Tag: alphabet

YouTube Announces AI-Enabled Editing Products for Video Creators

YouTube will roll out a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered features for creators, the latest effort from parent company Alphabet to incorporate generative AI — technology that can create and synthesize text, images, music and other media given simple prompts — into its most important products and services.

Among the new products YouTube announced Thursday is a tool called Dream Screen that uses generative AI to add video or image backgrounds to short-form videos, which the company calls Shorts. It also announced new AI-enabled production tools to help with editing both short- and long-form videos on its platform.

“We’re unveiling a suite of products and features that will enable people to push the bounds of creative expression,” Toni Reid, YouTube’s vice president for community products, said in a blog post timed to the announcement Thursday. The Google-owned video platform first announced that it was developing the tools in March.

Google has been under pressure to show results and practical applications for its generative AI products. Some critics have been wary the company, which has long been seen as a leader in artificial intelligence, was falling behind upstarts like OpenAI or rival Microsoft, and that the products Google was rolling out weren’t yet ready for public consumption. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a new Bing chatbot from Microsoft — which has invested $13 billion (nearly Rs. 1,08,100 crore) in OpenAI since 2019 — have been wildly popular and gained mainstream favour. 

Over the past few months, Google launched its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, and released a steady flow of updates to the product. It’s  also incorporated experimental generative AI features into its most important services, including its flagship search engine, in what the company calls its experimental “search generative experience.” The product generates detailed summaries based on information it’s ingested from the internet and other digital sources in response to search queries.

The announcement of the new features also comes as YouTube is locked in fierce competition with ByteDance‘s TikTok and Meta Platforms‘s Instagram Reels to gain more share of the vertical, short-form video market. YouTube said it now sees more than 70 billion daily views on Shorts, and the new generative AI tools appear to be aimed at attracting even more users and creators and gaining a competitive edge over its rivals.

The company also announced YouTube Create, a mobile app aimed at helping the platform’s creators make video production work easier. The app includes AI-enabled features like editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters and royalty-free music. The app is currently in beta on Android in “select markets,” the company said, and will be free of charge.

Beyond creation, YouTube said it would also provide creators with more tools to get AI-powered insights, help with automatic dubbing of videos and assist with finding music and soundtracks for videos.

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Google to Pay Over $155 Million to Settle Claims About Tracking Location Data

Google agreed to pay $155 million (nearly Rs. 1,300 crore) to settle claims by California and private plaintiffs that the search engine company misled consumers about how it tracks their locations, and used their data without consent.

Both settlements resolve claims that the Alphabet unit deceived people into believing they maintained control over how Google collected and used their personal data.

The company was accused of being able to “profile” people and target them with advertising even if they turned off their “Location History” setting, and deceive people about their ability to block ads they did not want.

“Google was telling its users one thing–that it would no longer track their location once they opted out–but doing the opposite and continuing to track its users’ movements for its own commercial gain,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “That’s unacceptable.”

The California settlement requires Google to pay $93 million (nearly Rs. 770 crore), and disclose more about how it tracks people’s whereabouts and uses data it collects.

Money from Google’s $62 million (nearly Rs. 515 crore) settlement with private plaintiffs would, after deducting legal fees, go to court-approved nonprofit groups that track internet privacy concerns.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said this made sense because it was “infeasible” to distribute money to the approximately 247.7 million US adults with mobile devices.

Some critics say this type of settlement, known as “cy pres,” offers little benefit to class members.

Google denied liability, and both settlements require court approval.

Last November, Google agreed to pay $391.5 million (nearly Rs. 3,250 crore) to resolve similar allegations by 40 US states.

The Mountain View, California-based company has also reached $124.9 million (nearly Rs. 1,040 crore) of settlements with Arizona and Washington.

A spokesperson for Google on Friday referred to a blog post discussing the multistate settlement, and said it related to “outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”

Lawyers for the private plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Google generated $110.9 billion (nearly Rs. 9,22,100 crore) of advertising revenue in the first half of 2023, accounting for 81 percent of its total $137.7 billion (nearly Rs. 11,44,840 crore) of revenue.

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Google Unveils AI-Powered Tools to Enterprise Customers at $30 Monthly Fee

Google on Tuesday made its artificial intelligence-powered tools available to enterprise customers at a monthly price of $30 (nearly Rs. 2,500) per user, as the Alphabet-owned firm looks to cash in on the technology’s surge in popularity this year.

The price is the same as rival Microsoft‘s “Copilot” AI-powered office software suite that includes Teams and Outlook.

Google has intensified investments in generative AI this year as it plays catch-up after Microsoft-backed OpenAI‘s launch of ChatGPT last year took the tech world by storm. 

Its Tuesday announcement was made at the Google Next conference in San Francisco, where the company also unveiled a new version of its custom-built AI chips and a tool to watermark and identify images generated by AI. 

Google’s new tools include “Duet AI in Workspace”, which will assist customers across its apps with writing in Docs, drafting emails in Gmail and generating custom visuals in Slides, among others.

“We have released this add-on in response to strong customer demand and will continue to enhance and expand,” Google said, adding that the tools were tested by more than a million users.

The company plans to release more offerings over the coming months for other customer segments, including small and medium-sized businesses and consumers.

On Monday, OpenAI also announced the release of new ChatGPT version for large businesses. ChatGPT Enterprise is claimed to offer more security, privacy and higher-speed access to OpenAI’s technology. The early customers of the version include Block, Carlyle and Estee Lauder Companies.

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News Organisations Call for Regulations on Content Use by AI Makers, Reveals Letter

A group of the world’s biggest news media organizations called for revised regulations on the use of copyrighted material by makers of artificial intelligence technology, according to an open letter published on Wednesday.

The note, signed by industry bodies like the News Media Alliance — which includes nearly 2,000 publications in the United States — and the European Publishers’ Council, batted for a framework enabling media companies to “collectively negotiate” with AI model operators regarding the operators’ use of their intellectual property.

“Generative AI and large language models… disseminate that content and information to their users, often without any consideration of, remuneration to, or attribution to the original creators. Such practices undermine the media industry’s core business models,” according to the letter. 

Services like OpenAI‘s ChatGPT and Google‘s Bard, which use the language producing generative AI, has led to a surge in online content produced by bots and several industries are assessing its impact on their businesses.

Most of those services do not disclose what inputs they have used to train their models, although with earlier versions of their models have said they used datasets comprising billions of pieces of information scraped from the internet for training, which include content from news websites.

Even as the technology sees wide adoption — several companies have launched features based on generative AI — governments around the world are still deliberating rules to govern its use.

The move echoes the news media industry’ long-standing effort to secure favorable deals with tech companies like Meta Platforms and Alphabet, which are often accused by publishers of running platforms filled with news content without adequately sharing profits. US lawmakers this year are considering a bill called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which allow news broadcasters and publishers with fewer than 1,500 full-time workers to jointly negotiate ad rates with the likes of Google and Facebook.

Meanwhile, news companies are beginning to experiment with generative AI and negotiate deals with tech companies for their content to be used to train AI models.

News agency Associated Press, one of the signatories of the letter, last month signed a deal with OpenAI to license a part of AP’s archive of stories and explore generative AI’s use in news. OpenAI also committed $5 million (nearly Rs. 41 crores) to the American Journalism Project (AJP) under a partnership that will look for ways to support local news through AI.

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Google Parent Alphabet Slashes Nearly 90 Percent Stake in Robinhood Markets

Google-parent Alphabet said on Friday it had slashed its stake in Robinhood Markets by nearly 90 percent, days after the trading app said it had turned a profit for the first time as a public company.

Robinhood has been struggling to regain its footing after emerging as the breakout financial technology app during the pandemic, when several retail traders were drawn to its platform because of its commission-free trades and easy-to-use interface.

The Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle last year hammered equities, especially high-flying tech stocks in which there was a lot of retail interest, denting Robinhood’s business. 

Shares of the company, whose trading platform was at the center of a meme stock frenzy in January 2021, have lost 86 percent since hitting their peak in August of the same year. 

Earlier this week, Robinhood said it had earned 3 cents (nearly Rs. 0.12) per share in the second quarter, while analysts were expecting a loss of 1 cent (nearly Rs. 0.01), according to Refinitiv data.

However, as retail traders stayed cautious due to volatile market conditions, monthly active users at the platform decreased to 10.8 million, one million fewer compared to the first quarter and 3.2 million lesser than last year.

To counter this weakness in its mainstay trading business, Menlo Park, California-based Robinhood is looking for new revenue streams. In June, it agreed to buy financial technology and credit card firm X1 for about $95 million (nearly Rs. 787 crore).

In its regulatory filing, Alphabet said it had around 612,214 shares in Robinhood as of June 30, compared with 4.9 million shares in the first quarter ended March 31.

As of Robinhood’s last close on Thursday, Alphabet’s stake would be worth just about $7 million (nearly Rs. 57 crore), according to Reuters calculations.

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Microsoft Result Puts AI in Spotlight, Creates Worry for Big Tech

A number of US big tech companies fell on Wednesday as Microsoft‘s results signaled how the high-stakes battle for AI supremacy will cost the tech giants that have seen their shares rally in recent months on hype around the technology.

Microsoft’s shares fell 3.6 percent in early trading as the company laid out an aggressive AI-related spending plan, saying deeper investments in AI are required before gains trickle to the bottom line.

Microsoft is set to shed about $100 billion (nearly Rs. 8,20,100 crore) from its market capitalization if the loses hold until close of trading. Its shares had gained 46.4 percent up to yesterday’s close.

“AI will generate a lot of revenue and earnings for such firms, but a lot of investors have been buying the rumor and now that we have earnings, they are taking profits,” Paul Nolte, senior wealth advisor and market strategist for Murphy & Sylvest said.

“There’s still a lot of excitement around AI, but nobody quite understands what that means for the bottom line of many of these companies.”

The NYSE FANG+ index, which houses many megacap growth names, was down 0.2 percent. The index has risen about 76 percent so far this year, driven by the frenzy around AI.

Google-parent Alphabet was an outlier. Its shares rose 5.6 percent after the company beat expectations for second-quarter results. Alphabet looks set to add about $100 billion to its market capitalization.

The recent rally has driven up Microsoft’s valuation. The stock is trading at 31 times 12-month forward earnings, compared to a PE multiple of 20 for Alphabet.

“The tech earnings season has started on a mixed note,” said Mark Haefele, global wealth management chief investment officer at UBS in a client note.

“The tone set by quarterly results over the next week will be crucial to the performance of tech stocks through the rest of the third quarter.”

Apple, the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, and Amazon.com are set to report quarterly earnings next week. 

Fed fears vs AI boost 

Investors also remained cautious on Wednesday, with Wall Street’s main indexes muted ahead of a likely Federal Reserve interest rate hike later in the day that could push borrowing costs to their highest since the global financial crisis.

Large tech companies, which rely heavily on borrowed money, have been pressured since the Fed started its tightening cycle to tame inflation.

However, optimism over AI and hopes that the Fed is nearing the end of its rate hiking cycle have supported tech stocks in recent months.

Stuart Cole, chief macro economist at Equiti Capital, said tech stocks tend to be fairly exposed to such sentiment around central bank policy as many of them are reliant on robust economic growth to deliver the returns they promise.

“There are valid concerns that the US economy is weakening, but until the Fed sees sustained evidence of softening inflationary pressures, the hawkish stance will be maintained, even at the risk of tipping the economy into negative growth.”

Meta Platforms‘ shares rose 1.0 percent after Alibaba‘s cloud computing division said it has become the first Chinese enterprise to support the company’s open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model Llama.

Amazon shares dropped 1.3 percent after a media report said the Federal Trade Commission is finalizing an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.

Snap Inc shares tumbled 18.3 percent after the photo messaging app-owner reported a weaker third-quarter forecast than analysts had expected on Tuesday.

“Band-Aids not fixing bullet holes yet,” wrote Bernstein stock analyst, Mark Shmulik. 

The company’s Snapchat app has added a new AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions to attract more users, but Shmulik notes the company has struggled to consistently grow revenue and catch up to rivals like Facebook-owner Meta. 

“Snapchat is running to stay in the same place while peers enviously get back on the ad growth track,” Shmulik said.

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OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta Commit to Watermark AI-Generated Content for Safer Tech, Assures White House

Top AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms have made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer, the Biden administration said.

The companies – which also include Anthropic, Inflection, Amazon.com, and OpenAI partner Microsoft – pledged to thoroughly test systems before releasing them and share information about how to reduce risks and invest in cybersecurity.

The move is seen as a win for the Biden administration’s effort to regulate the technology which has experienced a boom in investment and consumer popularity.

Since generative AI, which uses data to create new content like ChatGPT’s human-sounding prose, became wildly popular this year, lawmakers around the world began considering how to mitigate the dangers of the emerging technology to national security and the economy.

US Senate Majority Chuck Schumer in June called for “comprehensive legislation” to advance and ensure safeguards on artificial intelligence.

Congress is considering a bill that would require political ads to disclose whether AI was used to create imagery or other content.

President Joe Biden, who is hosting executives from the seven companies at the White House on Friday, is also working on developing an executive order and bipartisan legislation on AI technology.

As part of the effort, the seven companies committed to developing a system to “watermark” all forms of content, from text, images, and audio, to videos generated by AI so that users will know when the technology has been used.

This watermark, embedded in the content in a technical manner, presumably will make it easier for users to spot deep-fake images or audio that may, for example, show violence that has not occurred, create a better scam or distort a photo of a politician to put the person in an unflattering light.

It is unclear how the watermark will be evident in the sharing of the information.

The companies also pledged to focus on protecting users’ privacy as AI develops and on ensuring that the technology is free of bias and not used to discriminate against vulnerable groups. Other commitments include developing AI solutions to scientific problems like medical research and mitigating climate change. 

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Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Google Rolls Out Its AI Chatbot, Bard, in Europe and Brazil to Take on Microsoft-Backed ChatGPT

Alphabet said it is rolling out its artificial- intelligence chatbot, Bard, in Europe and Brazil on Thursday, the product’s biggest expansion since its February launch and pitting it against Microsoft-backed rival ChatGPT.

Bard and ChatGPT are human-sounding programs that use generative artificial intelligence to hold conversations with users and answer myriad prompts. The products have touched off global excitement tempered with caution.

Companies have jumped onto the AI bandwagon, investing billions with the hope of generating much more in advertising and cloud revenue. Earlier this week, billionaire Elon Musk also launched his long-teased artificial-intelligence startup xAI, whose team includes several former engineers at Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.

Google has also now added new features to Bard, which apply worldwide.

“Starting today, you can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish,” Google senior product director Jack Krawczyk said in a blog post.

“Sometimes hearing something out loud can help you approach your idea in a different way … This is especially helpful if you want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script.”

He said users can now change the tone and style of Bard’s responses to either simple, long, short, professional or casual. They can pin or rename conversations, export code to more places and use images in prompts.

Bard’s launch in the EU had been held up by local privacy regulators. Krawczyk said Google had since then met the watchdogs to reassure them on issues relating to transparency, choice and control.

In a briefing with journalists, Amar Subramanya, engineering vice president of Bard, added that users could opt out of their data being collected.

Google has been hit by a fresh class action in the US over the alleged misuse of users’ personal information to train its artificial intelligence system.

Subramanya declined to comment on whether there were plans to develop a Bard app.

“Bard is an experiment,” he added. “We want to be bold and responsible.”

Nonetheless, novelty appeal may be waning, with recent Web user numbers showing that monthly traffic to ChatGPT’s website and unique visitors declined for the first time ever in June.

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Google I/O 2023 saw the search giant repeatedly tell us that it cares about AI, alongside the launch of its first foldable phone and Pixel-branded tablet. This year, the company is going to supercharge its apps, services, and Android operating system with AI technology. We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Spotify Planning to Test Full-Length Music Videos in App

Spotify Technology is considering adding full-length music videos to its app, which could help the streaming service better compete with Alphabet‘s YouTube and ByteDance‘s TikTok.

The service has already begun talking to partners about the product, according to people familiar with the plan who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak about it publicly. 

Spotify declined to comment. 

The feature would add to Spotify’s growing efforts to establish video — which in the streaming media era has tended to be more lucrative than audio — as a core part of its app. Spotify already allows musicians to upload “canvases,” or looping GIFs under 10 seconds long, that populate the screen while music plays. Earlier this year, it debuted a feature called “clips,” which are videos shorter than 30 seconds designed to give artists a storytelling tool to communicate about their music, similar to how they might use TikTok.

The company also launched a new, TikTok-esque music home screen in March that allows users to preview and swipe through surfacing videos before committing to listen to a full track. Earlier this week, Spotify announced that the platform has surpassed more than 100,000 podcasts with video.

Spotify is responding to growing competition for the Gen Z audience by YouTube and TikTok. YouTube operates a streaming music service and appeals to fans with full-length music videos, as well as the more concise Shorts. It has also added podcasts to YouTube Music. ByteDance has reportedly looked to expand its music streaming service Resso, which already operates in countries where Spotify is offered, and TikTok has become an important discovery platform for musical artists. 

Spotify previously set its sights on video by creating its own original series and working with media companies, including Paramount Global and Vice Media, to place TV content in the app, such as clips from the Comedy Central show Broad City. Those deals eventually lapsed.

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Google to End News Access in Canada Over Law on Paying Publishers

Google said on Thursday it plans to block Canadian news on its platform in Canada, joining Facebook in escalating a campaign against a new law requiring payments to local news publishers.

Alphabet-owned Google will remove links to Canadian news from search results and other products in Canada when the law takes effect in about six months.

Facebook-owner Meta Platforms made a similar announcement last week after the passage of Bill C-18, or the Online News Act.

Canada’s media industry has called for tighter regulation of Internet giants to allow news businesses to recoup financial losses suffered in the years that Facebook and Google gained a greater share of the online advertising market.

The independent budgetary watchdog in Canada estimated last year that news businesses could receive about CAD 330 million (roughly Rs. 20,436 crore) per year from deals mandated under the legislation.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who introduced the bill last year, has said the platforms have no obligations under the act immediately and that the government was open to consulting with them on the regulatory and implementation process.

Facebook and Google said the proposals were unsustainable for their businesses and for months signalled possibly ending news availability in Canada unless the act was amended.

Canada’s federal government has pushed back against suggestions to make changes, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in June accused the companies of using “bullying tactics.”

“Big tech would rather spend money to change their platforms to block Canadians from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations,” Rodriguez said in a statement on Thursday.

“This shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are, especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users.”

Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said in a blog post that the law remains unworkable and that the company did not believe regulatory process would be able to resolve “structural issues with the legislation.”

“We have now informed the government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada,” Walker said.

The news outlets affected by Google’s decision would be based on the government’s definition of “eligible news businesses” when rules are finalised for implementation.

Google will also end its News Showcase programme in Canada, under which the company has agreements with 150 news publications across the country. Reuters has a contract with Google to produce News Showcase panels, including in Canada.

The law forces online platforms to negotiate with news publishers and pay for their content. A similar law passed in Australia in 2021 prompted threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services. Both struck deals with Australian media companies after the legislation was amended.

Google has argued Canada’s law is broader than those in Australia and Europe, saying it puts a price on news story links displayed in search results and can apply to outlets that do not produce news.

The search engine giant had proposed that the displaying of news content, rather than links, be a basis for payment and that only businesses that produce news according to journalistic standards are eligible.

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Google I/O 2023 saw the search giant repeatedly tell us that it cares about AI, alongside the launch of its first foldable phone and Pixel-branded tablet. This year, the company is going to supercharge its apps, services, and Android operating system with AI technology. We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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