Technology News

WhatsApp Starts Testing Feature to View, Share Channels Using QR Codes WhatsApp is beta testing a feature that lets users share, view, and follow WhatsApp Channels using a quick response code (QR code) code in the app. The feature is currently available to beta testers and could roll out to all WhatsApp users in the future.

WhatsApp Begins Testing Sticker Pack Sharing Feature on iOS, Android WhatsApp beta testers can now share sticker packs installed on their devices after updating to the latest beta versions of WhatsApp for iOS and Android. Additionally, WhatsApp has begun to permit some testers to include a message when forwarding content on the messaging platform.

Amazon Black Friday Sale Now Live in India With Up to 40 Percent Off on Smartphones, Other Offers Amazon has announced its first-ever Black Friday Sale in India which went live on midnight November 28. During this limited period, customers can avail of exciting discounts on a wide range of items such as smartphones, TVs, home appliances, gaming consoles, fashion and beauty products, and more.

Anthropic Introduces Custom Styles in Claude AI That Can Match Users’ Writing Style Anthropic introduced a new feature in Claude on Tuesday that will allow the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to generate responses in users’ preferred writing style. Dubbed Custom Style, the new feature is aimed at the chatbot’s responses more in tune with how the user generally writes and prefers to read. With this personalisation feature, users can either se...

Reliance Digital Announces Black Friday Sale in India With Offers on iPhone 16 and Home Appliances Reliance Digital has announced its Black Friday Sale in India. The sale, which commenced today (Thursday), offers a wide range of electronic items such as smartphones, laptops, and home appliances at discounted prices. Further, customers can take advantage of additional bank offers to get the products at even lower rates than their usual market prices. The sale ends o...

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Completes 400th Successful Mission, Deploys 24 Starlink Satellites SpaceX's Falcon 9 achieved its 400th successful mission with the launch of 24 Starlink satellites on 26 November 2024. Lift-off occurred from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and the satellites were deployed into low Earth orbit as planned. The rocket’s first stage landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking its 15th reuse.

Increasing Global Heatwave Hotspots Defy Climate Model Predictions Heatwave hotspots exceeding climate models are emerging globally, with regions like northwestern Europe, central China, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest witnessing record-breaking extremes. Recent findings reveal jet stream wobbles, vegetation drying, and atmospheric patterns driving these anomalies. Notable impacts include wildfires, crop failures, and surging heat-rel...

SpyLoan Apps Installed on Over 8 Million Android Phones Amidst Rise in Predatory Loan Apps SpyLoan, a predatory loan application, has been detected on over 8 million Android devices, according to McAfee. Fifteen versions of the SpyLoan application have been removed or updated since they were identified, and users must remove these apps manually if they have already been downloaded.

Google to Tweak Search Results in Europe After Rivals Complained Google plans to make adjustments to displaying search results on its platform in Europe after some smaller rivals complained about lower traffic to their sites. Under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google is prohibited from favouring its products and services on its platform.

Google, Meta Urge Australia to Delay Bill on Social Media Ban for Children Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children's social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.

Australia Moves Closer to Ban Social Media for Children Australia on Wednesday moved closer to banning social media for children under 16. Australia's House of Representatives passed the bill 102 votes to 13 after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labor government secured bipartisan support for the ban.

IMAX Reportedly Partners With Camb.AI to Bring Real-Time Language Translation for Its Original Content IMAX, the Canadian production theatre company, reportedly announced its partnership with Dubai-based Camb.AI to offer its content in localised languages globally. On Monday, the company announced that it will be leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools to translate its original content into 140 languages to let viewers enjoy it in their local languages. Notably, ...

Anthropic Open-Sources Model Context Protocol to Offer a New Way to Connect AI Chatbots to Data Anthropic open-sourced a new protocol to connect data hubs to artificial intelligence (AI) systems on Monday. Dubbed Model Context Protocol (MCP), the company claimed it can overcome the limitations of traditional data integration methods and solve the problem of data silos. The AI firm is also offering local MCP support in the Claude Desktop apps and an open-source r...

Chinese Scientists Claim to Have Built Microwave Weapon That Converges Energy Beams on a Single Target Chinese scientists have developed an advanced microwave weapon capable of merging multiple high-frequency beams into one, targeting a single location. This new technology, claimed to have an effect greater than the sum of its parts, has been compared to the Death Star’s beam convergence. However, experts highlight challenges with precision, alignment, and energy cap...

Black Forest Labs Introduces AI-Powered Flux.1 Tools for Advanced Image Editing Black Forest Labs released four new artificial intelligence (AI) tools for its base text-to-image Flux.1 AI model last week. These four AI tools are based on separate models designed to execute specific image editing tasks within the image generator. The company claims that these tools will offer granular control over the output images and let users preserve the key e...

Lightricks Introduces Open-Source LTX Video AI Model With Real-Time Video Generation Capability Lightricks, a software company focused on image and video editing, released an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) video model in preview last week. Dubbed LTX Video, the AI model can generate medium-resolution videos in real time. While real-time video generation capability exists in a few large language models (LLMs), this is the first one to be open-sourced.

CCI Rejects Apple Request to Put Antitrust Report on Hold The CCI internal order showed that Apple in November alleged that the main complainant in the antitrust investigation - Indian non-profit Together We Fight Society (TWFS) - had not complied with the directives to give an assurance that the old investigation reports had been destroyed.

OpenAI Planning AI-Powered Web Browser, Could Rival Google Chrome: Report OpenAI is reportedly planning to build a native web browser powered by artificial intelligence (AI). As per a report, the AI firm is planning to take on Google Chrome with its own browser platform and has started discussing its plans with several website and app developers. Separately, the AI firm is reportedly also in discussions with Samsung to integrate its AI feat...

Google Must Sell Chrome to Restore Competition in Online Search, DOJ Argues Alphabet's Google must sell its Chrome browser, share data and search results with rivals and take other measures - including possibly selling Android - to end its monopoly on online search, prosecutors argued to a judge on Wednesday.

Brave Search Gets AI-Powered Chat Feature With Support for Follow-Up Queries Brave, the San Francisco-based software company, rolled out a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature for Brave Search on Thursday. Earlier this year, the company introduced ‘Answer with AI’ to its search engine, a feature that shows AI-generated summaries for searched queries. Now, it has added an extension to this feature dubbed AI chat mode, which allows users...

Adobe Develops SlimLM That Can Process Documents Locally on Devices Without Internet Connectivity Adobe researchers have published a paper that details a new artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of processing documents locally on a device. Published last week, the paper highlights that researchers experimented with existing large language models (LLMs) and small language models (SLMs) to find how to reduce the size of the AI model while keeping its processin...

Threads Algorithm Updated to Show Users Less Recommended Content Threads has updated its algorithm to show users more posts from people that they follow. Users will see fewer recommended posts, which are published by accounts that they don't follow, according to details shared by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who said that content creators on Threads will see a drop in 'unconnected' reach, while 'connected' reach will increase, afte...

Chinese DeepSeek-R1 AI Model With Advanced Reasoning Capabilities Released, Can Rival OpenAI o1 A Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) model was released on Wednesday which claims to take on OpenAI’s o1 AI model in terms of advanced reasoning. Dubbed DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview, the large language model (LLM) is said to have outperformed the o1 model on several benchmarks. Notably, the AI model is available to test on the web for free, although its advanced reaso...

Samsung Gauss2 Multimodal AI Model With Support for Up to 14 Languages Unveiled at SDC24 Samsung unveiled the second generation of its Gauss artificial intelligence (AI) model on Thursday. Dubbed Gauss2, the new multimodal AI model is said to feature improved performance, efficiency, and enhanced use cases for application integration. The new large language model (LLM) was introduced during the keynote address of the Samsung Developer Conference Korea 202...

Australia Launches 'Landmark' Bill to Ban Social Media for Children Under 16 Australia's government has introduced a bill in parliament that aims to ban social media for children under 16. The proposals are the highest age limit set by any country, and would have no exemption for parental consent and no exemption for pre-existing accounts.

Google Reportedly Working on AI-Powered ‘Help Me Draw’ Feature for Google Keep Google is reportedly working on a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature for Google Keep. As per the report, the company’s note-taking app might soon offer AI-powered enhancement to hand-drawn text and sketches. Dubbed Help Me Draw, the evidence of the feature were said to be found within the latest version of the Google Keep app for Android.

Google AI-Powered Air View+ Announced With Real-Time Hyperlocal Air Quality Information Across India Google announced Air View+, an ecosystem-based solution to address the gaps in air quality data across India, on Wednesday. The system uses the Mountain View-based tech giant’s artificial intelligence (AI) models to process a large volume of air quality data at the hyperlocal level and provide actionable insights to Indian government agencies.

Google’s Chrome Worth Up to $20 Billion If Judge Orders Sale Chrome browser could go for as much as $20 billion if a judge agrees to a Justice Department proposal to sell the business. Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements.

Instagram Will Let Users Reset Their Content Recommendations Instagram will let some users reset the algorithm that determines what types of posts and videos they see in their feed. The change is designed to give people more control if they find the content in their Instagram feed no longer matches their interests.

ChatGPT Outperformed Doctors in Diagnosing Diseases and Medical Conditions, Says Study ChatGPT was able to outperform human doctors in diagnosing diseases and medical conditions in a study. While the study aimed to understand if AI chatbots can help doctors provide better diagnoses, the results unexpectedly revealed that OpenAI’s GPT-4-powered chatbot performed much better when performing without human assistance compared to when paired with a doctor.

Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 Successfully Launches THE ISRO GSAT-20 Satellite On November 19, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launched Isro’s GSAT-20 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Weighing 4,700 kilograms, the satellite is designed to enhance India’s communication infrastructure. With 48 Gbps throughput and advanced Ka-band transponders, it will provide critical internet services across remote regions of India, including islands....

Perplexity AI ‘Buy With Pro’ and ‘Snap to Shop’ Features Rolling Out for Paid Subscribers Perplexity added two new features to its platform on Monday to offer users a new shopping experience. The artificial intelligence (AI) search engine is rolling out ‘Buy with Pro’ and ‘Snap to Shop’ features for paying subscribers. With the former, Perplexity Pro users can now purchase products directly on the platform after asking for recommendations.

DOJ Said to Push Google to Sell Chrome to Break Search Monopoly The US DOJ has decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser. The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolised the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system.

CCI Imposes Rs 213 Crore Penalty on Meta; Firm Plans to Appeal Decision The Competition Commission of India imposed a Rs 213-crore penalty on Meta regarding its WhatsApp privacy policy on Monday, and the company expressed disagreement with the decision and said that it intends to appeal. The CCI directed WhatsApp on Monday to desist from sharing user data with Meta-owned applications for advertising purposes for a period of five years.

Meta Fined EUR 798 Million by EU Over Abusing Classified Ads Dominance The European Commission ordered Meta to stop tying its classified-ads service to Facebook’s sprawling social media platform, and refrain from imposing unfair trading conditions on rival second-hand goods platforms.

Google Maps Updated With Product Search, Trailer-Friendly Routes and Weather Disruption Alerts Google Maps has introduced several new features designed to enhance the user experience for shopping and driving during the upcoming holiday season. Users will be able to search for specific products within Google Maps, while drivers in North America can use 'trailer-friendly routes' to avoid obstacles and tunnels.

Gemini in Gmail Gets Integration With Google Calendar App, Lets Users Ask Date-Based Queries Gemini in Gmail is getting support for more artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities. On Wednesday, Google announced the integration of the Google Calendar app with its native AI model Gemini. This way, eligible users can use Gemini within Gmail to ask Calendar-based queries to users. The feature is available to those Google Workspace users who have one of the Gem...

OpenAI Reportedly Planning to Launch AI Agents That Can Control Tasks on Computer OpenAI is reportedly planning to release artificial intelligence (AI) agents that can operate tasks on computer systems. As per a report, the company has been working on several agent-related research projects, one of which is dubbed “Operator” which can execute multi-step actions on computers. The AI agents are said to be released in January 2025 as a research pr...

Netflix Says 70 Million Users Now Watch Shows With Advertising More than 50 percent of new subscribers are opting for Netflix’s ad-supported plan in the countries where it is available. Netflix has priced its advertising-supported plan as a less-expensive alternative for cost-conscious users.

Meta Pushes Back Against FTC Effort to Toughen Privacy Order A Meta lawyer told the FTC’s five commissioners at a hearing Tuesday that the consumer protection agency doesn’t have authority to modify the agreement without the company’s consent.

Meta to Offer Less Personalised Ads in Europe to Appease Regulators Meta Platforms plans to offer Instagram and Facebook users in Europe the option to receive "less personalised ads". These ads will also target users based on age, gender, and location, with some being unskippable for a few seconds.

Elon Musk's Starlink Working on Indian Security Clearance for Satellite Broadband Starlink has been looking to enter India for years and its plans got a major boost last month when New Delhi said it wouldn't auction spectrum for satellite broadband but rather award it administratively - just as Musk wanted. Rival Indian telecom billionaire Mukesh Ambani had wanted an auction.

Epoch AI Launches FrontierMath AI Benchmark to Test Capabilities of AI Models Epoch AI, a California-based research institute launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) benchmark last week. Dubbed FrontierMath, the new AI benchmark tests large language models (LLMs) on their capability of reseasoning and mathematical problem-solving. The AI firm claims that existing math benchmarks are not very useful due to factors like data contamination and...

Baidu's New AI Text-to-Image Generator I-RAG and No-Code Platform Miaoda Reportedly Announced Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, announced two new artificial intelligence (AI) platforms on Tuesday. The company introduced a text-to-image generator dubbed I-RAG and a no-code platform called Miaoda. The new AI platforms were showcased at the Baidu World Conference, the company’s annual event. Additionally, the company also plans to launch new AI-integrated smart gl...

Signal Updated With Call Links Feature, Raise Hand Button, Emoji Reactions and More Improvements Signal has been updated with Call Links, a feature that enables users to initiate a group call with multiple participants without the need to form a separate group chat. Additional updates include a "raise hand" button, emoji reactions, and a dedicated calls tab on Signal.

LG Unveils Stretchable Display With 50 Percent Rate of Elongation LG Display, a subsidiary of the South Korea-based conglomerate focused on display technology, unveiled a new stretchable display that can expand by 50 percent of its original size. The company introduced the new stretchable display panel last week at LG Science Park in Seoul during a meeting of more than 100 South Korean industry, academia, and research stakeholders.

ED Said to Summon Amazon, Flipkart Executives as Regulatory Scrutiny Grows The planned action signals growing regulatory scrutiny of Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon when their sales are rapidly growing in India's $70 billion (roughly Rs. 5,93,614 crore) e-commerce market. An Indian antitrust investigation also found the two companies breached laws by favouring select sellers,

OpenAI’s Next Flagship AI Model Reportedly Struggling to Outperform Older Models in Certain Tasks OpenAI is rumoured to be working on the next generation of its flagship large language model (LLM), however, it might have hit a bottleneck. As per a report, the San Francisco-based AI firm is struggling to considerably upgrade the capabilities of its next AI model, internally codenamed Orion. The model is said to be outperforming older models when it comes to languag...

OTT Releases This Week: Vijay 69, Devara, Citadel: Honey Bunny and More  Blake Lively’s It Ends with Us, which was only available to rent until now, is making its OTT debut on Netflix on November 9

Reliance Lobbies for Satellite Spectrum Auction in New Clash With Starlink Reliance lobbied the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday to reconsider its plan to administratively allocate satellite spectrum, instead of auctioning it. Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in October that the government would allocate spectrum in line with global trends. However, it will issue a final notification on how spectrum is allotted ...

Competition Commission of India Finds Zomato, Swiggy Breached Antitrust Laws, Documents Show CCI's antitrust investigation against Swiggy and its top rival Zomato began in 2022 after a complaint by National Restaurant Association of India about the impact on food outlets of alleged anti-competitive practices of the platforms.

Australia Proposes 'World-Leading' Ban on Social Media for Children Under 16 Australia is trialing an age-verification system to assist in blocking children from accessing social media platforms, as part of a range of measures that include some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date.

ED Said to Have Raided Offices of Sellers Operating on Amazon and Flipkart India's ED has raided offices of some sellers operating Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart. One senior government source said raids were being carried out in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, but did not give names of sellers whose offices were being raided.

Government Issues New Rule for In-Flight Wi-Fi Connectivity on Indian Domestic Airlines The Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced a new rule for in-flight and maritime Wi-Fi connectivity recently. With the new rules, the government department has specified the criteria under which travellers will be allowed to access Internet connectivity. It is believed that with this rule change, Indian airlines such as Air India, Indigo, and SpiceJet...

ToxicPanda Banking Trojan Infects Over 1,500 Android Smartphones, Targets 16 Banks: Report ToxicPanda has been detected by security researchers as a new banking trojan, infected devices in Europe and Latin America. It is used to remotely take over accounts on compromised phones, allowing attackers to transfer funds while bypassing a bank's security measures. ToxicPanda was reportedly found on over 1,500 devices, while targeting users of 16 banking instituti...

xAI Rolling Out Grok API for Developers, Offers $25 of Free Credits Per Month xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm founded by Elon Musk, has rolled out an API for Grok. While the API was launched last month, the company has now offered several incentives for developers to try out the API and build apps and software using it. The most notable incentive on offer is free credits worth $25 (roughly Rs. 2,100) per month till the end of the yea...

Competition Commission of India Recalls Flipkart Antitrust Probe Report After Xiaomi Complaint In a lengthy investigation that started in 2020, the CCI found Flipkart gave preference to select sellers and prioritised certain listings and also colluded with companies like Xiaomi, Samsung and Vivo to launch phones exclusively on their websites. The watchdog has now told recipients of the Flipkart report to destroy it and give an undertaking to that effect to avoi...

Government Issues Notice to Wikipedia Over Bias, Editorial Control Concerns: Report Wikipedia was reportedly issued a notice by the Indian government on Tuesday over concerns of bias and inaccuracy on the website. The notice was reportedly served by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and it has also raised questions about why the platform should be treated as an intermediary and not as a publisher.

Meta Makes Llama AI Models Available to US Government Agencies Meta announced making its Llama artificial intelligence (AI) models available to US government agencies and contractors on Monday. The announcement came just days after reports claimed that the company’s open-source AI models were being used by researchers in China for military use. The social media giant highlighted that it will also make its Llama models available...

Facebook, Nvidia Ask US Supreme Court to Spare Them from Securities Fraud Suits Social media platform Facebook and Artificial Intelligence chipmaker Nvidia appealed to the Supreme Court after the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed separate class action securities fraud lawsuits to proceed against them.

Recraft Introduces AI Image Generator Recraft V3 With Improved Capabilities Recraft, an artificial intelligence (AI) firm, introduced its latest AI image generation model Recraft V3 last week. Interestingly, this is the same Red Panda AI model that topped the leaderboard of benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis. The company has now formally unveiled the AI model and highlighted its capability.

ElevenLabs Releases AI-Powered Voice Design API and X to Voice Features ElevenLabs, a New York-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm, released an application programming interface (API) for its Voice Design feature that recently made its debut. The announcement came last week, and alongside, the company also introduced an open-source project dubbed X to Voice, which can generate a unique voice for an X (formerly known as Twitter) profil...

MIT Unveils Novel Method of Training General-Purpose Robots Using Generative AI Techniques Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled a new method to train robots last week that uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. The new technique relies on combining data across different domains and modalities and combining them together in a shared language which can then be processed by large language models (LLMs).

OpenAI Will Not Release GPT-5 This Year But ‘Some Very Good Releases’ Are Coming, Says CEO Sam Altman OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and several other company executives hosted an ask-me-anything (AMA) session on Thursday. The session was hosted on the social networking platform Reddit and users were told to ask questions about the AI firm’s products such as ChatGPT or general queries about artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI). During the se...

Telegram Update Adds Improved Video Speed Controls, Last Edit Timestamps and Chat-Specific Hashtags Telegram has been updated with new video and chat editing features. Users will get access to new video speed controls and enhanced video quality. Additionally, Telegram will indicate the most recent edit time of a message within a chat. Developers have access to new monetisation options on the platform.

Apple Offers Modest Growth Outlook After iPhone Sales Help Beat Profit Expectations Apple's iPhone 16 sales boosted the company's quarterly sales beyond Wall Street expectations, the company said on Thursday. However, questions linger about the sustainability of this momentum through the holiday sales period. The company's executives did not give any indication of how the iPhone might fare, including in China, where the company's new AI features are ...

WhatsApp Rolling Out Custom Lists Feature to All Users Globally WhatsApp recently introduced a feature where users could categorise certain groups and individual chats as favourites for quick access. This was accessible through a tab in the chat filters bar alongside tabs like unread, groups and all. Now the company has announced that it is rolling out a Custom Lists feature where users will be able to create and edit customisabl...

OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Search AI-Powered Web Search to Take On Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity ChatGPT Search, the artificial intelligence (AI) search engine for the OpenAI-built chatbot, was introduced on Thursday. The feature arrives after months of speculation about the AI firm’s SearchGPT waitlist. The web search feature allows users to run a web search about a topic and get natural language results based on information sourced from various websites. This...