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🚀 Elon Musk's Radical Changes to X Platform: Unveiling Subscription Tiers for Ad-Less Experience
Today: OpenAI Ponders AI Chips | CEO Replaces 90% Staff with AI | X's Ad Revenue Down 60%
Kristoffer Lindström
October 06, 2023
Greetings, Digital Explorers!
Today is Friday, October 6, and here comes a snapshot of today's most electrifying tech news:
Apple's $19B Move: Is Bing in their sights?
AI Evolution: OpenAI's stance on producing AI chips in a time of scarcity.
E-commerce Revolution: A major CEO’s bold move to AI-powered staff.
Cloud Investigation: UK delves into the depths of Amazon and Microsoft's cloud game.
and more...
With these highlights and more, there's no better time to immerse yourself in today's tech landscape. Dive in!
Tech Companies
Tech giants Nvidia, Intel, and Qualcomm are protesting against impending U.S. restrictions on semiconductor sales to China, warning it could harm their business and advance China's chip industry.
💡 Why does this matter?
This matters as it reveals a significant tension between US tech firms and the government over trade restrictions with China. Tech giants Nvidia, Intel, and Qualcomm argue that reducing chip sales to China harms their business, potentially boosting China's independent chip industry and threatening US tech leadership.
Apple contemplated acquiring Bing from Microsoft to challenge Google's search supremacy, according to unsealed testimony from an antitrust trial against Google. Though negotiations took place, the tech giant ultimately decided against the deal.
X has observed at least a 55% monthly decrease in US ad revenue since Elon Musk's takeover. CEO Linda Yaccarino anticipates X turning a profit by early next year, following a resurgence of brands to the platform.
The X platform is developing new subscription tiers for its premium service, potentially including an ad-free tier. Currently, X Premium, formerly Twitter Blue, provides subscribers with a variety of features including fewer ads. The suggested new tiers, uncovered in the app's recent code, include Basic, Standard, and Plus, offering varying levels of ad exposure. The cost and transition process for existing users remains uncertain.
UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the public cloud services provided by Microsoft and Amazon. Telecoms regulator Ofcom identified obstacles for customers seeking to switch or use multiple cloud suppliers, highlighting costs of data migration, discount schemes, technical hurdles, and specific concerns about Microsoft’s software licensing practices. Both companies control up to 80% of the UK's public cloud infrastructure, sparking concerns about market competition. The CMA's investigation is set to conclude by April 2025.
PayPal is the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging its anti-steering rules lead to higher consumer costs, stifling competition with platforms like Stripe and Shopify.
AI Corner
E-commerce CEO Suumit Shah replaced 90% of customer support with an AI chatbot, despite criticism, asserting copy-paste jobs are obsolete. The move substantially reduced his customer support budget.
💡 Why does this matter?
Suumit Shah, CEO of Indian e-commerce company Duukan, predicts the death of copy-paste jobs due to AI advancements, stating that he replaced 90% of his support staff with an AI chatbot. This trend represents a potential paradigm shift in hiring practices that could significantly affect job prospects in the tech and customer service industries, and may catalyse professionals into acquiring new, AI-related skill sets to remain indispensable. Conversely, businesses may uncover opportunities to pare down operations costs and improve efficiency.
OpenAI weighs the creation of its own artificial intelligence chips to counter their shortage and high operational costs. This would align them with tech giants like Google and Amazon, despite the risk and sizable financial investment involved.
💡 Why does this matter?
The potential move of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, into making its own AI chips is pivotal news, particularly for those in the AI and tech industries. Recent news indicates that OpenAI is looking for hardware ventures (earlier wearable/iPhone device with Johnny Ives) and now this. It’s seldom wise for a software company to travel down this route.
SoftBank CEO, Masayoshi Son, predicts artificial general intelligence (AGI), surpassing human intelligence, will emerge within ten years and called for Japanese companies to leverage AI.
💡 Why does this matter?
The advent of AGI might disrupt traditional workflows, urging businesses to adapt and innovate. Furthermore, Son's belief in the centrality of chip design underscores the potential growth in this sector.
In the AI industry's competition, Anthropic's Claude models outperform OpenAI's GPT-3.5, even as they remain free to use. GPT-4 leads the Large Model Systems Organization's (LMSO) Chatbot Arena Leaderboard, while the Claude models follow closely. An important edge for Claude models lies in their superior token processing capabilities compared to GPT, which is crucial for a nuanced user experience. Open-source models also play a critical role in AI development due to their less costly operations and community-driven improvement efforts.
Adobe is set to announce a new AI-based photo editing tool named "Project Stardust" at the Adobe Max event next week. The product streamlines image alteration and will identify individual objects in photographs, allowing for easy manipulation. Also featuring generative AI capabilities similar to Adobe's Firefly-powered Photoshop tools, the firm promises that the project will ""revolutionize"" interactions with Adobe products. The full capability of Project Stardust will be revealed at Adobe Max, commencing October 10th.
Microsoft has integrated OpenAI's improved DALL-E 3 model into its Bing Image Creator and Chat services, offering enhanced image quality and detail. The platform will also watermark AI-generated images with the creation date and time. Bing AI's content moderation system will block DALL-E 3 from crafting inappropriate or harmful images. Despite concerns about its efficacy fighting disinformation and deepfakes, Bing's watermarking complies with the C2PA specification, a provenance verification framework.
Insights & Analysis
Barclays analysts predict Meta Platforms' growth in the AI sector owing to its incorporation of AI technology into its leading apps; WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook. This integration could enhance user engagement and increase core ad revenue by $16 billion. The strategy of blending new services with existing distribution channels can drive the widespread application of consumer internet products. Meta is also developing AI personas with celebrity themes to cater to diverse customer needs.
Apps & Gadgets
Microsoft has launched a revamped version of its Teams chat client for Windows and Mac. The client, two times faster and using 50% less memory, stakes a claim on Microsoft's Edge WebView2 technology and React JavaScript library, ditching the Electron foundations. The new features will necessitate an upgrade for businesses, though migration isn't required. The new update also ushers improvements for Apple's devices. It also lays the base for Microsoft's AI-powered Copilot in Teams.
Reddit has rolled out major updates to its search function, introducing a media search tab, media search within subreddits, and enhanced accessibility features. The update also includes a simplified design of the search results page and tabs for community and search results. Changes aim to offer better user experience and allow content discovery for visually impaired users. The move follows recent improvements to the platform for non-logged users and changes to the award system, enabling users to monetize posts.
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