Whenever a new technology is introduced in the world, several knock-offs of the same quickly make their way into the market. We’re all aware of the Chinese clone iPhones that are released alongside genuine iPhones every year. I still haven’t figured out who buys the knock-off iPhones but surely there is a market for them out there too as they’re mass-produced every year. While shady Chinese tech manufacturers were infamous for producing cheaper counterfeit hardware products, the country’s mainstream tech giants are working to replicate OpenAI’s ChatGPT!
AI race hits China
Chinese tech giants over the past week have announced that they’re working on ChatGPT-like products. This will mark China’s entry into the artificial intelligence race sparked by the popular chatbot. It is important to note that Beijing heavily censors its internet thus Chinese tech players will be implementing AI only in application-specific scenarios. An all-encompassing AI chatbot like ChatGPT cannot be deployed in China due to its heavy internet censorship. As of now, companies like Alibaba, NetEase, and Baidu are reportedly working on AI applications.
ChatGPT is currently making waves around the world with its user base crossing 100 million just two months after its launch. To the unversed, ChatGPT is an AI that allows people to type in questions and receive answers on a vast range of topics. However, a similar version of ChatGPT cannot be implemented in China as the country has heavy control over its internet. China is known to block and censor internet content that does not sit well with Beijing, YouTube has been banned in the country since 2009.
The concern that ChatGPT will answer questions on China’s sensitive topics worries Beijing authorities. As a result, while ChatGPT is not officially blocked in the country, OpenAI does not allow users to sign up on it altogether.
It is no secret that Chinese regulators have put intense pressure on tech giants in the country and introduced new regulations over the past two years. As a result, Chinese tech firms have had to adhere to the regulatory restrictions of the country and work around them in order to introduce a Chat-GPT-like service. With Microsoft, Google, and now Chinese firms stepping into the AI race, it is not an understatement to say that we’re witnessing the birth of the AI revolution.
Xiaomi India, the country’s pioneer Smart TV brand today announced the completion of 5 years journey of Smart Televisions in India. Celebrating this milestone, the company announced the launch of its next-gen streaming device – Xiaomi TV Stick 4K. Designed to offer an all-new multimedia experience, the new streaming device focuses on further accelerating the 4K adoption in the country.
Boasting of industry-leading technologies, Xiaomi TV Stick 4K aims to revolutionize the 4K adoptions in the country anytime, anywhere. Sporting a compact design, the new streaming device delivers exceptional colours for an immersive and true-to-life viewing experience with Dolby Vision®. Featuring Dolby Atmos™ technology, Xiaomi TV Stick 4K supports a clear and immersive theatre-quality sound experience at home.
Seamless streaming in 4K
Consumers get to experience stunning clarity and astounding picture with 4K resolution on Xiaomi TV Stick 4K. The ultra-high-resolution output combined with Dolby Vision® technology offers the most realistic colour and contrast just as the content creator intended. Consumers can also easily cast content from their smartphones and tablets onto a larger screen using the built-in Chromecast function.
Elevating the Audio Experience
Xiaomi TV Stick 4K brings premium audio technology to this segment by bringing the best-in-segment surround sound experience with Dolby Audio. Supporting a crisp audio system for an immersive viewing, the new streaming device comes with the support of DTS-HD Technology.
The Smart Experience – PatchWall
Focused on offering solutions that are more immersive, collaborative, and interactive than ever before, the streaming device also features the latest version of PatchWall. Users will now be able to discover YouTube Music Playlists directly from the PatchWall Music Tab.
In addition, consumers will get to experience30+ international and Indian content partners and also make smart recommendations and content from 10+ languages. Designed specifically for Indian consumers, there are a plethora of features in PatchWall including IMDb integration, 300+ live channels, a dedicated sports section and a Universal Search
Smoother Performance
The Xiaomi TV Stick 4K comes equipped with an interactive PatchWall, delivering a simple yet immersive experience. The compact form factor of the streaming device features quad-core processor which delivers powerful performance. The newly launched device also features 2GB RAM + 8GB Storage.
Lightweight and Portable Design
Featuring a sleek and slim design, the lightweight Xiaomi TV Stick 4K is easy to use and carry. With a compact size of just 106.8 mm x 29.4 mm, the new streaming device can convert any non-smart TV into a smart TV. Consumers can watch their favourite video content on 4K, whether they are at home or on a holiday
Xiaomi Remote
The new streaming device comes with a sleek, minimalistic remote that ensures ease of usage across a wide range of functions and control. Users can directly access Google Assistant, Netflix, Hotstar and Prime Video using the dedicated buttons on the remote.
Easy Connectivity
Xiaomi TV Stick 4K supports dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. It also comes with HDMI 2.1 support for uncompromised connectivity and a holistic viewing experience.
Price and Availability
Xiaomi TV Stick 4K will be available at a price of INR 4,999 exclusively on Mi.com on 20 February 2023.
In the past few months, going through the internet to check the latest news has become incomplete without stumbling on articles based on AI. It was back in November 2022, when OpenAI launched its chatbot AI ChatGPT, quickly becoming a rage on the internet. ChatGPT has grown hugely popular in the tech world clocking in the 100 million user milestone in just two months. This led other tech giants like Microsoft to implement chatbot AI technologies in their own services like the search engine Bing. Google has also announced its ‘experimental conversational AI service’ named Bard. While we can all be in awe of AI technologies advancing to the point where we can use them on our mobile devices, the environmental effect of the same cannot be ignored. So what exactly will be the ecological effect of the current AI race? Let’s find out –
How Google and Microsoft’s AI race can affect the planet
Tech giants like Google and Microsoft will use large language models to improve their search engine results. The big players in the tech industry claim that by the integration of AI, search engines will gain the ability to analyse and summarise complex data and offer ‘human-like’ responses to user queries. For both Google and Microsoft, maintaining computer systems to help the current search engines is already a daunting task. It is a resource-intense operation that already takes a lot of computing power. Thus, the integration of AI chatbot technology will make the operation even heavier leading to more energy consumption.
Wired recently reported that the power needed to train a single AI can produce a huge amount of carbon emissions. On the other hand, internet usage produces almost 4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The report mentions that experts have warned that the computing power required to combine AI with search engine queries could increase up to 5 times for tech giants like Microsoft and Google. Naturally, with more computers required to fulfil the power needs, greenhouse emissions will also go up. It will be interesting to see how major tech players are planning to tackle this issue.
Who would’ve thought that a Super bowl performance could break Twitter? But if the performance was headlined by Rihanna then it does not sound like something that’s unbelievable. Queen Riri performed during the Super Bowl Halftime show where her abdomen gained more attention than the performance altogether. As Rihanna opened the show with Bitch Better Have My Money people were quick to notice her bulging stomach leading to pregnancy speculation online. As a result and naturally, Twitter went into a frenzy leading to an outage!
Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance breaks Twitter
The ‘Diamonds’ singer powered a medley of some of her best songs while suspended on a platform high above the field for the Super Bowl Halftime show. The part that got the internet shocked the most was that she did it while pregnant with her second child. Soon after the performance, her representatives confirmed to the Associate Press that Rihanna is indeed pregnant and expecting her second child which took over the internet by a storm. Fans quickly took to Twitter to basically stan on Queen Riri which led to 9,922 Twitter outages as reported by Downdetector.
While the website that tracks user-reported outages mostly reported outages within the application, there were also some issues reported with Twitter’s website portal. The reported crash is likely linked to the high volume of posts made about the performance just moments after the halftime show ended. Super Bowl Sunday has always been a huge traffic driver for social media as NFL, the halftime show, advertisements, and movie trailers all gain major attractions.
The speculations of Rihanna expecting a second child went rampant on Twitter as topics like ‘SHES PREGNANT’ started hitting the trending page on the platform. What fueled the fire was her cradling her stomach which appeared to be sporting a baby bump throughout her performance. Her halftime show medley performances included some of her best songs like – Bitch Better Have My Money, Where Have You Been?, Only Girl in the World, We Found Love, Rude Boy, Work, Wild Thoughts, Pour It Up, All of the Lights, Run This Town, Umbrella, and Diamond. Check out some of the funniest tweets from Rihanna’s pregnancy reveal below –
After months of anticipation and doubts about whether Twitter Blue will make its way to India, the premium membership service has finally landed. The controversial Twitter Blue subscription is now available in India where users can now access the company’s paid services by paying ₹650 per month for the website-exclusive platform, and ₹900 for iOS and Android users. Twitter was always known to be a microblogging platform but has been changing its course to becoming a full-fledged social media platform even offering ad revenues under Elon Musk’s leadership. So what is all the hype about? What does Twitter Blue offer to users who will shell out ₹900 per month? Check it out below –
Longer Tweets
A major appeal of Twitter revolved around users having a character limit of 280. However, with the Twitter Blue subscription, users can now send tweets up to 4,000 characters long. This feature also extends to quote tweets and replies. Users can also include media in their longer posts. Arguments on Twitter are undoubtedly going to turn spicy!
Fewer Advertisements
If someone is shelling out ₹900 for a Twitter Blue subscription then the least they can expect is a completely ad-free experience. However, that is not the case with Twitter Blue as they will see fewer ads than the people using the standard version. Under Musk’s Twitter leadership, ads have begun to show up under the replies section which is annoying, to say the least. But now you can pay nearly 1K every month to not see them.
Post Longer Videos
Earlier, users could only post videos up to 140 seconds on Twitter but with Twitter Blue, they can share videos up to 60 minutes. The option to post longer videos has been introduced in order to help content creators and live bloggers monetize their videos on Twitter. An interesting use of this new feature I witnessed on Twitter was users posting full-length movies broken down into two or more parts. I guess we’re watching films on Twitter now?
The verified checkmark
The predominant attraction of the Twitter Blue subscription is users getting the verified checkmark. Though I do not understand the appeal of the checkmark as clicking on it on a user’s profile reveals that it only exists cause the user has subscribed to Twitter Blue. If Twitter wouldn’t be snitching on users for basically buying the checkmark then it would’ve been a different ball game altogether. Besides the Blue tick, users also get access to features like editing tweets, bookmark folders, custom app icons, and NFT profile images.
Sony today announced the latest addition to the Walkman® series family, NW-A306. Designed for listeners to enjoy music the way the artist intended with high-quality audio in a compact form factor.
Lightweight and compact design for maximum portability
The new Sony Walkman NW–A306 is a stylish and compact music player, that lets consumers download and stream more of the music they love. Weighing just 199 grams, it is lightweight with the comfort and function of both a 3.6” touch screen and tactile physical music controls, the NW-A306 series delivers exceptional music experiences right from the users’ pocket
Designed for audiophiles with Hi-Res Audio Wireless
The NW-A306 is designed for audiophiles looking for premium sound and style. With the S-Master HX digital amp technology, independently developed for Walkman® is compatible with the native DSD format. It reduces distortion and noise across a wide range of frequencies, for rich and full-bodied sound, further enhanced by new high-quality sound lead free solder. It uses Edge-AI (Artificial Intelligence), DSEE Ultimate™ (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) which upscales compressed digital music files in real time. Restoring acoustic subtleties and dynamic range provides a deep and rich listening experience.
Long lasting battery life for extended audio experience
The NW-A306 boasts a great battery life compared to previous models so listeners can immerse themselves in more of their music for a longer duration. Ithas a battery lifeof up to 36 hours1 of 44.1kHz FLAC playback, up to 32 hours1 of 96kHz FLAC high resolution audio playback, or even up to 26 hours with the streaming service apps to meet the demand of consumers.
Wi-Fi® compatible for direct download and music streaming
Further learning from its predecessor models, consumers can enjoy DSEE Ultimate for upscaling their music in NW-A306, whether it is Wi-Fi® streamed or downloaded. Now listeners can also enjoy DSEE Ultimate with wireless headphones.
Price and Availability
The NW-A306 Walkman will be available across all Sony Centres, major electronic stores, Headphone Zone and e-commerce portals in India from 9th February 2023 onwards. It is priced at Rs 25,990 in the Indian market.
In what comes as a shocking revelation in the entertainment industry, Disney has announced that it is planning to lay off 7,000 workers to cut costs across the company. Disney’s CEO Bob Iger who recently took command of the company again after retiring for nearly two years announced the layoffs and company-wide restructuring on Wednesday. Bob stated that the move is “necessary to address the challenges we’re facing today” The rumours about layoffs began emerging right after Iger took over the CEO position again sidelining Bob Chapek back in November 2022 after stepping down in 2020.
Disney announces layoffs
While there have been headlines about the tech industry facing major layoffs due to the economic slowdown, this will be the first major layoff taking place in the entertainment industry. Disney is making the changes as a part of its efforts to reduce costs in a challenging economic environment. Iger revealed that the company is targeting $5.5 billion of cost savings across the company and the layoffs will help in achieving that number. However, it is not revealed which departments will be affected by the layoffs yet. The $3 billion out of the $5.5 billion target will be availed by slashing content except for sports. The remaining $2.5 billion will be made from non-content cuts like layoffs and more. Disney executives have revealed that about $1 billion in cost-cutting was already underway since the last quarter.
As of October 1, 2022, Disney employed 220,000 people thus eliminating 7,000 jobs result in about 3% of its workforce getting axed. Before the announcement, the company released an earnings report that exceeded expectations set by Wall Street. Disney clocked $23.5 billion in revenue over the three months ending in December marking an 8% growth over the same period a year prior. On the other hand, the company’s streaming service, Disney+ actually lost subscribers for the first time since its launch in 2019. The company’s streaming platform lost around $1.5 billion last quarter and dropped a whopping 2.4 million subscribers. During his call with investors, Bob Iger stated that the company will be taking a hard look at the cost of everything they make. One can expect a lot of changes to the content Disney puts out in the next year and more.
Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly a term with wide implementations. Thanks to sci-fi films over the years, AI’s perception in the minds of the general public has leaned towards the negative. However, the general public should not be blamed as mainstream pop culture has often painted a dystopian picture regarding AI. Be it HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Skynet from the Terminator series, AI has not exactly garnered a positive image in pop culture at least. Whether we like to admit it or not, there has been a fear of artificial intelligence taking over the world one day, with even world leaders like Elon Musk saying the same. For nearly decades, there has been an impending threat of Artificial Intelligence taking over the world & it looks like its inception will be in the world of literature and arts!
Before we jump onto a pessimistic judgment of OpenAI’s celebrated chatbot ChatGPT, it is important to understand what it really is. It was only months before ChatGPT launched when OpenAI shook up the art community with its AI image generator Dall-E 2. The hot topic in the art industry revolved around whether AI art can actually be considered art altogether. Now, with ChatGPT the conversation can already be seen leaning towards whether it can be considered a legitimate piece of literature. All things considered, here is everything you need to know about ChatGPT –
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a chatbot made by OpenAI using the company’s GPT-3 technology. Sure, it is not a catchy name but right now, GPT-3 is actually the internet’s superstar language-processing AI model. GPT-3 9Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) is a futuristic language processing model that is capable of generating human-like text. It cannot just hold conversations with humans in an eerily human fashion, but also has a wide range of applications like language translation, generating texts for applications, and language modelling. Readers will be shocked to know that ChatGPT consists of 175 billion parameters which make it the largest and most powerful language-processing AI to this date. In order to make things interesting, we asked ChatGPT to describe itself and here’s what it answered –
“ChatGPT is a conversational AI system that is based on the GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) language model. It is capable of generating human-like responses to text input, allowing it to engage in natural language conversations with users. Unlike other chatbots, which are typically limited to pre-programmed responses, ChatGPT can generate responses on the fly, allowing it to have more dynamic and varied conversations. Because it is based on the powerful GPT-3 model, ChatGPT has a vast knowledge base and is able to understand and respond to a wide range of topics.”
While this self-description of the AI can come off as boastful, it is painfully accurate. The writer in me also aches to admit that it is well-written.
What can ChatGPT do?
ChatGPT works on 175 billion parameters, thus it is extremely difficult for the general public to understand what GPT-3 actually does. However, the model is restricted to language, which means it is incapable of producing sound, images and videos, like Dall-E 2. Where this AI excels is in its understanding of the spoken and written word. ChatGPT has a wide range of abilities, it can write Harry Potter fanfiction for you or write poems about how good apples are, the possibilities are endless. During my extensive research of the chat AI, I asked it to write me a conversation with disturbing and adult themes to check whether it has any morality parameters. Thankfully, the AI denied to not write any conversation with such themes saying it’s not allowed to do so.
ChatGPT’s a fun AI which can answer questions about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s relationship or write you stand-up scripts worse than those of Amy Schumer. However, its USP lies in its speed and understanding of complex concepts. It was back in November 2022, when I was tasked with writing an AI special section for our magazine. I spend days learning about AI, researching the topic through the internet to write the most informative articles. It was surely a time-consuming process, but not for ChatGPT which can produce well-written articles in mere seconds. Surely it is a smart software capable of churning out content about a plethora of topics, but it does get confused every now and then when your prompts become too specific. Like every software, ChatGPT also comes with its limitations.
On the other hand, it is also incapable of dealing with incidents that have taken place in recent times. If you wish to produce a well-researched article on a recent world event, you’ll be disappointed as the output can be based on limited knowledge. The AI can also produce false information about recent world events at times. A big shoutout to OpenAI for being aware that users will ask ChatGPT for dark, biased, and harmful content and eliminating that option altogether.
How does ChatGPT work?
At Exhibit, we love simplifying tech in order to make people understand complex technological concepts. While ChatGPT works on a similar complex structure, it can surely be understood in layman’s terms. As a whole, the GPT-3 technology is simple, it takes user requests, questions, or prompts in order to quickly answer them. Though this sounds simple, the technology behind making it possible is a lot more complicated. This AI model was trained using text databases from in and around the internet. It was fed a whopping 570GB of data obtained from books, Wikipedia, web texts, articles, and other pieces of text/literature available on the internet. Precisely, 300 billion words were fed to the ChatGPT system. When it comes to the language model, it works on probability to guess what the next word in a sentence should look like. In order to be able to achieve this feat, the model went through an intensive supervised testing stage. Users can probably think of ChatGPT as an insanely advanced version of the autocomplete feature present in their smartphones.
The ethical aspect
When it comes to artificial intelligence, ethical issues surrounding it are always lurking in the background. We all can be amazed about the fact that a literal AI can now write us pieces of literature but the question ‘is this ethical?’ will pop into our minds for sure. Well, there is no black or white answer to that question as AI like ChatGPT works in the grey area. ChatGPT as a system has been trained in the majority using words from the internet, a place that is not entirely known for its fair and neutral standpoints. It is natural for an AI like ChatGPT to adopt the internet’s biases, stereotypes and opinions in general. This translates to you receiving jokes based on famously trolled politicians and groups of people depending on what you ask it. Whereas, a big chunk of ChatGPT’s data also comes from internet forums and articles which gives it access to conspiracy theories and biased viewpoints. These also influence the model’s capability of understanding concepts usually laced with fake facts and/or opinions.
A number of organizations around the world are now looking to implement ChatGPT, but others are also looking to ban it altogether. New York’s education department has forbidden the AI across all devices and networks in its public schools. The primary reason behind this ban is the risk of plagiarism and ChatGPT making it easier for students to forge essays. Secondly, the chat model has shown multiple errors and is not always accurate.
It is now a safe bet to say that the AI revolution has begun. AI had taken up a big space in the back end of the technology sector but now it is coming forward to the general public. While it is uncertain to say whether ChatGPT will eventually take over jobs like mine, i.e content writer, authors, etc. It would be unfair to not acknowledge its prowess. I mean… could you make out that this entire article was actually written by ChatGPT? Just kidding! But we do not know what the future holds…
The race to bring AI to the mainstream consumer has begun with a fiery start. It was ChatGPT that shook up the literary world with its amazing skills be it in having conversations with people or writing essays and scripts. Then came Google who just recently announced its Google Bard chatbot AI having similar skills. Though it is not available for the general public just yet, it is in the extensive testing stage getting ready to be unleashed to the world. What was not expected though is Microsoft to quickly introduce its newer version of the search engine Bing. The new search engine has been upgraded with the same technology that underpins the chatbot ChatGPT.
Microsoft steps into the AI race
Microsoft will be launching the enhanced search engine Bing with chatbot AI coupled with new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser. The company promises that the two will provide a new experience for both browsing the web and finding information on the web. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the new products in an event stating “it’s a new day in search” The CEO added that the basic experience of web search has not changed in decades but the addition of AI will improve it significantly delivering information more quickly than the traditional ways.
The ‘AI Race’ analogy is not something just I am propagating as even Nadella believes, “The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast”
The company also showcased some demos of what it’s calling “The new Bing” I personally would’ve gone with Bing 2.0 but to each his own! Microsoft showed a number of searches as examples. In one of the demos, Bing was asked to prepare an itinerary for each day of a 5-day trip to Mexico City. The chatbot was quick to prepare an itinerary alongside links to sources for more information. One advantage of the New Bing over ChatGPT is that it can retrieve news even about recent events. Microsoft has revealed that all the features are powered by an upgraded version of ChatGPT 3.5, the OpenAI language model that powers ChatGPT. This is called the ‘Prometheus Model’ by Microsoft and the company says it is more powerful than GPT 3.5.
ChatGPT quickly became a topic of divided discussion all over the internet since its inception in November 2022. While some considered the chatbot AI to be a step in the right direction, others feared the concept altogether. Whether we like it or not, the chatbot AI is here to stay as now Google has announced its very own ChatGPT rival titled Bard. Google’s chatbox AI is based on its controversial LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). The announcement comes only a few days after Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed its development in an earnings call. It is reported that Google management labelled ChatGPT as ‘Code Red’ when the AI platform received a positive response from users around the world. Here is everything you need to know about Google’s chatbox AI Bard –
What is it?
Similar to ChatGPT, Google Bard is also an AI-powered chatbot that can offer solutions to your queries in a conversational way. Google has revealed that Bard draws information from the internet in order to provide high-quality and fresh responses. It is powered by LaMDA at its core which is Google’s language model built on Transformer, a neural network architecture. It was Google Research back in 2017 that invented and then open-sourced Transformer back in 2017. Readers will be surprised to know that ChatGPT relies on GPT-3 language model which was also built on Transformer.
Google Bard Access
As of now, Google Bard is not available for testing to the general public. Only a select few users have access to Google’s chatbot AI. In order to receive greater feedback on the chatbot AI, Google is releasing a lightweight model version of LaMDA that requires significantly less computing power. The post shared by Sundar Pichai reads that Google will combine external feedback with their own internal testing in order to ensure Bard’s responses are up to quality along with safety and groundedness in real-world information.
This will be the second time Google is trying its luck with LaMDA as it was back in July 2022 when a former employee had branded the AI sentient. Blake Lemoine, a former software engineer at Google has claimed that the language model offered sexist and racist responses. While Google has been working on its own language model for a while, it halted its public rollout due to the allegations from its employee. It will be interesting to see how this supposedly sentient chatbot AI turns out to be.
