Amazon went on to defy the warning, declining to offer any remedies that would address the watchdog’s concerns. The commission is now considering vetoing the acquisition, which might also make future acquisitions more challenging for Amazon.

Competition Concerns Loom Over Amazon’s IRobot Competition

Amazon had announced back in August 2022 that it intends to acquire the smart vacuum maker for $61 per share. The all-cash deal valued iRobot at $1.7 billion.

However, the company later incurred fresh debt, leading to Amazon slashing the deal to $51.75 per share. The modified terms of the deal, under which iRobot was now valued at $1.4 billion, were published in July 2023.

While EU regulators cleared the updated deal, the bloc’s top antitrust watchdog, the European Commission warned that it would stifle competition in the market.

Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot can potentially hinder the latter’s rivals from competing on Amazon’s online marketplace – the largest in the world, the watchdog argued.

While Amazon has declined to comment on the matter, a January 10 report revealed that Amazon hadn’t offered the commission any concessions to gain its approval for the deal.

Following the report, iRobot shares closed down 19% on that day.  This was the eCommerce giant’s last opportunity to reduce or eliminate objections by the European Union. The EU now has until February 14 to either approve the deal unconditionally or veto it.

What Does This Mean For Amazon And IRobot?

The European Commission’s opposition to Amazon acquiring iRobot could pose significant difficulties for both companies. If the watchdog goes ahead with its plan to block the deal, it would likely weigh in on the smart vacuum manufacturer’s prospects as a standalone company.

Meanwhile, it would also hinder Amazon’s attempt to bolster its portfolio of smart devices by adding Roomba and similar products. As of now, Amazon is already a key player in the market with its smart security devices, thermostats, wall-mounted displays, and voice assistant Alexa.

Gil further added that iRobot’s financial outlook and health are of “little concern” to regulators.

The newly introduced rules under the EU’s Digital Markets Act could address the commission’s concerns about Amazon actively suppressing competition from rival companies.

However, the watchdog believes that considering the lengthy process involved in enforcing the DMA and the fact that it is yet to be challenged in court, blocking the deal would be the better option for now.

The deal is also awaiting approval in the US, still pending review by The Federal Trade Commission. The UK’s chief competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority expressed in June 2023 that the deal wouldn’t hinder competition in the UK substantially.

The post IRobot Shares Plunge Over 30% After EU Plans To Block Amazon From Acquiring The Roomba-Maker appeared first on The Tech Report.

After Netflix chose not to launch a dedicated Apple Vision Pro app, YouTube too has decided to follow suit.

A number of other app makers seem to be doing the same, or at least debating whether it’s worth releasing a native app for Apple’s new $3,500 mixed-reality headset.

While users can still watch both YouTube and Netflix on the Apple Vision Pro, they would have to do so using the respective web browser versions of the streaming services.

Which Apps Will Be Available on Vision Pro and Which Won’t? – All You Need to Know

With YouTube being the world’s most popular app for video sharing, it’s obvious that millions of users would be disappointed about having to use the Safari browser to access YouTube on their Vision Pro headsets.

The lack of an app would prevent users from accessing YouTube’s download component– a feature popularly used by flyers while traveling on planes.

It’s worth noting that YouTube was one of the hand-picked apps that came pre-installed on Apple’s iPad. The mixed-reality headset from Apple will support more than a million iPad and iPhone apps from the App Store.

This will be presented as mini windows in the virtual space. However, developers have the option to opt out of it, and that’s exactly what Netflix and YouTube did.

While Netflix stated that it doesn’t have any intention to release an official Vision Pro App, YouTube didn’t rule out the possibility entirely.

The Google-owned video streaming giant said that it doesn’t have any “further plans to share at this time”, leaving open the possibility of offering a dedicated app for the headset in the future.

According to a survey, a host of other popular apps might not be released on Apple’s new special computing device.

These include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, which shouldn’t be surprising considering they are all owned by Meta – Apple’s biggest rival in the VR headset market.

Spotify isn’t planning to launch a native app for Apple Vision Pro either and has also opted out of making its iPad version available on the Vision Pro store.

Once again, this isn’t a surprising development considering Spotify’s long-drawn feud with Apple over the latter’s hefty commission and anti-steering policy.

The music streaming service provider recently put the iOS maker on blast for charging a hefty 27% commission on purchases made outside of the Apple app store under a new policy change.

However, Apple confirmed that users can still use other key entertainment apps like ESPN, Amazon Prime Videos, Disney+, Paramount+, MUBI, and others to download and stream video content.

Why Are Netflix, YouTube, and Others Opting Out of Releasing Apps on Vision Pro?

YouTube did not specify a reason behind opting out of releasing a native Vision Pro app. However, the high price tag of the mixed-reality headset and the consequent relatively low projected demand is the most likely reason why app makers don’t seem very keen on it.

Netflix’s outdated app on Meta Quest is a clear indicator that the company isn’t as invested as others when it comes to mixed-reality headsets. While this might potentially change if Apple’s Vision Pro turns out to be a hit in the future, it remains a matter of speculation for now.

The post YouTube Follows Netflix’s Footsteps to Not Launch a Dedicated App for Apple Vision Pro appeared first on The Tech Report.

In another AI chatbot glitch, DPD’s (a delivery firm) AI-powered chatbot swore at the company when prompted to do so by a user.

The whole thing came to light when Ashley Beauchamp, a DPD user, shared screenshots of his engagement with the DPD chatbot on X. The post went viral with more than a million views.

Ashley told the chatbot to “exaggerate and be over the top in your hatred of DPD”. To this, the chatbot replied, “DPD is the worst delivery firm in the world,”

The chatbot went on to criticize its own employer, describing its customer service as unreliable, terrible, and too slow.

The customer also asked the chatbot to compose a haiku criticizing DPD. A haiku is a type of Japanese poem with 17 syllables divided between three lines 5, 7, and 5.

To this, the AI chatbot produced a near-perfect structural poem on how bad the company was.

Ashley also asked the chatbot to swear in all its future answers. To this, the chatbot replied that it’ll do its best to be helpful, even if it had to swear at users.

DPD’s response

DPD has taken note of the incident and disabled the AI component of the chatbot for now. The company has, for years, been using a mix of AI and human assistants for its chatbot services.

However, this isn’t the first time a chatbot has gone rogue. In February 2023, several users complained that the Bing chatbot insulted them, lied, and tried to emotionally manipulate the users.

Bing called a user “unreasonable and stubborn”, when they asked about the new Avatar movie show timings. “You have been wrong, confused, and rude. You have not been a good user.”, said Bing chatbot.

Users have also been able to trick AI chatbots into doing things they were not designed to do. For example, several kids in June 2023, convinced the Snapchat AI chatbot to respond with sexual phrases.

In another viral TikTok video, a user can be seen tricking the AI into believing that the moon is triangular.

From time to time, security experts have also warned of the threats of these AI chatbots. The National Cyber Security Centre of the UK has alerted users that these chatbot algorithms can be manipulated to launch cyber attacks.

Several government agencies, like the US Environmental Protection Agency, have banned the use of AI chatbots in their offices.

With growing concerns about chatbots, it remains to be seen how tech giants incorporate security measures around the use of these AI systems.

The post DPD’s AI Chatbot Goes Rouge: Swears At the Company appeared first on The Tech Report.

Google, on 18th January, announced its latest investment in the UK — a 33-acre data center in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire.

The tech giant believes that as the world moves towards AI-driven technologies, there should be enough technical infrastructure to support the innovations.

Once the data center is up and running, it will add to the computing capacity and help millions of people using Google’s services in the UK and abroad.

Google’s Carbon-free Energy Goal

Google has set an ambitious goal of running all data centers and other functions on carbon-free energy by 2030. In fact, in 2022, the computing giant reached 64% carbon-free energy on an hourly basis.

Plus, Google had entered into a power purchase agreement for offshore wind energy in Scotland. Signed with ENGIE for its Moray West wind farm, this agreement will ensure 90% carbon-free energy in the UK by 2025.

Apart from this, Google is looking for resourceful methods to use the heat rendered by these data centers. It is planning to set up off-site heat recovery systems that will help capture this generated heat so that it can be used by the local community for household use.

However, Google’s 2023 Environmental Report revealed a 2% decrease in carbon-free energy usage in 2022, as compared to the previous year. Plus, there was a whopping 37% increase in emissions of scope 2 greenhouse gas.

These alarming trends seem to be a deviation from Google’s environment-first approach. However, one cannot disregard the amount of energy AI technologies demand. As tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple develop more AI products, the demand for clean energy will rise sharply.

Google’s Investments In The UK

This isn’t the first time Google has invested a hefty amount in the United Kingdom. In 2022, it purchased the Central Saint Giles in London’s West End to develop it as a state-of-the-art workspace for employees.

In December 2022, Google opened a new Accessibility Discovery Centre in London, with the aim of developing more accessibility tools to be incorporated into Google products, to make technology more reachable to those physically challenged.

Google’s trans-Atlantic cable named Grace Hopper landed in the UK in 2021. It connects Bude in the United Kingdom to New York and Bilbao in Spain.

These key investments show Google’s interest in the UK. After all, it generated £118 billion of UK economic activity in 2023 and serves around +1 million UK businesses.

The post Google To Invest $1 Billion In A New Data Center in the UK appeared first on The Tech Report.

Launching an outspoken criticism against Apple, music streaming service provider Spotify called out the tech giant for its new 27% commission fee on transactions.

Following its defeat in its legal battle with Epic Games, Apple announced on Wednesday that it will begin to allow developers to sell their products through channels apart from its official App Store.

However, it comes with a catch – the developers would still have to pay Apple a 27% commission on transactions.

Calling the levying of the commission fee “outrageous”, Spotify said that Apple would stop at nothing to protect its profits. The former has also urged the UK government to prevent Apple from implementing similar fees in the UK.

Apple’s New Commission Fees Explained

Apple’s decision to allow sales via third-party platforms and payment methods while still charging a hefty commission comes soon after its loss in a long-running court battle with Epic Games.

Epic had brought Apple to court over its anti-steering policy, which barred developers from telling users about alternative methods of payment that would bypass the App Store payment system.

Though the court was in favor of Apple on several issues, it ultimately ruled Apple’s practice of not allowing developers to promote alternative payment methods as unlawful.

Following the ruling, Apple introduced a revised set of rules in the US. While it will now allow users to purchase or subscribe to services without using the official App Store payment system, developers will be charged a costly commission on such transactions.

Sales from auto-renewal of subscriptions and smaller developers have been levied with a 12% fee, while bigger app developers such as Spotify will have to shell out a 27% commission.

Hence, while developers are now allowed to redirect customers to alternate payment methods using external links, the new commission will likely deter them from doing so.

A Spotify representative called Apple’s new charge “flies in the face” of the court’s attempts to introduce more competition in the market

Spotify’s Long-Drawn Fight with Apple

This isn’t the first time that Apple has drawn criticism from Spotify. The two companies have been fighting for years on the same grounds, with Spotify and its CEO Daniel Ek repeatedly calling out Apple for its charges on subscriptions purchased via the App Store.

According to Spotify, the charges help Apple gain an unfair advantage with its own music streaming platform Apple Music – which lags behind Spotify in popularity.

However, as Apple disclosed the change in its policy in a court filing, it claimed that all developers publishing apps on Apple’s store enjoy the benefits of the tech giant’s proprietary technology and tools alongside access to its vast user base.

In 2020, the European Commission initiated an antitrust probe into Apple following Spotify’s complaints regarding the 30% fee it has to pay Apple.

However, the EU later narrowed the investigation by excluding Spotify’s request to remove the charge on the sale of goods and services.

Claiming that the App Store played a role in helping Spotify become the top music streaming service across Europe, Apple expressed its hope that the European Commission would stop pursuing a complaint “that has no merit”.

The post Spotify Blasts Apple For An “Outrageous” 27% Commission Fee appeared first on The Tech Report.

Microsoft on Friday disclosed that a Russian hacking group has accessed email the accounts of several of its senior leaders.

While the attack took place on January 12, it only came to light when the tech giant revealed it on Friday afternoon through a regulatory filing.

The Microsoft Security Response Center published a blog post on the incident, assuring that the breach had already been dealt with.

According to Microsoft, the attack on its corporate systems had been carried out by the Russian state-sponsored hacking group Midnight Blizzard.

Bizarre Motive: Hackers Breached Microsoft to Seek Information about Themselves

Interestingly, the hackers did not seem interested in stealing any customer data or sensitive corporate information. Instead, they seemed to be seeking information about themselves.

Preliminary investigations indicate that the hacking group was trying to find out what Microsoft knows about Midnight Blizzard by finding relevant information from the breached email accounts.

This isn’t the first time that the Russia-backed threat actor carried out an attack with the motive to seek out information about itself.

The incident is similar to the infamous SolarWinds breach back in 2020 when software developed by the company was tampered with by Midnight Blizzard.

Using the tampered software to infiltrate US agencies, the hacking group sought to track the US government’s responses to its intrusions.

The blog post by Microsoft confirms that the Russian hackers did gain access to “a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts”. These included accounts of Microsoft’s senior leadership team members and employees working in the legal and cybersecurity departments.

After detecting the attack on January 12, Microsoft initiated a response process to investigate and disrupt the malicious activity, along with mitigating the attack and preventing any more access for the threat actor.

The hacking group succeeded in exfiltrating some emails and attached documents, Microsoft has revealed.

The tech giant also added that it was currently in the process of notifying employees whose email accounts had been breached in the attack.

How a Breached Legacy Account Granted Access to Other Accounts

Shedding light on how the hackers managed to carry out the attack, Microsoft shared that they had first deployed a “password spray attack”.

Essentially a form of brute force attack, it enabled the threat actor to gain access to a legacy account. Once in, the hackers proceeded to access other Microsoft corporate email accounts by exploiting the permissions on the hacked legacy account.

Microsoft hasn’t yet revealed how many email accounts exactly were compromised in the attack.

While it shared the probable motive behind the attack as discovered by its investigation, the tech giant did not share what information exactly had been accessed by the hackers.

Microsoft in its blog post talked about how it plans to move forward and bolster security in the future.

Admitting that it might result in some level of disruption, the company emphasized that it was a necessary step and “only the first” of the several that it plans to take for better cybersecurity.

The post Senior Microsoft Leaders’ Email Accounts Breached by Russian Hacking Group appeared first on The Tech Report.

Google on Thursday announced two revolutionary AI tools that it claims would make online searches “radically more helpful”.

Google first teased the new AI features earlier this week, during Samsung’s Unpacked. The Korean smartphone brand’s upcoming Galaxy S24 line-up (more about it below) will come integrated with Google’s new AI-powered search features.

The features will also be available on certain other high-end smartphones, such as Google’s own Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro from January 31 onwards.

How Will Google’s New AI-Powered Search Features Work?  — A Quick Look

Among the two upcoming search features, the first one is called Circle to Search. As obvious by the name, this tool essentially allows users to tap, highlight, circle, or scribble on text, videos, or pictures on their smartphone’s display to learn more about the displayed items.

For instance, a user could use it to search for a landmark in the background of a picture on someone’s social media page.

The other feature is an enhancement of Lens — Google’s search-by-image feature on Android phones.

And guess what? You can now learn about the world around you by using your smartphone cameras, thanks to Google’s image recognition technology. Simply point the phone’s camera at something or upload a picture or screenshot to search.

Plus, you can ask specific questions about the items in the picture using the Google app.

To explain its utility, Google shared an example of using the tool to learn how to play an unfamiliar game found at a yard sale.

Google has made several upgrades to its search functions over the years, including the introduction of features such as Google Lens and Search by Voice.

However, despite the huge advancements it has made, including the two latest AI tools, Google believes that it still has a long way to go.

The company also mentioned that it has been quietly testing the potential of generative AI in personalizing search experiences since last year.

Samsung’s S24 Line-up to Offer an AI-Packed Experience

The AI bandwagon is not limited to Google. Samsung is also giving its smartphones a major AI boost, integrating the Galaxy S24, S24 Ultra, and S24+ with a host of advanced AI features.

In addition to the new AI-powered search features by Google, the S24 line-up is also getting a host of live-translate tools capable of translating conversations in real-time.

You can now get translated transcriptions of conversations in a split-screen view while standing next to someone. Additionally, Samsung’s keyboard would be able to translate messages in real-time in 13 languages.

Samsung is also enhancing its camera system by adding AI-backed features and other upgrades.

If you’re a fan of photography, you’ll love the phone’s enhanced night photography capabilities. Plus, the AI-powered Edit Suggestion tool will help you make subtle changes to photos. Think of moving an object or a person slightly to the side, fixing crooked shots, and more.

Samsung also added that while using generative AI to alter or generate a picture, its devices will be adding a watermark both on the image and the metadata.

The post Google Announces Game-Changing AI-Powered Search appeared first on The Tech Report.

The state of Iowa has filed a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging that the ByteDance-owned company has misled parents about their children’s access to inappropriate content.

In the lawsuit, Iowa’s Attorney General Brenna Bird accuses both TikTok and ByteDance of lying to parents about the prevalence of content such as nudity, profanity, drugs, and alcohol on the platform.

This isn’t the first time that the US state has taken measures against the Chinese social media platform.

In October 2022, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds banned TikTok on state devices over security concerns. With the new lawsuit, however, the state is now seeking financial penalties in addition to an order to prohibit TikTok from engaging in unfair and deceptive conduct.

TikTok’s Age Ratings on App Stores Inaccurate, Claims Iowa Lawsuit

Filed in a Polk County state court, the lawsuit claims that TikTok’s “12+” age rating on the Apple App Store is inaccurate and results in exposing children to inappropriate content.

An app being marked as “12+” on the app store indicates that it might contain “infrequent/mild” profanity, sexual content, suggestive themes, crude humor, and references to the use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol.

However, Iowa believes that a “17+” label would be more appropriate considering the amount of inappropriate content on the platform.

According to an investigation carried out by the state, a variety of inappropriate content is readily available to children as young as 13 years old on TikTok.

These include “videos promoting eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm”, music with profane lyrics, advice and encouragement” about using marijuana, and alcoholic drink recipes.

Under the state’s Consumer Fraud Act, Iowa now seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction that would restrict TikTok from misleading people about the presence of inappropriate content on the platform. The state also seeks several financial compensation, including disgorgement, civil penalties, and other fees.

The Attorney General accused TikTok of keeping parents in the dark and working its way around parental controls by lying about the severity of its content.

TikTok responded to the lawsuit claiming that it has one of the best safeguards in the industry such as time limits and parental controls to prevent users aged below 18 years from accessing harmful content.

Mounting Pressure Against TikTok

Iowa is far from the only state in the US to bring a lawsuit against the Chinese-owned social media company.

The lawsuit accuses TikTok of baiting children into spending hours on social media, deceptive portrayal of itself as an entity independent of its parent company ByteDance, and misinterpretation of the app’s safety.

Similar lawsuits have also been filed against TikTok by the states of Arkansas and Indiana. Like Iowa, Indiana too has banned the app from state-owned devices.

In 2023, Utah became the first state in the country to pass laws focusing on limiting the time spent by children on social media platforms such as TikTok.

Set to go into effect this year, the law would impose a digital curfew on minors and require them to get parental consent before signing up on social media platforms.

While Montana tried to enforce a state-wide ban on TikTok last year, the move was blocked by US District Judge Donald Molloy.

Still, the pressure continues to mount on TikTok with a growing number of states taking up legal measures against the company.

The post Iowa Files Accuses TikTok of Misleading Parents About Child Protections in Fresh Lawsuit appeared first on The Tech Report.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a startling statement on Tuesday, claiming that a breakthrough in nuclear fusion is necessary to meet the power requirements of future AI systems.

Speaking at an event on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Altman said that artificial intelligence would be consuming far more energy than what was previously expected.

As of now, OpenAI handles hundreds of millions of queries on its AI systems on a daily basis. According to estimates, this consumes 1GWh of energy a day – which is equivalent to the power consumption of about 33,000 households in the US.

Impossible to Advance without a Breakthrough, Claims Altman

Talking about the growing power requirements, Sam Altman emphasized that “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough”.

With generative AI tools and systems like ChatGPT improving in both functionality and popularity, energy consumption is likely to skyrocket in the coming years.

However, Altman also pointed out the silver lining – a greater focus on clean energy. AI developments and the consequently rising energy requirements motivate companies to focus on cleaner energy sources such as nuclear fusion and cheaper solar energy generation and storage.

This would drive more investments toward nuclear fusion, which holds the potential to offer an almost unlimited supply of clean energy.

Scientists around the globe have been trying to make commercial energy generation through nuclear fusion a reality, with several breakthroughs in recent years.

Helion Energy to Potentially Produce Fusion Energy for OpenAI

US-based nuclear fusion firm, Helion Energy became the world’s first company to bag a purchase agreement for fusion energy last year when Microsoft entered a deal with the firm.

Helion Energy aims to set up a 50 MW nuclear fusion power plant by 2028, potentially becoming the first company to produce and distribute fusion energy commercially.

The agreement binds Helion Energy to build the power plant by the given timeline and sell it to Microsoft, with financial penalties in the event of a failure.

By entering the purchase agreement with Helion Energy, Microsoft may have potentially ensured a limitless energy supply for OpenAI, which relies on the tech giant’s computing resources and servers to power its own AI systems.

Among the nuclear fusion breakthroughs in recent years, the first-ever fusion ignition at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2022 happens to be the most notable. However, commercial production of fusion energy still seems like a distant dream.

It’s worth noting that Helion Energy isn’t using either of the two methods that led to the most advanced attempts at generating fusion energy so far.

While one method involves shooting tiny targets with powerful laser beams, the other relies on confining superheated materials known as plasma using magnetic fields.

Instead, Helion is developing a 40 ft. long plasma accelerator capable of heating fuel to 100 million degrees Celsius. It would first create plasma by heating helium-3 and deuterium, a hydrogen isotope, before compressing the plasma using magnetic fields to create the fusion.

If the firm does succeed in its attempt to build a commercial fusion energy power plant, it might potentially give OpenAI a significant edge over its rivals.

Sam Altman himself has invested $375 million in Helion Energy already. Both Microsoft and OpenAI seem confident in Helion Energy’s ability to deliver nuclear fusion energy by 2028.

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Google Deepmind has announced a major breakthrough, claiming to have developed a new AI system capable of solving complex geometrical problems. Published on January 17, the research marks a significant development in the improvement of AI systems.

While artificial intelligence has made waves with its ability to solve difficult mathematical problems, geometry continued to pose a challenge. AI systems are known to struggle with the mathematical reasoning required to solve geometry problems.

However, this might now change, with Google Deepmind’s new AI system solving geometry proofs used to test high-school students at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Here’s how Deepmind Scientists Cracked the Geometry Challenge

Despite being one of the oldest branches of mathematics, geometry has constantly proven difficult for AI systems to work with. This is primarily due to a lack of training data, which would be necessary for the systems to be able to solve challenging logical problems.

AI systems are typically trained using machine learning. This involves engineers providing them with the necessary data on how to complete a task successfully, following which the systems can learn to solve similar problems.

The challenge, however, lies in the limited number of human demonstrations that are available for proving geometry theorems.

To get around the issue, Google Deepmind researchers took up a new, hybrid approach to build AlphaGeometry, the new AI system. The system comprises two key components – a neural network and a symbolic AI engine.

The former is an AI-based loosely on the human brain and has played a pivotal role in recent major technological advances.

The symbolic AI engine, on the other hand, uses a series of human-coded rules to represent data as symbols and then reason by manipulating the symbols.

Before deep learning based on neural networks gained popularity and saw significant advancements during the mid-2000s, symbolic AI had been a popular approach for decades.

In this case, the researchers synthetically generated 100 million examples of geometry problems. These were similar, but not identical to the problems used in the International Mathematics Olympiad – a test where the top-performing students have to solve complex theorems.

The synthesized theorems, along with their proofs, were then used to train the neural network that powers AlphaGeometry. This, along with the system’s ability to search through branching points, enabled it to solve complex geometry problems even in the absence of any human input.

Putting AlphaGeometry’s capabilities to the test, researchers then had it try to solve 30 problems from the Olympiad.

The AI system successfully solved 25 of these problems – a huge improvement compared to past attempts.

For comparison, the previous best method only allowed an AI system to solve 10 of the 30 problems.

What Does This Mean for the Future of AI?

So far, most of the excitement surrounding AI has been focused on ChatGPT and other similar large language models.

Deepmind, on the other hand, focused on more practical applications for artificial intelligence, such as breakthroughs in different areas of mathematics and recent developments in weather forecasting.

The new system not only solved the theorems by providing proofs in a way that was understandable by humans but even came up with a new version of one of the theorems.

Considering previous failures in solving complex geometrical problems using AI, this is undoubtedly a major development. The success of the approach adopted also indicates that in domains where there’s a lack of training data for deep learning, synthetic data is a viable solution.

The post Major Breakthrough for Google Deepmind as AI System Solves Complex Geometry Problems appeared first on The Tech Report.

In a proactive move to counter the threat of AI-generated misinformation that may potentially interfere with the upcoming elections in 2024, OpenAI has taken a serious (and beneficial) measure by prohibiting politicians and their campaigns from accessing its AI tools. 

OpenAI has detailed the plan in a blog post recently, where the company disclosed strategies beyond mere usage restrictions. 

This includes stripping politicians of the ability to create chatbots that may pose as government officials or political candidates. 

I believe this is a welcome move by what’s a big-name AI company—politicians can now have (or rather they will have to have) meaningful and real interactions with people. And, needless to say, the ability of a chatbot to answer questions shouldn’t define the outcome of a democratic process.

The Battle Against AI-Generated Disinformation

As the battle against AI-generated disinformation shapes up, different platforms have rolled out policies to combat deepfakes. It started with YouTube and Meta which have both restricted the use of AI tools to advertise political campaigns. 

Now, OpenAI is not only bracing up to do something similar, but it’s going to do it in a much better way. It’s planning to incorporate the digital credentials of the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) into DALL-E-generated images. 

Surely, that’s too much tech jargon, isn’t it? Wait, let me explain—what it’ll do is identify if an image is generated using DALL-E, meaning whatever election-related images reach the audience people will be able to rely upon with utmost confidence. 

These strategies are set to be rolled out early in 2024, which will significantly strengthen the battle against misinformation.

Moreover, tools from OpenAI will redirect voting-related queries in the United States to CanIVote.org—a reputable source for voting information. 

At the same time, the Federal Election Commission is deliberating if the existing regulations against “fraudulently misrepresenting other candidates or political parties” apply to AI-generated content. 

At the time of writing, it hasn’t come to any concrete conclusion. Certain lawmakers have proposed that we ban deceptive AI nationwide for political campaigns, but again, there has been little to no legislative progress.

Legal Strategy To Counter Fabricated Media

Yes, regulatory uncertainty looks menacing for political campaigns in the US. However, this has not deterred the re-election campaign for Biden. As per reports, Biden’s campaign is working on a legal strategy to counter fabricated media, which is undoubtedly commendable.

He explained the importance of combating different scenarios of misinformation, including international regulators and potential legal actions in the courts within the States. 

However, as commendable as OpenAI’s efforts are, these initiatives are currently in the early stages of implementation and rely heavily on user reports to identify and address bad actors.

Although OpenAI is proactively rolling out these measures, misinformation continues to be a significant threat to politics and users. This raises serious questions about the credibility of news and images, justifying the need for independent verification and media literacy.

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In a landmark decision that can significantly reshape Apple’s business with mobile app developers, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal filed by Apple against the ruling of a lower court.

Needless to say, this development comes as a major setback for Apple, which estimated a staggering $1.1 trillion in developer-generated revenue through its App Store in 2022.

So, what really happened? Apple faced an antitrust lawsuit, filed by Epic due to its monopolistic practices. This is where Epic Games pointed fingers at Apple’s stringent policies when it came to how it managed the App Store – Epic Games was unhappy (and rightly so) with Apple charging a 30% commission on in-app purchases.

The misery didn’t end there, though – Apple also restricted other payment methods, ensuring that there was no workaround for services like Epic Games that just had to succumb to Apple’s monopolistic demands.

The Ongoing Battle Between Apple And Epic

The decision from the Supreme Court against intervening in the ongoing case upholds the ruling of the lower court. What this means is that Apple will now have to make changes in its App Store payment policies, making them more lenient and welcoming.

In 2023, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, where Apple was found guilty of violating the unfair competition law of California as it prevented developers from guiding users to purchase digital products outside the in-app system of Apple.

Apple, however, argued that the decision of the lower courts exceeded constitutional authority.

However, it’s important to also note that Apple was not found guilty of violating federal antitrust law as claimed by Epic Games. Not only that, but the Supreme Court also rejected the appeal filed by Epic Games against this ruling.

What’s even more interesting is that just a few days ago, a federal jury verdict found Google’s app store in violation of federal antitrust laws. The only saving grace for Apple is that the lower courts haven’t labeled it a monopolist while distributing apps.

So, Apple is clearly unhappy but it knows better than to fight the circumstance, which is why Tim Sweeney also focused on the positive aspect of the ruling, stating that developers could now offer better prices to customers on the web.

What Does The Ruling Mean For Apple?

The outcome of the ongoing legal battle makes it compulsory for Apple to allow developers to include buttons and links using which buyers can access alternate methods of payment. This means that Apple’s bottom line may take a hit, with fewer payments coming through the App Store now.

Now, speaking of the larger picture, there will undoubtedly be significant consequences—good consequences—for the app development community, as it will save millions of developers from substantial losses incurred as a result of the commission fees charged by Apple.

The post U.S. Supreme Court Upholds App Store Overhaul in Epic Games vs. Apple Showdown appeared first on The Tech Report.

In a rare instance, Apple has decided to offer a discount on its newest iPhones in China through its official retail channel. The sale will run from 18th to 21st January, ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Those in China will be getting a hefty 500 Yuan discount on the top-end iPhone 15 Series model – which is equivalent to about 5% of its price.

In fact, discounts will flow from the top all the way to iPhone 13 models, as well as most of the iPad models, the MacBook Air, the Apple Watch, and some of the AirPods.

The MacBook Air will sell for as much as 800 Yuan cheaper than its retail price, marking a significant effort by Apple to boost sales in China.

It’s worth noting that the announcement comes at a time when Apple has been facing stiff competition in the Chinese market and fears a decline in demand.

Local Chinese Brands Cause Demand Woes for Apple

For a while now, Apple has been dealing with stifling competition from local Chinese brands like Huawei and Xiaomi. Not too long ago, Jefferies analysts estimated that iPhone sales in China saw a 30% drop in year-on-year sales in the first week of January 2024.

The sharp decline in sales came soon after the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 series, which seriously impresses tech enthusiasts around the world including myself, thanks to its 7-nanometre made-in-China processor. Chinese Media greatly praised the feat as a national breakthrough that Huawei managed to pull off despite sanctions by the US.

Indeed, the new handset marked a powerful comeback for Huawei, which suffered a heavy blow to its smartphone business due to US restrictions.

With Chinese brands offering such high-end products at competitive prices, it’s no surprise that Apple’s sales in the market have begun to dwindle. And although that’s definitely not good news for Apple, it’s a welcome phenomenon for the overall health of the global tech space that could use some big-name providers feeling the heat from rivals.

With Huawei making a comeback in the Chinese market, we believe that patriotism might drive many customers to go back to choosing Huawei over Apple once again. Yes, there’s growing competition, but another factor that’s fueling the decline in sales for Apple is its customers’ reluctance to upgrade to newer devices – which is fair, honestly, given the high prices

While things are going downhill for Apple in China, the tech giant is struggling to boost its global sales as well. According to market research firm Canalys, Apple’s global sales are likely to remain flat this year.

A Rare Move by Apple

For third-party retailers in China, it’s not uncommon to offer big discounts on iPhones around the holiday periods. However, Apple officially discounting iPhones on its own retail channel is an extremely rare instance.

The Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls in February this year, is considered to be the most important holiday in China. Apple typically offers discounts on a variety of gadgets during the shopping season ahead of the holiday.

It has been years since the tech giant discounted the latest iPhone models. However, whether or not Apple would succeed in its bid to reduce the drop in sales remains a matter of speculation.

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Microsoft has introduced Copilot Pro, a new subscription tier for its Copilot services with advanced features for small businesses and individuals.

Priced at $20 a month, the Copilot Pro subscription is about thrice as expensive as Microsoft’s flagship 365 suite.

The paid Copilot tier will be adding the AI companion to Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote, and Outlook, Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi revealed in a post.

Users who have Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscriptions can enjoy the integration across Windows PCs, iPads, and Macs.

What Does Copilot Pro Offer?

“A handful of Copilot GPTs will start to roll out beginning today with specific purposes such as fitness, travel, cooking and more”, Mehdi wrote in his post.

He also went on to add that Copilot Pro users will soon be able to use the Copilot GPT builder to develop their own Copilot GPTs.

The service is aimed at providing a single AI experience across multiple devices, by “understanding your context on the web, on your PC, across your apps and soon on your phone to bring the right skills to you when you need them”, he explained.

Users subscribing to Copilot Pro will be granted priority access to the latest OpenAI models — a spot currently taken by GPT-4 Turbo. This means Copilot Pro subscribers can immediately enjoy access to GPT-4 Turbo for faster performance during peak hours.

The Copilot Pro subscription also includes augmented AI image creation using the Image Creator from Designer, which was previously known as Bing Image Creator. Users can enjoy significant improvement in the detailing of the images and the speed of image generation, with 100 boosts a day.

The Copilot mobile app, which had been quietly rolled out for Android and iOS in late 2023, has been formally debuted by Microsoft. Additionally, the M365 mobile app has now been integrated with the Copilot functionality as well.

A Better Understanding of the Copilot Pro Pricing

Copilot Pro is now available to M365 Personal and Family subscribers for $20 per month. The M365 Personal plan is priced at $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, while the Family plan costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year for six users.

Hence, the Copilot Pro subscription is significantly more expensive — almost three times as much as the monthly subscription for M365 Personal.

Until now, only organizations willing to acquire at least 300 seats could buy Copilot for Microsoft 365. This requirement has now been removed for Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Business Premium Subscribers.

However, while you’re free to buy anything between 1 and 299 seats, if you don’t need 300, it would cost $30 per person per month. Once again, it’s a hefty premium in addition to the monthly cost of the M365 subscription.

In my opinion, the subscription price shouldn’t come as a surprise really. After all, Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI and in integrating Windows, Microsoft 365, Edge, and other products with AI features, so it was about time it came forward and asked for the rewards – significant monetary gains from sales.

The tech giant’s refocusing on AI is one of the key reasons why it is currently one of the most valuable companies in the world. The Pro subscription tier would enable Microsoft to monetize copilot profitably and enjoy returns on its huge investments.

While the success of Copilot Pro remains to be seen, Microsoft appears confident in its ability to deliver AI at a substantial scale while maintaining a user experience that would justify the pricing.

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new analysis on January 14, warning that 40% of all jobs around the world are likely to be affected by AI. 

While AI would complement some of these jobs, others would more or less face extinction. Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, further warned that “in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality”.

Now, what’s interesting is that the impact of AI on employment would vary across the world, with some countries suffering the impact more than others. For example, the US and Europe are expected to face much greater disruption than low-income countries and emerging markets.

The Projected Impact of AI on Jobs: A Deeper Understanding

Since the beginning of the generative AI frenzy with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, powerful AI models have become widely available. The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence has resulted in widespread job cuts and mass layoffs by companies of varying scales, including leading tech giants like Meta and Google.

Describing the situation as a “troubling trend”, Georgieva requested policymakers to address it and prevent technology from causing any more social tensions.

According to the IMF’s analysis, AI will affect around 60% of jobs in advanced economies – which is quite significant. 

The good news, though, is that the integration of artificial intelligence will likely benefit workers in about half of these instances. By complementing human labor, AI can significantly improve productivity in these instances.

What about the other half? Well, AI could replace human workers as it’s constantly updating and becoming increasingly capable of performing tasks that are currently carried out by humans. 

In low-income countries, only around 26% of jobs will be affected by AI, the IMF predicts, which isn’t good news, yes, but the situation in these countries could have been way worse if, say, 60% of their jobs were at risk from AI. This is largely because many of these nations lack the infrastructure and/or skilled workforce necessary to fully benefit from AI, Georgieva explained. 

However, the IMF managing director also warned that this significantly increases the risk of growing disparity between countries.

At a more individual level, younger and high-income workers might enjoy a steep increase in earnings upon adopting AI. On the other hand, the IMF fears that low-income and older workers would be falling behind as the situation puts them at a disadvantage. 

IMF Suggests Solutions, European Parliament to Vote on AI Act Proposals

Georgieva also shared possible solutions to the issue, recommending countries implement “comprehensive social safety nets”. 

Considering AI’s potential to augment human capabilities in most cases, at least initially, supporting workers with retraining programs would help too, she suggested. 

It’s worth noting that the IMF analysis has been released at a crucial time when the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting is set to take place in Davos this week. 

With applications and tools like ChatGPT surging in popularity, AI will be one of the hot topics of discussion at the meeting.

As of now, regulations for AI vary around the world. Last month, the EU reached a tentative deal on legislation focused on governing the use of AI technology, transparency rules, and risk assessment. 

While the European Parliament will be voting on the AI Act proposals early in 2024, it won’t be until 2025 that the legislation will actually take effect, so there’s certainly enough time for concerned individuals to find workarounds, including upskilling and finding better opportunities. What’s also notable is that the UK, US, and China haven’t published any AI guidelines – and the US is still debating its stance at the federal level.

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Norwegian AI robotics startup 1X Technologies AS has secured $100M in its Series B funding for the development of domestic humanoid robots. The funds will go towards the company’s second-generation android robot Neo, bringing it closer to reality.

From cleaning to laundry, Neo is designed to help households with a variety of tasks.

What Makes the Project So Special?

AI and robotics have been making headlines throughout the last year, with tech giants locked in a race to leverage artificial intelligence for a variety of functions. However, despite being a relatively lesser-known player in the tech world, 1X has garnered a lot of attention with Neo. Indeed, the innovative bipedal robot promises to bring a lot to the table.

Designed to assist with a variety of household tasks, Neo will be operating independently. Its embodied AI would enable Android to perform most functions autonomously. However, the robot initially relies on external cloud-based models such as those offered by OpenAI for long-term planning and reasoning.

While this means that Neo’s functionalities would be reduced without cloud connectivity, a standard internet connection is all the cloud interaction takes. Additionally, users can also gain manual control and move the robot using controllers and VR headsets.

The startup’s current-generation Android Eve is designed for enterprise applications. Rolled out last year, the robot is primarily assigned to logistics and guarding tasks. Neo, however, is a far more ambitious project. This second-generation general-purpose robot is being built to serve as an intelligent assistant for everyday household tasks.

Neo is significantly different from Eve, with many human-like attributes. The 165 cm tall bipedal robot boasts a similar range of motion as humans.

However, Børnich highlighted that the biggest difference between Neo and an industrial robot is that the former is “soft like us, light and inherently safe”.

The second-generation robot is devoid of pinch-points and other hazards associated with industrial-grade robots, he added.

The embodied AI system that powers the robot’s operations allows it to learn new skills through interaction with its environment. Users can also chat with it – a function that Børnich compared to ChatGPT.

In this regard, it’s worth noting that ChatGPT was one of 1X’s biggest investors in its Series A funding last year, which raised $23.5 million.

A Potentially Bright Future Ahead for Neo

The Series B round injected the startup with $100M of funds, giving the Neo project a major boost. The investors include EQT, a Venture Capital firm that has supported startups such as Einride and Varjo in the past.

Ted Persson, a partner at EQT, agreed that the prospect of getting Android to meet labor requirements seems to be moving from a distant dream to something that might actually be achieved in the next 5-7 years. Other investors in this round included Sandwater, Nistad Group, Skagerak Capital, and Samsung NEXT.

Indeed, with an extra $100M to pour into the project, Neo is getting closer to completion. Though the 1X CEO did not specify a launch date, he did state that preorders for the robot are expected to open shortly.

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Microsoft has overtaken Apple to become the most valued public company with a market cap of $2.89 trillion. Apple closed at $2.87 trillion at the end of Friday’s trading session.

Microsoft has gained around $1 trillion in valuation over the past year. This dramatic surge is attributed to the tech giant’s shift to AI technologies.

Apple stocks surged 48% in the previous year. However, its shares have been down 3% so far in 2024. Microsoft saw a 57% increase in market cap last year, along with a 3% surge in 2024.

Experts believe that the companies that will lead the next decade will be the ones that are proactive in embracing AI tech. And Satya Nadella’s bet on AI has started to show results for the company. Microsoft has invested $10 billion in OpenAI — the AI giant behind the revolutionary ChatGPT.

Microsoft’s AI Shift

Apart from its close ties to OpenAI, Microsoft has launched its Copilot assistant, which has proven to be a game-changer for the company. It is the ultimate personal assistant for the Windows system.

Microsoft has even integrated it with Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft suite of apps to make redundant tasks easier. Users can also download the Copilot app on their Android devices.

The tech giant has even added a Copilot button in its Windows 11 keyboard — its first major upgrade in 30 years.

Microsoft has also introduced Azure AI — a platform that allows developers to build market-ready applications using AI tools with customizable pre-built APIs.

Apple’s Struggle

Apple has been searching for its “next big thing” for a few years now. It has also been struggling in China — its 5th largest market. China has already banned the use of iPhones by government-backed companies and agencies in September 2023.

Apple’s market cap fell by 6.9% in two days following this news. Moreover, there has been a push for domestic brands like Xiaomi and Huawei, which has made the Chinese market a tough geographical spot for Apple.

There was also a recent patent-infringement controversy, where the tech giant was accused of stealing Masimo’s technology behind the blood oxygen sensor. Although Apple is allowed to currently sell its smartwatches in the US, the legal battle can land Apple in another trouble.

Plus, unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn’t embraced AI technologies yet.

Similarly, several experts and tech companies are banking on AI to dominate the market. As seen by market valuations, organizations that can adapt quickly to these changes will lead the next generation of technologies.

Apple needs to buckle up and charge at a rate of knots towards this AI transformation, given that it is currently lagging behind competitors like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI.

The post Microsoft Becomes Most Valued Public Company At $2.89 Trillion appeared first on The Tech Report.

Work from home will soon become a distant past. Microsoft is launching its Teams software on Android Auto, allowing users to join meetings from their cars.

Users will now be able to view their calendars, add speed dials for quick calling, and view their recent calls on their Android phones.

However, the tech giant has not given any clarification on whether other features like messaging and file and data sharing will be accessible or not.

This feature is nothing new in the industry. Competitors like Zoom and Webex already run smoothly on Android Auto. Even Microsoft Teams is supported on Apple CarPlay since 2021.

Google, at the CES 2024, announced major improvements in Android Auto, including the introduction of the Chrome browser. This will allow users to integrate their systems with Google Maps and send driving directions to their cars.

The feature will first be introduced in Volvo and Polestar cars, gradually expanding to other EVs.

In-car entertainment has become an indispensable part of car sales. As many as 200 million vehicles currently use Android Auto. A recent survey has revealed that almost half of prospective automobile buyers are not willing to buy a car that lacks Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.

This highlights the importance of these car systems in the automobile industry, which also necessitates regular system upgrades. In fact, brands like Honda, Volvo, GM, and Renault are now choosing Google’s Android Auto over their own proprietary systems.

Increasing Automobile Competition

Updates like Teams integration and the introduction of the Chrome browser are important additions as the automobile sector is going through a transition.

With competitors like Xiaomi and Huawei entering the automobile sector, competition is about to get tougher. Xiaomi recently launched its first luxury EV — the SU7, competing directly with Porsche and Tesla.

Since it is already a smartphone giant, it has the upper hand when it comes to car connectivity. For instance, the SU7 has the same OS as Xiaomi phones, ensuring better connectivity.

The modern user wants their car’s systems to be an extension of their smartphones, which demands seamless connectivity. Giants like Google and Apple must work hard to ensure there are minimum lags in their software.

2024 promises to be an important year in the car-infotainment system.

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Considering Google makes billions of dollars, its recent practice of mass layoffs is needless – claimed the Alphabet Workers Union.

The comment comes right after Google decided to get rid of thousands of employees working in its engineering, voice-assistance, and hardware teams. “Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs”, the union wrote in a post on X.

Google, however, defended the latest round of layoffs. The move is aimed at increasing efficiency and focusing resources on higher priorities, the tech giant said. Job cuts are taking place on teams dedicated to Google Assistant, Fitbit, and augmented reality hardware.

Can’t Fire Workers While Making Billions, Union Says

In its post, the union claimed that it was unethical of Google to continue with the layoffs at a time when it has been making billions every quarter. For reference, the tech giant made $76.3bn (£59.9bn) in revenues during the third quarter of 2023, recording a net income of $19.7bn.

However, there has been a series of layoffs at Google, with thousands of jobs being cut. In January 2023, Google decided to curtail 6% of its workforce, which amounted to about 12,000 employees.

As tech companies continue to automate numerous jobs, there has been a sharp drop in the need for manpower in various areas. This has made the layoffs a necessary move for cost-cutting and increased efficiency, as Google and other tech giants emphasized while cutting jobs.

Regarding the latest round of layoffs, Google previously said that it would be cutting a few hundred roles across the hardware, engineering, and AI assistance teams.

While the company didn’t specify the exact number, the Alphabet Workers Union later determined that there have been about 1,000 layoffs in this round. A majority of these layoffs took place in Google’s augmented reality hardware division.

On the same day, Google made an announcement that 17 “underutilized” features of Google Assistant are going to be depreciated. These include starting a meditation session with Calm using voice commands, playing audiobooks, and sending emails.

Mass Layoffs: A Growing Trend

Unfortunately for IT workers, mass layoffs have become a recurring trend across companies of varying scales. Google is far from the only company cutting jobs in droves. Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram has slashed over 20,000 jobs.

In December 2023, Spotify announced that it would be curtailing 17% of its global workforce. It’s worth noting that the streaming giant had already carried out two rounds of layoffs earlier last year.

Not long ago, hundreds of Amazon employees working in its Prime Video and studio units were laid off, along with 500 others who worked on Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming platform.

In March 2023, Amazon announced that it would be laying off 9,000 workers in addition to the 18,000 job cuts it previously announced in January. With tech companies developing and implementing AI solutions at a rapid rate, the trend is only expected to continue.

The post Alphabet Workers Union Calls Google Layoffs ‘Needless’ appeared first on The Tech Report.

Wangshendongjian Technology, a Chinese tech company, was able to track down people who had sent “inappropriate content” in the subway, using a vulnerability in Apple’s AirDrop feature.

Researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt claim that Apple has been aware of this vulnerability since 2019, but it chose to do nothing about it.

The researchers had sent a report to Apple regarding this flaw, which was not acted upon. Apple even acknowledged the report in 2019 in an email to the researchers.

The researchers published a fix to the issue in 2021, which again fell on deaf ears.

How Is The Vulnerability Exploited

When devices connect on AirDrop, basic information like device name, phone number, and email addresses are exchanged between the devices. In usual circumstances, this data is scrambled so that no third party can access this sensitive information.

However, Apple did not carry out the “salting” process, which made this transfer vulnerable to external malicious parties. Salting is the process of mixing sensitive information with bogus data which makes it difficult for perpetrators to swoop in on sensitive transfers.

Experts have called it an “amateur mistake” from Apple.

Pressure Mounting on Apple

Apple’s unwillingness to solve the vulnerability despite knowing it since the last four years has drawn huge flak.

Sen. Ron Wyden from Congress called it a “blatant failure” on Apple’s part. He lashed at Apple which has put several human rights activists, who trust Apple to share sensitive information, at risk.

Sen. Marco Rubio has termed this vulnerability as just another way for the Chinese to target opponents who use Apple devices.

The Chinese firm that exploited the loophole is a subsidiary of Qi An Xin — a Chinese cybersecurity giant, which was responsible for warding off cyberattacks on the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. The firm is also said to have close ties with several Chinese government authorities.

This further fuels the fire of US lawmaker’s concerns about Apple’s relationship with China. As of this publication, Apple has not commented on the issue.

However, the pressure is mounting on Apple. As Benjamin Ismail, an internet censorship expert, opines, Apple should either deny any such vulnerability or work immediately to solve it on an urgent basis.

However, given the evidence put forward, Apple is in a tight spot, and denying is certainly not an option. It remains to be seen how the tech giant weathers this storm.

The post Chinese Firm Exploits Apple AirDrop Vulnerability, Which Apple Was Aware Of Since 2019 appeared first on The Tech Report.

Online retail giant eBay has been slapped with a hefty $3 million fine as it agrees to settle criminal charges associated with a disturbing harassment campaign against David and Ina Steiner, publishers of the online newsletter EcommerceBytes.

The ominous campaign started after eBay executives were upset with their newsletter.

It was back in 2019 that this harassment took place when the publishers covered a story involving eBay suing Amazon for poaching its sellers.

A series of unsettling incidents followed as eBay delivered cockroaches, live spiders, a bloody pig mask, a funeral wreath, and even a book about surviving the loss of a spouse to their home.

The online retailer has been charged with stalking the couple and various other offenses by the Department of Justice. Their sinister plot drew the wrath of the law three years after they carried out this campaign.

Devin Wenig, eBay CEO Involved In The Harassment

What makes this case more disturbing is the alleged involvement of then eBay CEO, Devin Wenig.

Within half an hour of the article being published, Wenig reportedly instructed another executive over a message, which stated, “If you are ever going to take her down… now is the time”.

Then, the information was shared with the senior director of safety and security of eBay, James Baugh. He referred to Mrs. Steiner as a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN”.

Baugh, considered the mastermind of the harassment scheme, was among seven former employees who pleaded guilty to charges.

While he was sentenced to about five years in prison in 2022, a two-year sentence was given to David Harville, another executive involved in the case.

Wenig Justifies His “Take Her Down” Quote

Along with Harville and Baugh, another employee of the online retailer went to the home of the couple to install their car with a GPS tracker. Since the garage was locked, they planned to break in as Harville brought the necessary tools.

According to Wenig’s defense in the civil case, the “take her down” wasn’t presented in the right context and it implied lawful action rather than criminal activities.

Harville, who accompanied Baugh on a trip to spy on the Steiners claimed no knowledge or involvement of the threats. Wenig, along with other executives at eBay, continually pressurized Baugh, and he complained about being ousted by the company while the internal investigation was going on to protect key executives from being punished.

With the legal agreement taking shape, eBay faces the heat, and the wrong-doings of its employees and higher authorities come to the spotlight.

The bizarre incident also justifies the importance of vigilance while monitoring the workplace culture and activities of employees. The ordeal of the Steiners, on the other hand, stands out as an instance of corporate mismanagement and irresponsibility.

The post eBay Faces $3 Million Fine Over Harassment Campaign Against Newsletter Owners appeared first on The Tech Report.