Category: Internet

India’s banking regulator doesn’t intend to impose drastic measures on the country’s fintech sector, a senior official said, weeks after it stunned investors by abruptly suspending much of the operations of Paytm Payments Bank, founded by high-flying billionaire Vijay Shekhar Sharma. There are “no harsher measures coming on fintech,” P. Vasudevan, an executive director in […]

India’s Paytm Payments Bank has been given more time by the central bank to wind down its operations, while its parent company has signed on a new banking partner to try to keep some of its popular products running and survive its current crisis. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in January ordered Paytm Payments […]

A group of 20 tech companies announced on Friday they have agreed to work together to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence content from interfering with elections across the globe this year. The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can create text, images and video in seconds in response to prompts, has heightened fears that the […]

Google and Meta made notable artificial intelligence (AI) announcements on Thursday, unveiling new models with significant advancements. The search giant unveiled Gemini 1.5, an updated AI model that comes with long-context understanding across different modalities. Meanwhile, Meta announced the release of its Video Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (V-JEPA) model, a non-generative teaching method for advanced […]

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, introduced its first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered text-to-video generation model Sora on Thursday. The company claims it can generate up to 60-second-long videos. This is longer than any of its competitors in the segment, including Google’s Lumiere, which was unveiled last month. Sora is currently available to red teamers, cybersecurity experts […]

Meta Platforms Inc. released new guidelines for small businesses that advertise on Facebook and Instagram, aiming to help them get around fees imposed by Apple Inc. Meta is advising the companies to buy ads through a web browser, rather than on Facebook or Instagram iOS apps, according to guidance released Thursday. That will help them […]

Apple Inc., racing to add more artificial intelligence capabilities, is nearing the completion of a critical new software tool for app developers that would step up competition with Microsoft Corp. The company has been working on the tool for the last year as part of the next major version of Xcode, Apple’s flagship programming software. […]

Google has reportedly expanded testing for its Duet AI artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time collaborator for Google’s online services including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. Duet AI was first unveiled by the tech giant during the Google I/O 2023, and since then it has been in a closed testing phase. Before […]

Telecom giant Reliance Jio is reportedly working on generative AI and plans to launch a ‘Bharat GPT’ programme along the lines of large language model-based AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The company has reportedly partnered up with Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay to develop an India-first AI programme. Jio, which now offers products and services across the […]

PlayStation Plus’ monthly free games for January 2024 — the new year — have been revealed. The month’s offerings include narrative-focused period adventure title A Plague Tale: Requiem, top-down dungeon-crawling action RPG Nobody Saves the World, and third-person vampire-hunting shooterEvil West. The three titles will be available to members of PS Plus Essential, Extra, and […]

WhatsApp started rolling out dark mode for its Web version back in 2020. Now, the instant messaging platform is reportedly gearing up to introduce a new colour scheme and a redesigned sidebar for the dark theme. The new interface is expected to be beneficial for users of WhatsApp Web in low-light conditions. It is expected […]

Microsoft Copilot appears to have been quietly rolled out to Android users. Copilot, driven by the latest OpenAI models GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, is capable of generating content and creating visuals from basic text descriptions and requests. It is Microsoft’s Bing Chat AI chatbot and other existing AI features rebranded and bundled together as a generative AI […]

Japan is reportedly working on new regulations that will require big tech giants including Google and Apple to permit app downloading from outside their official app stores — Google Play, App Store. The legislation is expected to be sent to parliament next year. The two tech companies are currently facing regulations from various governments to […]

Reliance Industries, India’s most valuable company, and Walt Disney signed a non-binding term sheet to merge their Indian media operations, the Economic Times reported on Monday, citing sources it did not name. Under the merger, Reliance would own 51% through a combination of shares and cash, with Disney holding the remaining 49%, giving more control […]

A study has found that people who performed online searches to verify the truthfulness of a piece of possible misinformation actually ended up believing it due to “poor quality results” from search engines. The findings, according to researchers, flag the need for online search engines to address the challenge posed by the appearance of non-credible […]

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that uses sequences of life events — such as health history, education, job and income — to predict everything from an individual’s personality to their lifespan. Built using transformer models, which power large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, the tool called life2vec is trained on a data […]

Over-the-top (OTT) apps or services will not be under the ambit of the newly passed Telecommunications Bill 2023, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told ET Telecom. The minister’s statement comes days after Parliament passed the new telecom bill that replaces three older laws, including the including the 138-year-old Indian Telegraph Act. Provisions under the new bill reduce […]

OpenAI is in early discussions to raise a fresh round of funding at a valuation at or above $100 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said, a deal that would cement the ChatGPT maker as one of the world’s most valuable startups. Investors potentially involved in the fundraising round have been included in preliminary […]

Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing organisations, seeking permission to use their material in the company’s development of generative artificial intelligence systems, the New York Times reported on Friday. The iPhone maker has floated multiyear deals worth at least $50 million (roughly Rs. 420 crore) to license the archives […]

Apple’s MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac computers are now available at deeply discounted prices, as part of a Christmas-themed sale from an authorised reseller in India. The discounts apply to Apple’s latest models, including those powered by the company’s new M3 chip. Meanwhile, the price of the M1 MacBook Air — launched […]

Vi — the telecom network formerly known as Vodafone Idea — on Friday announced the launch of its Rs. 3,199 annual prepaid recharge plan that comes with a yearly subscription to Amazon Prime Video for prepaid users. It allows Vi prepaid subscribers to stream their favourite shows on the OTT platform without any additional subscription charges. The […]

The hacker responsible for leaking in-development videos of Grand Theft Auto VI last year has been reportedly confined to a secure hospital — for an indefinite period. As per BBC News, an 18-year-old individual named Arion Kurtaj, who was part of the notorious cybercrime group Lapsus$, was deemed unfit to stand trial due to acute […]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has unveiled shortlists in 10 categories for the upcoming Oscars 2024 ceremony. Among those, Greta Gerwig’s candy-coated romp Barbie leads with five mentions, largely dominating in the Best Original Song section with three entries alone. Dua Lipa’s party song ‘Dance the Night,’ Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I […]

Elon Musk recently disclosed his plans to add payments feature to the X app (formerly Twitter) by mid-2024. The multi-billionaire tech mogul has been working towards his goal of transforming X into an ‘everything app’ — prior to Musk’s takeover of the platform, Twitter was characterised as a microblogging platform. Interestingly, Musk chose to leave […]

Parliament on Thursday passed a bill that seeks to allow the government to temporarily take control of telecom services in the interest of national security, and provide a non-auction route for the allocation of satellite spectrum. The Telecommunications Bill, 2023, was approved by the Rajya Sabha through a voice vote. It was passed by the […]

Amazon Prime Lite made its debut in India in June this year. It offers a cost-effective alternative to the company’s standard annual Prime subscription. The budget-friendly package offers many benefits similar to the standard Amazon Prime subscription including two-day deliveries and access to the Prime Video catalogue, albeit with some restrictions. Notably, Amazon Prime Lite does […]

The Parliament passed the Telecommunications Bill, 2023, which seeks to amend the laws relating to telecommunication services and networks, on Thursday. The bill, introduced by Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on December 13, would allow for the government to temporarily take control of telecom services in the interest of national security. While […]

X — the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter — appears to be experiencing an outage, as thousands of users are reporting they are unable to access the service. Starting at around 11am, users took to a downtime tracking website to state that the service was not accessible, while other users are reporting that they […]

Microsoft has announced a partnership with Suno to bring its AI-powered music creation capabilities to Copilot. With the Suno plugin, Microsoft Copilot users will be able to create personalized songs with the help of prompts. The song creation feature follows a host of new AI-driven enhancements to Microsoft Copilot. Announced in September, the Copilot AI […]