Biggest Announcements from Microsoft Build; Apple COO in Taiwan Locking Down NexGen Chips;Scarlett Johansson Slams OpenAI for Mimicking Her Voice; Porsche Invests in Startup For Better Cold Weather Battery Performance

Posted: May 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Microsoft just held a special event leading into Build 2024, and announced updates of Surface devices, and also teased some major developments in AI. Theverge.com reports that Microsoft CEO Nadella announced a new category of computers called Copilot Plus. The new units will run Arm based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors from Qualcomm, and down the road will run Intel and AMD chips. Microsoft claims Copilot Plus PCs will be 58% faster than the M3 MacBook Air. Besides Microsoft’s own Surface line, Copilot Plus devices are coming from Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Asus, and HP. One of the major AI features available within Copilot Plus PCs is Recall. The new tool runs locally on your device and logs everything you do on your computer, allowing you to search for and retrieve the content you’ve interacted with. That makes it possible to uncover a conversation you’ve had in apps like Discord, or even a specific PowerPoint slide you were working on. Copilot is getting OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model, which lets the AI answer questions based on what you see on your screen. So how much? The 13 inch Surface Pro starts at $999.99, and comes in blue, black, beige, and platinum. A new Surface Laptop 6 has 13.8 and 15 inch display options, and the lowball price model is also $999.99, with the same color choices as the Surface Pro. 

Apple COO Jeff Williams has reportedly been to Taiwan, working to lock down a supply of the upcoming 2 nanometer chips from Taiwan Semiconductor. According to macrumors.com, the COO and the president of TSMC discussed custom AI chips built on the chipmaker’s 2nm process…due to go into production next year. The iPhone 15 Pro runs on the A17 Pro chip, which is a 3nm chip from TSMC. The smaller footprint allows more transistors to be packed into less space, increasing both efficiency and performance. Even the latest Apple M4 chip is using the 3nm process. TSMC projects a 10 to 15% performance gain and power consumption reductions of up the 30% with the upcoming 2nm chips compared to the latest 3nm ones. 

Last fall, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI called Scarlett Johansson and pitched her on being the voice of the ChatGPT 4.0 system. The actress says she declined the offer after “much consideration and for personal reasons,” but when OpenAI demoed GPT-4o, the company’s latest large language model last week, “my friends, family, and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ’Sky’ sounded like me.” Engadget.com says that apparently Altman had called her 2 days before the debut and asked if she would reconsider…then put out the product before she could respond. The net is, Johansson hired an attorney, and now OpenAI is ‘pausing’ the use of “Sky”, the voice that sounds like Scarlett. Apparently it isn’t a clone of her voice, but another voice actor…and OpenAI claims it doesn’t mimic her voice. This is why SAG-AFTRA fought so hard in the strike last year for clauses it won that give actors, voice artists, and broadcasters under the new contracts the right to refuse a voice cloning, and if one is agreed to, a reasonable payment for the use of a person’s voice. 

It is pretty widely known that EV battery packs drop pretty dramatically in performance in very cold or very hot weather. Now, Porsche has invested in a startup that claims their tech will make cold weather charging and performance more reliable. TechCrunch.com reports that South 8 Technologies has developed a method of filling batteries with pressurized, liquified gas electrolyte instead of a liquid one. The cold weather issue occurs because the low temperature makes the liquid electrolyte thicken. This should avoid that issue, and as a bonus, South 8 says they think it wall cut the cost of lithium ion batteries by some 30%! That’s huge, because with EV’s, the battery costs about a third of the entire vehicle! The South 8 Tech also reduces the size of the battery pack. Porsche is mainly excited about the cold weather improvements at this point. Lots of improvements are in the pipeline for EV batteries, and they can’t get here too soon!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

Apple-Accessibility Eye Tracking for Recent iPhones & iPads; Google Opens Smart Home to Everyone; OpenA Chief Scientist Leaves; FTC Warns Car Makers About Selling User Data

Posted: May 15, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple has announced new accessibility features. The biggie is built in eye tracking for iPhones and iPads. Engadget.com reports that devices with the A12 chip or later will gain the ability to use the front facing camera to navigate software without additional hardware or accessories. When enabled, people can look at their screen to move through elements like apps and menus…then linger on an item to select it. Another thing they are adding is vocal shortcuts. AI on the device creates personalized voice commands. You could maybe use Yo, and Siri will…or may…understand and then perform the shortcut or task you associated with the shortcut word.  Voice control and color filters are coming to the interface for vehicles, making it easier to control apps by talking and for those with visual impairments to see menus or alerts. To that end, CarPlay is also getting bold and large text support, as well as sound recognition for noises like sirens or honks. 

Google has announced it is opening API access to its Google Home Smart home platform. Now, according to theverge.com, any app maker, whether smart home related or not, can access the more than 600 million devices connected to Google Home and tap into the Google Home automation engine to make what they are calling smart solutions for users. Any device that uses the Matter protocol or which says Works with Google Home will be accessible. 

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and long time chief scientist has left the building…and company. Techcrunch.com says that CEO Sam Altman posted on X about the departure last night. Altman called it a very sad day, and praised Ilya as having easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field,” and he also called him “a dear friend.” The big brained chief scientist is reportedly planning on working on something he called ‘personally meaningful.’ Ilya did say in a statement that he is leaving OpenAI with the “belief the company will build artificial general intelligence — AI capable of accomplishing any task a human can — that’s “both safe and beneficial.”

A warning has come out for automakers that sell connected cars…that’s virtually all of them these days. It’s from the Office of Technology of the FTC, and they said in a statement that Companies that offer such products “do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service.” Arstechnica.com notes that the FTC went on to say Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not “outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards.” This sounds like a shot over the bow to car makers that the feds will be coming after them if they don’t stop peddling car owners’ data to all sorts of data brokers and other third parties.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Google I/O Recap; Open AI’s New GPT-4o; Feds Investigate Waymo Driverless Cars; Apple & Google Bow Cross-Platform Anti-Tracking

Posted: May 14, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google made a flood of announcements today during the 2 hour I/O Keynote. Of course, it was all heavy on AI. 9to5google.com reports that Google Lens will now get the ability to search with a video. You can shoot a video, ask a question about something in it, and the AI will try to find appropriate answers on the web and serve them. The new Google AI model is Gemini 1.5 Flash. That’s supposed to be a reference to its quickness, not to the old Adobe Flash Player, or the comic book character, or someone running naked across a stage…although that might have gotten some shock value into the presentation today! Anyway, Flash is multimodal, and just as powerful as Gemini 1.5 Pro according to Google. They have also doubled 1.5 Pro’s context window to 2 million tokens. Gemini is being rolled out to the sidebar in Docs, Sheets, slides, Drive, and Gmail when it gets to paid subscribers next month. They claim it will be a general purpose assistant in Workspace that will fetch info from your drive, help you wrote, or give you reminders.

Google also touted Project Astra is a multimodal AI assistant that the company hopes will become a do-everything virtual assistant that can watch and understand what it sees through your device’s camera, remember where your things are, and do things for you. The Google answer to OpenAI’s Sora is a new generative AI model that can output 1080p video based on text, image, and video based prompts. Google is also bowing a custom chatbot creator called Gems that you can customize. Circle to search now can help solve math problems…it won’t do it for you, (so school kids can’t use it to cheat) but will break down problems into easier steps. Something that will affect everyone is AI Overviews…formerly the ‘Search Generative Experience.’ Yep, Google is dropping more AI into their bread and butter search engine. 

Yesterday, getting the drop on Google somewhat, OpenAI released GPT-4o, a new flagship AI model. According to techcrunch.com, it is a rolling release and will hit developer and consumer facing products over the next few weeks. What is it? Well, according to OpenAI, it provides GPT-4 level intelligence but improves on GPT-4’s capabilities across text and vision as well as audio. OpenAI stressed the importance of voice and vision as the large language model interacts more with people…so be sure to say and think nice things about our coming AI and robot overlords. One interesting wrinkle…you can interrupt it as it is giving you an answer, and ask more or clarify, and the chatbot will theoretically be able to handle that. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been hot on the case of GM’s Cruise vehicles, which had to stop operation in San Francisco after a series of accidents. Now, the feds are looking into ‘unexpected behavior’ by Waymo self-driving cars. Arstechnica.com says that some of the incidents were reported to the government by Waymo, and others came from the public. The feds are looking into what they call  single-party crashes into “stationary and semi-stationary objects such as gates and chains” as well as instances in which Waymo cars “appeared to disobey traffic safety control devices.” This initial probe is the first step before the NHTSA can issue a potential recall. Earlier this year Waymo voluntarily recalled some 400 self drivers after back to back crashes in Arizona. 

As has been promised since last year, Apple and Google are finally rolling out cross-platform anti-tracking ability. Apple has had this feature for a couple years…it aims to prevent someone using one of their Air Tags to track or stalk someone else. Engadget.com notes that Apple and Google have been collaborating to make it possible to spot and end this kind of behavior across Apple and Android devices, to protect users from unwanted Bluetooth trackers snooping around on them. When an unknown Bluetooth device is seen moving with someone over a period of time, they’ll get an alert that reads “[Item] Found Moving With You,” no matter which platform the tracker is paired with. Apple and Google are rolling out the capability in iOS 17.5 and across Android 6.0 and later devices starting today.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Wireless Carriers to Appeal Big FCC Fines; Tesla Investigated for Securities and Wire Fraud; Amazon Rolls Out Fleet of EV Big Rigs; US Revokes Intel & Qualcomm Licenses to Sell Huawei Chips

Posted: May 8, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

We just reported a few days ago on big fines totaling almost $200 million for the Wireless carriers…AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and suggested that they wouldn’t just pay up. Now, in statements released, the big 3 wireless carriers have expressed their intent to appeal the FCC fines. Mashable.com reports that the fines were over the companies’ selling customer location data to aggregators, who then resold the info to third-party location-based service providers. In a statement, AT&T said “The FCC order lacks both legal and factual merit. It unfairly holds us responsible for another company’s violation of our contractual requirements to obtain consent, ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company’s failures, and perversely punishes us for supporting life-saving location services like emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC itself previously encouraged.” Verizon issued a similar statement. Expect the carriers to not only appeal, but to continue to appeal to higher courts to draw things out for years…so they avoid paying the big fines, or perhaps get out of them entirely. 

Having to give up a lot of data to the NHTSA is one thing, but now it turns out that Tesla is being investigated by the Department of Justice for securities and wire fraud concerning its self-driving claims. Wire fraud is never good…the government is pretty accomplished at proving cases centered around that. According to theverge.com, an investigation over self-driving claims has been ongoing since late 2021. Federal prosecutors are now starting to zero in on specific charges though…securities and wire fraud. For years, Elon Musk has been promising fully autonomous Tesla vehicles are just around the corner — while also admitting that he often sets overly optimistic timelines. Meanwhile, the company’s advanced driver-assist features, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, do not make the vehicles autonomous and require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road. The DOJ is also looking at Tesla’s over-optimistic range claims…although as any gas car owner can tell you, it’s a pretty rare moment when your gas car makes the claimed EPA mileage, too. 

Amazon is hitting the road with 50 heavy duty electric semi-trucks in Southern California. Geekwire.com says it is the largest such fleet to handle first and middle mile operations, as Amazon moves further towards decarbonizing operations. You have probably already seen Amazon electric delivery vans…I have seen a number of them the last few months, but the new big rig EVs will move goods move from where they are manufactured, through customs, across oceans, into ports, and then into Amazon’s fulfillment network….so-called first mile. Middle-mile trucks move Amazon orders between fulfillment centers, sort centers, air facilities, and delivery stations, where packages are finally loaded into last-mile vans to be delivered to customers. Amazon has deployed 35 electric heavy-duty vehicles for such transportation in Southern California and installed more than 45 direct current fast chargers across 11 sites to power the trucks.

The US government has pulled licenses that let Intel and Qualcomm buy and sell chips to Huawei of China. This is the latest in trade restrictions placed on the Chinese company, which has been under other restrictions since 2019. Engadget.com notes that The decision will impact chips Huawei uses for computers and mobile phones and is effective immediately. You may recall that a few years ago, both the US and UK blocked use of Huawei cell tower equipment when it was discovered that they had back doors that allowed them to scoop up information for the Chinese government. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

Google Prohibiting Sites & Apps that Generate Deepfake Porn; ChatGPT Search Engine Rumored Imminent; Threads Now Lets You Control Who Can Quote Your Post; Jack Dorsey No Longer on Bluesky Board

Posted: May 6, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google is going to prohibit ads promoting websites and apps that generate deepfake porn…starting May 30th. Engadget.com reports that Google has already had strong restrictions in place for ads that feature certain types of sexual content, this update leaves no doubt that promoting “synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or contain nudity” is in violation of its rules. Advertisers who violate the rules will be suspended without warning. Such deepfake ads are already prohibited in Shopping ads. Hopefully, Google will really police this, and in a manner where it doesn’t end up like whack a mole. 

When it comes to the internet and tech companies, people are always scouring every single word and character to try to determine what’s coming…whether a feature or ‘the next big thing.’ Now, according to mashable.com, a post in Y Combinator’s Hacker News community noted a domain name and security certificate for ‘search.chatgpt.com’ has been created. This could mean we are going to see a ChatGPT search engine sooner not later. Google, the 800 pound gorilla of search already is powered by an AI algorithm…but a ChatGPT one from OpenAI could really juice up the competition. It’s conceivable that before long, one could do a Google search, a ChatGPT search, and one with Microsoft Copilot…and I wouldn’t put it past some brilliant hackers out there to come up with a way to synthesize then streamline the results from all three…for a supercharged search like we’ve never experienced!

Threads is giving more control over who can quote their posts. Engadget.com says if you want to limit quoting your posts, you can limit it to only people you follow…or you can set it so no one can quote your posts at all. The update was announced over the weekend, and Threads is doing it to ‘help keep Threads a more positive place.’ Threads has now climbed past 150 million monthly users. Another recent feature lets users archive posts…either manually or automatically after a selected expiration date.

Jack Dorsey Tweeted over the weekend (not saying post on X, since it was Twitter when Jack ran it) that he is no longer on Bluesky’s board. TechCrunch.com notes that in fact, Jack was the platform’s most prominent backer…he first announced it back in 2019 when he was still CEO at Twitter. Dorsey didn’t elaborate, just replying to a question about him being on the board with a curt “No.” 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

FCC Fines AT&T, Verizon, Sprint & T-Mobile-Sharing Location Data; Meta is Offering Some Creators Thousands; Eight News Publishers Sue OpenAI & Microsoft-Copyright Infringement; DARPA’s Wild Self-Driving Robot Tank

Posted: April 30, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

The FCC has whacked the big mobile carriers in the US a combined $200 million for what the Commission says was illegally sharing customer location data without consent. Theverge.com reports that the carriers “sold access to its customers’ location information to ‘aggregators,’ who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers.” The agency says the carriers effectively “attempted to offload” their responsibility to get customers’ consent to share their location data with “downstream recipients.” Even after being made aware of the issue, the FCC claims, the carriers still failed to limit access to the information. T-Mobile got whacked the hardest…with an $80 million fine. AT&T was number two, getting dinged for $57 million, and Verizon was hit for $47 million. Sprint, which merged into T-Mobile after the investigation started, owes $12 million. All the carriers are expected to appeal. 

Meta is waving thousands of dollars under the noses of some creators if they go viral on Threads. According to engadget.com, the money is part of a new invitation only bonus program. It is “based on the performance of your Threads posts” or “the number of posts you create.” Meta hasn’t given details about how the bonus program is structured, but so far, it appears that the bonuses are tailored to each individual creator. Meta says it is just testing the payment feature, so we don’t know how much it might be expanded…but a couple of creators have gotten offers of “up to $5,000” for Threads posts or replies with 10,000 views or more. That’s not nearly as high as the $10,000 bonuses Reels creators could once earn on Instagram, but not too shabby, either. 

Eight US news publishers have sued Microsoft and openAI, making the claim that the companies are using their copyrighted articles to train generative AI like the ChatGPT series and what Microsoft has recently dubbed Copilot. Cnbc.com says the suit claims the chatbots have  been “purloining millions of the publishers’ copyrighted articles without permission and without payment.” Newspapers operated by the companies that have sued include New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Sun Sentinel in Florida, The Mercury News in California, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register in California and the Pioneer Press of Minnesota. The complaint filed states that “The current GPT-4 LLM will output near-verbatim copies of significant portions of the publishers’ works when prompted to do so.” Previously, the New York Times had sued OpenAI over ChatGPT using its copyrighted property without payment. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said at the time that the suit was without merit, and that the startup had wanted to pay the Times.  

The folks at DARPA, who years ago developed DARPANet…that became the internet…have a wild new project. Bgr.com reports they are testing a self-driving robot tank. The prototype doesn’t have cannons on it, but it is freaky seeing the thing bound over all kinds of difficult terrain at 25 mph with no human input. It has two large, green lighted slits at the front that are status indicators, but look like eyes of some green monster. The tank is part of DARPA’s so-called RACER fleet….based on their RACER heavy platform that can be used for tanks, personnel carriers and other vehicles, including the Manta Ray underwater drone which bowed recently. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

US Offers TSMC over $6 Billion for Arizona Chip Plant; Google Launches Find My Device Network; Apple Officially Allows Retro Game Emulators on App Store; OpenAI Transcribed Over a Million Hours of YouTube Videos

Posted: April 8, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

The Biden Administration has offered TSMC up to $6 billion in government funding under a preliminary agreement announced by the government today. Cnbc.com reports that The funding, under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, will support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s more than $65 billion investment in three cutting-edge fabrication plants in Phoenix, according to the nonbinding agreement. The Taiwanese multinational semiconductor company is also eligible for around $5 billion in proposed loans under the CHIPS Act. TSMC Arizona has already created more than 25,000 jobs and attracted 14 semiconductor suppliers to the state. Intel got $8.5 billion in indirect funding and up to $11 billion in loans last month under the CHIPS Act.

At long last, Google has launched its Find My Device network. According to engadget.com, the tech leverages a crowdsourced network of over a billion Android devices to help folks find their lost gadgets. It essentially has the same functionality as Apple’s Find My network and that of the Tile system. The Google one rolls out to US and Canadian users today…and Google says the worldwide release will be coming soon. As with the others, you can use the app to locate your device with a map. The map data will work even if the device is off line. 

Apple has finally officially started allowing retro game emulators on the App Store. Engadget.com says updated Apple guidelines now say that retro gaming console emulator apps are welcome and can even offer downloadable games. Apple also reportedly confirmed to developers in an email that they can create and offer emulators on its marketplace. Apple warns developers, however, that they “are responsible for all such software offered in [their] app, including ensuring that such software complies with these Guidelines and all applicable laws.” Clearly, allowing emulators on the App Store doesn’t mean that it’s allowing pirated games, as well.

In the ongoing effort to train its Chat GPT4, OpenAI transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos! Theverge.com reports that the company knew this was really questionable, but believed it to be fair use. OpenAI president Greg Brockman was personally involved in collecting the videos that were used. Google spokesperson Matt Bryant told The Verge in an email the company has “seen unconfirmed reports” of OpenAI’s activity, adding that “both our robots.txt files and Terms of Service prohibit unauthorized scraping or downloading of YouTube content.” Google has said it also trained its models on ‘some YouTube content,’ but did it into accordance with its agreements with YouTube creators. Apparently, all the Large Language Models are running out of content to scrape. Some data scientists think they may run out by 2028, and will need to train on ‘synthetic’ data…that seems scary.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

ChatGPT-No Account Required; Yahoo Picking Up AI Powered News App; Microsoft Working on Xbox AI Chatbot; Google Must Destroy Browsing Data Collected-Settlement

Posted: April 2, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

In a somewhat surprising move, OpenAI has announced that users will no longer be required to create an account to use ChatGPT, its AI chatbot. Bgr.com reports that the move was announced in a blog post. The company said they will be rolling out the change gradually, but didn’t elaborate on a timeline for when it will be widely accessible without an account. Right now, Open AO says over 100 million people a week in 185 countries use ChatGPT. They aim to expand the number of users dramatically by dropping the account barrier. Keep in mind that you will still need a paid subscription to use the latest and greatest GPT 4, and to save and review your chat history, share chats with others, and use voice chat. This may be OpenAI’s version of a loss leader at the grocery store!

Yahoo is in the process of acquiring Artifact, and AI powered news app started by co-founders of Instagram Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. According to TechCrunch.com, Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo in an advisory capacity through the transition, but Artifact will stop operating as a stand alone app…its tech will be integrated into Yahoo and the Yahoo News app in the next few months. Artifact had said it was starting winding down operations as the market wasn’t big enough to continue further investment. Financial details have not been disclosed. 

What would you think of an AI powered Clippy annoyingly trying to assist you on your Xbox? Ok, I made that part up, but Microsoft is actually testing a new AI powered chatbot for Xbox that can be used to automate support tasks. Theverge.com says that the AI uses an ‘embodied AI character’ which animates when responding to Xbox support queries. The chatbot is plugged in to Microsoft’s support documents for the Xbox network and system. The chatbot can reply to questions and even process game refunds from Microsoft’s support site. Wait ‘till people try to argue with the chatbot about a refund or try to escalate to talk to a manager! 

Under the settlement of a class action suit from 2020 brought by Google Chrome Incognito users, Google will have to destroy ‘billions of data points’ that it improperly collected. Engadget.com reports that the search giant will also have to update data disclosures and maintain a setting that blocks Chrome’s third party cookies by default for the next 5 years. The suit claimed Google told users their info was private in Incognito mode…all the while it was monitoring their activity. Google had argued that Incognito doesn’t mean ‘invisible,’ and that sites could still see their activity. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Microsoft Separates Teams from Office Globally; AT&T-Huge Data Breach; OpenAI Teases Synthetic Voice Engine; Apple Says Latest AI Model ReALM is Better than GPT4

Posted: April 1, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Microsoft is going to sell its Teams chat and video app separately from Office worldwide now. Reuters.com reports that the announcement comes 6 months after Redmond was forced to unbundle Teams from Office i Europe to avoid an EU antitrust fine. The EU has been investigating Microsoft’s tying of Teams and Office since 2020. Teams has been a part of Office 365 since 2017 at no extra charge. Rivals have complained that the bundling has given Microsoft an unfair advantage. Starting April 1, customers can either continue with their current licensing deal, renew, update or switch to the new offers. For new commercial customers, prices for Office without Teams range from $7.75 to $54.75 depending on the product while Teams Standalone will cost $5.25. The figures may vary by country and currency. 

In the event you hadn’t heard, AT&T has reset millions of passwords for accounts after a huge data breach from 2021 was dumped onto the dark web in March. According to techcrunch.com, some 7.6 million out of the around 73 million accounts were affected. The larger number includes some former AT&T account holders. AT&T customer account passcodes are typically four-digit numbers that are used as an additional layer of security when accessing a customer’s account, such as calling AT&T customer service, in retail stores, and online. The leaked data includes AT&T customer names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. Of course, AT&T put out the usual corporate bs about how they take data safety seriously. Uh, huh…all you big companies do. 

Open AI launched voice capabilities in Chat GPT last September. Mashable.com notes that now they are previewing their Voice Engine, a model that can take a 15 second audio clip and text prompt and generate longer audio. In other words, voice cloning. Actually, this has been around for a while from other tech firms, and that’s one of the reasons the SAG-AFTRA union demanded and got protection for actors and voice actors to have the actor’s permission and to be compensated when AI clones their voice for other purposes. The big step forward by Open AI is that up to now, it has taken about 15 minutes of recording of a voice to clone it halfway decently. Their new Voce Engine does it with 15 second clip. Right now, the Voice Engine is limited to a very small universe of users. It isn’t just actors and voice actors who are concerned about this tech…recall the fake Joe Biden robocall a couple months ago. The Biden call is thought to hav been made with software from ElevenLabs, not anything from OpenAI. OpenAI claims to be building in safeguards, but the Biden Administration, members of Congress, and other politicians are working to codify safeguards…best not to leave this sort of thing to self-policing. 

We can expect a continuous flow of peeing patch announcements from the tech world, saying basically ‘mine’s bigger than yours, and I can pee further.’ Now, even famously secretive Apple has joined in. Bar.com reports that Apple researchers have published a paper claiming their ReALM large language model is better than ChatGPT4. Apple says its AI can understand and handle contexts of different kinds. Apparently, users can ask about something on the screen of the PC or run in the background, and the large language model can still understand the context and give the correct answer. An example they gave was doing a search for pharmacies. After the list is on screen, the user could ask ‘Call the one on Rainbow Rd,’ or ‘Call the bottom one,’ and the ReALM model could understand and respond. Instead of responding to a text prompt alone like Chat GPT4, the Apple model can use a screenshot and respond from what’s on it. In another article today, some scientists have predicted that ultimately combined AI may end up being like Star Trek’s Borg…only friendlier, they say. While you assimilate that little tidbit….

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Gemini in Google Messages Rolling Out; Facebook Snooped on Snapchat Traffic; Apple Announces WWDC; Leak-3rd, SmallerPixel 9 model

Posted: March 27, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google has started rolling out Gemini for some Google Messages beta testers. 9to5google.com reports that in addition to being a beta tester, you have to have RCS enabled, a Google Account, have English set, and have a Pixel 6 or later, Pixel Fold, Samsung Galaxy S22 or newer, or a Galaxy Z Flip or Z Fold. If all those criteria are met, you should see a Gemini AI option. Right now, voice messages aren’t supported, but you can upload images. Also..the conversations are not end-to-end encrypted. All that said, you can use Messages to query the AI about things, or have it draft a message or brainstorm ideas. Google does say that messages could go through human review, so keep that in mind if you are going to try it. 

Thanks to a lawsuit against Meta, we now know that in 2016, Facebook ran a secret project designed to intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers. The goal was to understand users’ behavior and help Facebook compete with Snapchat, according to newly unsealed court documents. TechCrunch.com notes that it was called ‘Project Ghostbusters,’ which is a little freaky since the latest Ghostbusters movie just hit theaters last week. According to documents released from the suit, Meta also tried to gain a competitive advantage over Amazon and YouTube by analyzing network traffic. The suit is a class action filed in 2020 against Facebook, claiming that they lied about data collection activities. 

Apple has announced this year’s WWDC. It’s the 35 annual developers conference from the Cupertino company. WWDC will begin on Monday, June 10th and run to Friday, June 14th. Macrumors.com says it will be an online event as it has been since 2020. WWDC is open to all developers at no cost. Expect the keynote to hi light features from iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, MacOS 15, and WatchOS 11. 

A leak has a new addition to the Pixel lineup. 9to5google.com reports that images from @OnLeaks show a third handset in the 2024 flagship lineup. The additional Pixel 9 only has two cameras, while the previously leaked images for the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 have 3. The new third model has a slightly smaller display than the Pixel 9 Pro. The Pro is 6.2 inches, the smaller phone is 6.03 inches. The body of the phones is the same, but the smaller screen unit has bigger bezels. One other difference…the newly leaked model loses a speaker cutout at the bottom…it has a SIM tray there instead. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →