Technology News

WhatsApp Rolls Out Bottom Navigation Tabs to All Android Smartphones WhatsApp is rolling out a change to the interface that places all the navigation tabs at the bottom of the screen. The four tabs that were previously at the top of the screen on WhatsApp for Android are now located at the bottom, making it a lot easier to use the app with one hand on an Android phone.

OpenAI Previews 'Voice Engine' Audio Tool That Can Clone Human Voices With 15 Seconds of Audio OpenAI has previewed a new Voice Engine audio tool that is capable of cloning human voices with 15 seconds of audio. The new Voice Engine tool can create speech that sounds like individual people, complete with their specific cadence and intonations, according to the Sam Altman-led company.

Amazon Invests Additional $2.75 Billion in AI Startup Anthropic Amazon is investing an additional $2.75 billion in AI startup Anthropic, bringing the former's total investment in the well-regarded AI builder to $4 billion. As part of the deal, Anthropic has also agreed to use Amazon Web Services data centers to power some of its operations, and to use Amazon's custom-built computer chips.

Google Maps Gets Curated Recommendations, Customised Lists, and More to Help Users Plan Travels Google Maps is getting new recommendations, customised lists, and AI-based summaries that are promised to assist users on their summer travels. In order to provide personalised suggestions to users, Google has added curated lists of recommendations from top sites and the Google Maps community on Maps.

Amazon Invests Additional $2.75 Billion in AI Startup Anthropic Amazon is investing an additional $2.75 billion in AI startup Anthropic, bringing the former's total investment in the well-regarded AI builder to $4 billion. As part of the deal, Anthropic has also agreed to use Amazon Web Services data centers to power some of its operations, and to use Amazon's custom-built computer chips.

IPL 2024 Live Streaming on JioCinema: How to Watch IPL Match for Free on Mobile and Smart TV Here's how you can watch IPL 2024 live stream for free on mobile and on your Smart TV.

Intel Announces New Initiatives for AI PC Developers and Hardware Vendors Intel launched its AI PC Acceleration Program in October 2023 to connect independent hardware and software vendors with the company’s resources. On Tuesday, the company announced two more initiatives under the umbrella programme. The first initiative is called the AI PC Developer Program which is aimed at software developers, and a separate initiative for independen...

Fireworks.ai, the Generative AI Firm That Fine-Tunes and Customises Open-Source LLMs For Business Needs Fireworks.ai is a California-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup that is offering a unique solution for enterprises. The AI firm does not build large language models (LLMs) or foundation models from scratch but fine-tunes open-source models and converts them into an Application Programming Interface (API) to help businesses seamlessly deploy the AI capabilities...

WWDC 2024 to Take Place From June 10 to June 14: All You Need to Know Apple's WWDC 2024 will take place on June 10, the company has announced. The latest edition of Apple's annual developer conference will take place as an online event, with a limited in-person experience, according to the company. This year, Apple is expected to announce new generative AI-powered features as the firm catches up to rivals Samsung and Google.

Elon Musk's X Loses Lawsuit Against Hate Speech Watchdog CCDH Elon Musk's lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was thrown out by a US judge who said it was "evident" that Musk's X Corp sued the nonprofit because he didn't like its criticism, and thought its research would hurt X's image and scare advertisers away. In a statement, X said it plans to appeal the decision.

Google, Apple and Meta to Face First Digital Markets Act Probes in the EU Google, Apple and Meta will be the first Big Tech firms to face antitrust probes from EU regulators, under the Digital Markets Act that recently went into effect. The new European law went into effect on March 7 and is designed to check the power of Big Tech firms, with big fines for firms that violate the act.

Google's AI-Powered Search Generative Experience Testing Reportedly Being Expanded to More Users Google is reportedly expanding the testing of its Search Generative Experience (SGE) feature which was announced in May 2023. The feature works using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and once a query has been searched, it creates a snapshot of the key information around the keywords. The feature was so far limited to users who signed up for it in Google’s Sea...

WhatsApp Now Lets Users Pin Multiple Messages in Chats: How to Use Feature WhatsApp rolled out the feature to pin messages in individual as well as group chats in December 2023. Users could only, however, pin a single message within one chat. Earlier this month, it was reported that WhatsApp was testing a feature that allows users to pin multiple messages within a chat. Now, the firm has officially announced this feature.

WhatsApp Spotted Working on AI-Powered Image Editor, Ask Meta AI Feature WhatsApp is adding AI powered features to the popular messaging app, according to feature tracker WABetaInfo. The popular chat application is adding a new AI image editor and a new ask Meta AI feature that is currently in development, which could eventually make its way to the chat application owned by Meta.

How the US Lawsuit Against Apple Could Make the iPhone Experience More Consumer Friendly Apple faces a lawsuit in the US over the company's alleged monopolistic practices that hurt smaller companies and drive up prices. The US Department of Justice hopes to increase competition for the iPhone and give a leg up to smaller companies whose apps work with the popular smartphone. Apple states that the lawsuit threatens the company and the principles that set i...

Microsoft Appoints Google DeepMind Co-Founder Mustafa Suleyman as CEO of New AI Division Microsoft has appointed DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a newly created consumer AI unit and hired several employees of his Inflection AI startup, seeking to defend its lead against rising competition from Google.

Google Collaborates With Apollo to Bring AI-Powered Early Disease Screening to India Google Health has announced a new collaboration with Apollo Radiology International for artificial intelligence (AI)-powered early disease screening in India. The announcement came during the company’s annual The Check Up event. Under this partnership, the tech giant will offer its AI stack for early disease screening to Apollo. The focus will be on three particular...

Meta Offers to Almost Halve Monthly Subscription Fee for Ad-Free Facebook, Instagram in EU Meta Platforms has offered to almost halve its monthly subscription fee for Facebook and Instagram to EUR 5.99 from EUR 9.99, a senior Meta executive said on Tuesday, a move that aims to address concerns from privacy and antitrust regulators.

OpenAI Could Release GPT-5, the Next-Generation of Its Generative AI Model, Later This Year: Report OpenAI could unveil the next generation of its artificial intelligence (AI) model, GPT-5 (Generative Pre-Trained Transformers 5), in the coming months, as per a new report. The AI model will arrive as the successor to GPT-4, which was officially released in March 2023 and currently powers its popular chatbot ChatGPT. It is said that the fifth iteration of GPT will als...

Nvidia Unveils Its Generative AI Model for Humanoid Robots, GR00T: 5 Things to Know Nvidia unveiled a general-purpose generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform for humanoid robots dubbed GR00T on Monday. The platform comes with both hardware and software solutions for humanoid robots and can equip them with capabilities that enable them to perform complex tasks as well as learn new tasks through human-assisted inputs. The AI model is paired wi...

Microsoft Appoints Google DeepMind Co-Founder Mustafa Suleyman as CEO of New AI Division Microsoft has appointed DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of a newly created consumer AI unit and hired several employees of his Inflection AI startup, seeking to defend its lead against rising competition from Google.

Stability AI Releases Stable Video 3D, an AI Model That Can Render 3D Videos From 2D Images Stability AI released a new 3D video rendering model dubbed Stable Video 3D (SV3D) on Monday. The artificial intelligence (AI) model generates videos, but unlike popular video generators such as OpenAI’s Sora, Runway AI, and Pika 1.0, it does not take text inputs. The main focus of SV3D is to take the image input and turn the 2D photo into an orbital 3D model.

Nvidia Announces Platform With Generative AI Features to Power Humanoid Robots Nvidia on Monday announced a hardware and software platform for building human-like robots that includes generative artificial intelligence features.

Nvidia Unveils B200 Flagship AI Chip, New AI Software Tools at Annual Conference Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang on Monday kicked off his company's annual developer conference with a slew of announcements designed to keep the chip maker in a dominant position in the artificial-intelligence industry.

Suno, a ChatGPT-Powered Chatbot, Can Generate AI Music Using Text Prompts Suno is an artificial intelligence (AI) music generator that can create original songs using a simple text prompt. The AI platform was first unveiled in July 2023 when it moved to open beta and began adding users to its Discord channel to test the model. Later, it also allowed users to generate AI music on its web interface.

Apple Researchers Working on MM1, a Family of Multimodal AI Model With Up to 30 Billion Parameters Apple researchers have shared their work on building a multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM), in a pre-print paper. Published on an online portal on March 14, the paper highlights how it was able to achieve the advanced capabilities of multimodality and make the foundation model train on both text-only data as well as images.

Elon Musk’s xAI Takes Its AI Chatbot Grok Open Source for Researchers and Developers Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) venture, xAI, made its large language model (LLM) Grok-1 available in open source on March 17. Last week, the billionaire revealed on his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) that the AI chatbot will be open-sourced. Now, it is available for researchers and developers.

Apple to Face Lawsuit Claiming AirTags Are Weapon of Stalkers, US Court Rules Apple must face a lawsuit that claims the company's AirTag device was used by stalkers to track their victims. The company was accused in the case of negligently releasing the AirTag despite warnings that the product would be re-purposed for surveillance.

CCI to Probe Google Amidst Dispute With Indian Firms Over In-App Billing Policy The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Friday ordered a probe into Google amidst an ongoing dispute with companies in India over the former's in-app billing system. The antitrust body has said that the search giant implemented its policies in a "discriminatory manner".

SIM Swappers Are Exploiting eSIM Vulnerabilities for Financial Frauds: Report SIM swapping crimes are on the rise globally, according to a new report. These crimes are primarily committed using eSIM (Embedded Subscriber Identity Modules) users. eSIMs are digitally stored SIM cards which are embedded into a device using a software. Hackers are now reportedly exploiting vulnerabilities within this technology to brute force into the victim’s pho...

YouTube Premium Widens Global Presence, Rolls Out to 10 More Countries YouTube Premium has been expanded to ten new countries. The paid tier of the popular video-streaming giant was already available in a large number of regions, but Google has now expanded further, bringing the total number of countries with an option to purchase the subscription to 100. Alongside its basic subscription tiers, the tech giant has also introduced its more...

Beeper for Android Update Brings Revamped Design, New Features Beeper for Android is now in beta as the company begins testing a revamped version of its messaging app, with a revamped design and new features. Users will be able to pick between Material You and OLED Black themes, while the Beeper app for Android now supports native features like chat bubbles and lets you add new services from the mobile app, according to the compa...

Microsoft Copilot AI Chatbot’s Free Version Has Been Upgraded to GPT-4 Turbo Microsoft Copilot has been silently upgraded to a more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model, revealed a company executive on Tuesday. With the upgrade, Copilot, the AI-powered chatbot, is now powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model. Both the free tier version and the Pro version have been upgraded, however, only Copilot Pro users will have the option to revert ...

Government Takes Action Against 'Obscene' Content on 18 OTT Platforms The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B) has taken action, in coordination with various intermediaries, to block 18 OTT platforms publishing "obscene," "vulgar," and, in some instances, "pornographic content". 19 websites, 10 apps (7 on the Google Play Store and 3 on the Apple App Store), and 57 social media accounts associated with these platforms have been d...

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati Reveals AI Text-to-Video Generator Sora Will Be Available Later This Year: Report OpenAI has plans to introduce its latest generative artificial intelligence (AI) model Sora later this year, as per a report. Sora is an AI-powered text-to-video generator which the company claims can generate up to 60-second-long videos, much longer than any of its industry rivals. In a recent interview, the AI firm’s CTO also revealed that Sora can generate videos...

Devin, an AI-Powered Software Engineer Capable of Coding, Building Apps, More Unveiled by Cognition Labs Devin, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model that can function as a software engineer, was introduced by the AI startup Cognition Labs. The company has claimed that Devin has successfully passed practical engineering interviews from AI companies and has even completed real jobs on Upwork. The AI tool comes with its shell, a code editor, and a browser to perf...

CERT-In Warns Users of Multiple Security Vulnerabilities Affecting Recent Android Versions CERT-In has issued a security advisory that warns users of security flaws affecting smartphones running on recent versions of Android. Google and Samsung have issued security patches for multiple several vulnerabilities that affect recent Android versions, and the cybersecurity agency has asked users to update their smartphones to the latest security update in order t...

Midjourney Tests New Algorithm to Bring Consistent Character Across Different AI-Generated Images Midjourey, the popular generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered image generation tool, has announced a new feature that will allow users to take a reference character and use it across multiple different images. The feature, called Character Reference, is currently in testing and only available on the Midjourney 6 (MJ6) and Niji 6 models.

Apple Announces Web Distribution Feature to Enable Direct Downloads From Developer Websites in the EU Apple will add Web Distribution support in the coming weeks, allowing developers to distribute apps directly from their websites in the EU. Users will be able to download apps without installing third party app stores, according to details shared by Apple. Apple has also announced changes to its policies related to support for alternative app stores in the EU, making ...

Opera One, the AI-Powered Browser, Introduces AI Feature Drops Programme for Beta Testers Opera One, the company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered browser, is starting a new AI Features Drop programme, it announced on March 8. The programme will allow users who sign up for it to access the developer build of the browser and test out the new features before it becomes available for the general public. The AI features on Opera One are built natively a...

Elon Musk Says His AI Startup xAI's Grok Chatbot Will Go Open-Source Elon Musk said on Monday his artificial intelligence startup xAI would open-source its ChatGPT challenger "Grok" this week, days after he sued OpenAI for abandoning its original mission in favor of a for-profit model.

Microsoft Reportedly Blocks Keywords from Copilot Designer to Stop Generating Violent, Sexual AI Images Microsoft has reportedly blocked several keywords from its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Copilot Designer that could be used to generate explicit images of violent and sexual nature. Keyword blocking exercise was conducted by the tech giant after one of its engineers wrote to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Microsoft board of directors expressing ...

Elon Musk Says X's Long-Form Videos Will Soon Be Available on Smart TVs Long-form videos will soon be available on smart televisions, billionaire Elon Musk said, after Fortune magazine reported that social network X planned to launch next week a TV app for Amazon and Samsung users. The platform rolled out an early version of video and audio calling for some users last October.

X Introduces 'Articles' for Premium+ Users to Write and Share Long-Form Content X has now introduced a new feature which allows users to share long-form written content. The firm announced that this long-form content-creating feature called Articles can only be used by X Premium+ users or verified organisations. The company has not yet confirmed if the feature will eventually roll out to all other non-paying users as well.

Paytm Terminates Some Ties With Troubled Payments Bank Unit Payments firm Paytm on Friday cut some ties with its payments bank unit, which India's banking regulator has ordered to be wound down, in its latest attempt to address compliance concerns that triggered a meltdown in its shares last month.

Google Drive Brings Improvements to Video Playback, and Search Experience on iOS Google Drive is getting a couple of updates that will improve the usability of the cloud-based storage platform. The tech giant is adding a new transcode to improve the playback speed and rebuffering of videos played within the Drive. It is also improving the search functionality on iOS and adding query filters to help users quickly get to the desired file.

Google Adds a New Gemini AI Feature That Will Let Users Fine-Tune Its Responses Google has introduced a new feature for Gemini, its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot. The new feature provides users with granular control over the generated response to a prompt and allows them to make changes to a particular portion of the text. Users can regenerate the selected portion, edit its length or get it entirely removed.

Apple Modifies Proposed App Store Changes to Comply With New EU Rules After Criticism From Developers Apple has modified some of its proposals to comply with landmark EU tech rules after criticism from app developers, including dropping a demand that those who want to create alternative app marketplaces must have a stand-by letter of credit.

Elon Musk vs OpenAI: Here's a Timeline of the Decade-Long Rivalry Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on February 29. The primary allegation was that the company breached its founding agreement with Musk by entering a partnership with Microsoft and functioning as its “closed-source de facto subsidiary”, intending to maximise profits. Now, OpenAI, on Wednesday, retaliated against the allegations by pub...

How to Use Chakshu Portal to Report Fraud Spam Calls, Messages, and More The Chakshu portal enables individuals to report suspicious messages across various platforms such as WhatsApp, SMS, and more

ChatGPT Gets New Accessibility Feature, Can Now Read Its Responses Aloud to Users ChatGPT has received a new accessibility feature that can be helpful for visually impaired people. The artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot by OpenAI announced a ‘Read Aloud’ feature on Monday that can read out its written responses. The new feature is a different functionality from the voice chat feature that was introduced in September 2023.

Wix Launches AI-Powered Website Builder That Can Create Websites Using Simple Text Prompts Wix, a cloud-based website development platform, has launched its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot that can generate a customised website using simple text prompts. The AI website generator was first announced by the company in July 2023 but was not made available to the public. After seven months, Wix has launched the feature globally and users can begin ...

Chakshu Portal Launched by Government to Curb Cyber Fraud Committed via Phone Calls, SMS, and WhatsApp Chakshu portal, a platform to report suspected communications of cyber fraud, was launched by the government of India on Monday. The portal was created alongside the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) which will be used for real-time intelligence sharing and coordination between all the stakeholders. The Chakshu portal can be used to report phone calls, SMS, and What...

Apple Hit With $2 Billion EU Antitrust Fine in Spotify Case, Will Appeal Brussels on Monday fined Apple EUR 1.84 billion euros $2 billion for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker's first ever penalty for breaching EU rules.

Indian Startups Ask CCI to Order Google to Restore Apps After 'Brazen' Removal From Play Store A group representing Indian startups has asked the country's antitrust watchdog to order Alphabet's Google to reinstate apps it removed for policy violations, a letter seen by Reuters shows, escalating a showdown with the US giant in a key market.

Anthropic Introduces Claude 3 AI Models, Claims Its Chatbot Outperforms GPT-4 and Gemini Anthropic has introduced its new family of artificial intelligence (AI) models called Claude 3. The third generation of the company’s AI-powered chatbot now comes in three separate versions — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus — where Opus is the most capable model, followed by Sonnet and Haiku.

AI Models in India Will Require MeitY Approval, Government Says in Advisory: Report Artificial intelligence (AI) models and generative AI models which are in any phase of testing or unreliable in any way will need to receive “explicit permission of the government of India” before it is deployed in India, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued in an advisory, as per reports.

Microsoft Introduces Copilot for Finance, an AI Tool to Streamline Enterprise Finance Tasks Microsoft unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Copilot for Finance on Thursday, aiming to help financial professionals in easily navigating through everyday mundane tasks. The Copilot tool is not a new AI model, and instead builds on the existing Copilot for Microsoft 365 stack to bring new features specific to financial operations. It is currently ...

Flipkart Launches UPI Service in Partnership With Axis Bank to Counter Third-Party Apps Flipkart launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service in collaboration with Axis Bank. The Flipkart UPI will be initially available for Android users and can be used for online and offline payments. With the latest update, customers can now pay bills and make fund transfers directly from the Flipkart app.

Google's Removal of Apps From Play Store in India 'Cannot Be Permitted': IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw Google's decision to remove some apps in India from its app store "cannot be permitted", Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday, amid an ongoing dispute over service fee payments to the US firm.

WhatsApp Introduces New Search by Date Feature for Messages: How to Use WhatsApp, Meta's popular messaging platform, has unveiled a new feature enhancing its search capabilities. The new ‘Search by Date’ feature allows users to choose a specific date to find the messages exchanged on those particular days. It is likely to help users retrieve specific information from past conversations more smoothly.

Brave Browser Is Bringing its AI Assistant Leo to Android Devices Brave browser, known for its privacy-focused features, is bringing its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Leo to Android devices. The software firm first announced its AI chatbot in November 2023, when Leo was added to the desktop browser. The company’s chatbot can run on several large language models, which are available for both the free version (with rate lim...

Paytm Terminates Some Ties With Troubled Payments Bank Unit Payments firm Paytm on Friday cut some ties with its payments bank unit, which India's banking regulator has ordered to be wound down, in its latest attempt to address compliance concerns that triggered a meltdown in its shares last month.