The past week was a busy time for the tech world. Microsoft and Google, two of the world’s most powerful tech companies, laid the groundwork for applying generative AI technology to their search engines. The Satya Nadella-led Microsoft hosted an event at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington it announced plans to fuse ChatGPT-like technology into its search engine Bing and Edge browser. Many analysts and insiders compared this announcement to the iPhone moment in the modern-day tech landscape.
Read More
Google, too, was not far behind in creating a buzz with Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. However, the announcement didn’t go as per plan. In fact, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new artificial intelligence technology produced a factual error in a promotional tweet.
With AI becoming the biggest buzzword, we track all the latest updates and announcements around the topic.
Microsoft seems to be ahead of Google in the AI race with its strategic partnership with OpenAI. Google is playing catch up with Microsoft and is developing its own AI-powered chatbot called Bard, which it recently showcased. Google did lose over $100 billion due to a single mistake.
The company has already started companywide testing of Bard. Now a new report from Business Insider claims that CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly asked Google employees in a memo to spend two to four hours every day helping test the chatbot which the company aims to integrate into search.
Reportedly the latest mail reviewed by the Insider indicates the sense of urgency seemingly visible at Google to lead in the realm of generative AI-backed search. Click here to read th the full story
In essence, generative AI lets users create content from scratch such as texts, images, poetry, videos, audios, etc. Tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Lensa are part of generative AI, a briskly progressing sub-domain in the field of AI.
Be it the ‘Magic Avatar’ from Lensa, a feature that lets people use AI to create their stylised portraits based on their photos, or ChatGPT that offers humanish responses to text prompts, AI tools are impressing users worldwide. Images, texts, videos and audios created by AI seem to be used by one and all, and more users are drawn towards them to try their hand. All this is possible thanks to generative AI. Read the full story here.
Vint Cerf, the father of the internet and the ex-vice president of Google has shared his opinion on conversational AI tools with CNBC in an interview. According to Cerf, “There’s an ethical issue here that I hope some of you will consider,” he also said AI is “really cool, even though it doesn’t work quite right all the time.”
Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft has tweeted that the new Bing is 'currently in Limited Preview so that we can test, learn, and improve. We’re slowly scaling people off the waitlist daily.' And the company has intentions to scale it to millions of people over the next few weeks. Currently, Microsoft is inviting people who have set Bing and Edge browsers as their default search engines and web browser, and the same will also be made available on the Bing Mobile app. In the coming days, it will be made available on all web browsers. With high demand and millions on the waiting list, he asks users to be patient and the new Bing is currently live in 69 countries.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and the brains behind ChatGPT has shared his thoughts on AI. According to Sam "AI is going to be the greatest force for economic empowerment and a lot of people getting rich we have ever seen."
Microsoft has started sharing invites with users who are on the waiting list to test out the new AI-powered Bing. Users can sign-up for the same on Bing.com. Similarly, the same can also be accessed by downloading Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension and setting Edge browser as the default web browser on your PC.
Go to Bing.com > click on try it, and then sign-up yourself using a Microsoft account to get into the waiting list. Microsoft will then send an invite to try out the new Bing.
Microsoft has started sending out an invite to those who are currently on the waiting list to test out the early version of the new Bing, powered by ChatGPT. The invite mentions that the new Bing is currently in the early preview stage and it would "love" users feedback to make the new Bing better in the coming days. Microsoft has received over a million applications to beta test the new AI-powered Bing, and the company is expected to roll out the invite to everyone in the coming days.
According to the latest report from Reuters, US lawmakers are showing interest in Microsoft-funded OpenAI's ChatGPT. With an estimated 100 million monthly active users Ted Lieu, a representative of the science committee said "incredible ways it will continue to advance society," but also "freaked out by A.I., specifically A.I. that is left unchecked and unregulated." He also said, "to ensure that the development and deployment of AI is done in a way that is safe, ethical, and respects the rights and privacy of all Americans and that the benefits of AI are widely distributed and the risks are minimized."
After putting AI into Bing and Edge, Microsoft now plans to embed ChatGPT-like functionality in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Details are still sketchy but the company reportedly plans to demo the new feature as early as March. By doing so, Microsoft wants to stay ahead of Google. Earlier last week, Microsoft announced a supercharged Big search engine as well as an Edge browser with a built-in AI capability. The Redmond-Washington headquartered company is an investor in OpenAI, the company behind the sensational ChatGPT bot.
One advantage of ChatGPT is that many developers appear to have incorporated the underlying technology into their own products. There are several Chrome extensions now all relying on 'ChatGPT' and promising to make life easier for users. For instance, ChatGPT Writer lets users write emails or replies based on a few quick prompts. According to the developer, the tool lets users respond to an email. Users need to click on reply and the ChatGPT Writer icon appears next to the Send button. Tapping on the icon will show a dialogue box with the text ‘Briefly enter what you want to reply:’ and a dialogue box beneath. Users can enter their prompts such as ‘write a reply in a casual manner’ and hit the Generate button. This will generate an instant response which users can add to their reply. Read more about these extensions here.
Yes, Google's Bard announcement didn't go as planned. But it looks like company's senior executive are warning against 'hallucinating chatbots. According Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google and head of Google Search, sometimes these generative AI bots can hallucinate. He made the remarks in an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Raghavan warned against these machines providing "a convincing but completely made-up answer." He added that one of the fundamental tasks was keeping this to a minimum.
MeitY is gearing up to integrate ChatGPT with WhatsApp. The idea is to make it convenient for people to get information about key government schemes through the popular AI chatbot. The government has been pushing the digital India initiative for years and integrating ChatGPT with WhatsApp could be another push in that direction. Read full report by Indian Express here.
Did Google announce Bard in a rush? That's what Google employees think. According to an internal message forum at Google, employees are calling the announcement of Bard “rushed,” “botched,” and “un-googley”. Some are even blaming Sundar Pichai, considering the recent massive layoff at Google. There are also plenty of memes floating around social media regarding the whole incident and how it wiped off a whopping $120 billion from Google's valuation.
According to Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, "AI will change our world" and will make workplaces more efficient. He also said jobs aren't at risk due to AI, it is said to do a lot of good by decreasing working hours. Gates also said that ChatGPT has exciting use cases, which include tutoring a student and even giving medical advice to a patient who cannot access a doctor.