TECH - Page 49

Alphabet said it is rolling out its artificial-intelligence chatbot, Bard, in Europe and Brazil on Thursday, the product’s most significant expansion since its February launch and pitting it against Microsoft-backed rival ChatGPT. The company is adding more languages to the service and introducing new productivity and personalization features. Both Bard and ChatGPT use large language models that generate text to hold conversations with users and answer myriad prompts — such as, “What is the weather today?” or, “Write a poem

Resemble AI, a San Francisco-based voice artificial intelligence startup, said on Wednesday it had raised $8 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Javelin Ventures. It added that Comcast Ventures (CMCSA.O) and existing investors Craft Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures also participated in the Series A round. The company said it was using the proceeds to develop further its product to detect if audio is artificially generated, known as a deep fake, with up to 98% accuracy. The

Twitter rival Threads has quickly attracted tens of millions of users, even though the app is just a day old. Combining Twitter-style text conversations with Instagram’s design, the service is the biggest challenge to the Elon Musk-owned Twitter. On Wednesday, the app went live on Apple and Android app stores at 2300 GMT in around 100 countries. It has garnered praise from celebrities and other influential users, including chef Gordon Ramsay, rapper Shakira, and Airbnb. Users can upload pictures and

Electric car giant Tesla is set to realize fully autonomous vehicles “later this year,” CEO Elon Musk said Thursday. The billionaire’s latest forecast for the long-anticipated milestone is still a few years away, even though the company already has a semi-autonomous system called Autopilot in its cars. The system allows drivers to cruise highways and maneuver city streets without having their hands on the steering wheel or watching the road. However, the driver must keep their eyes on the road

Dozens of robots, including several humanoid ones, will take center stage at a conference organized by the U.N. technology agency in Switzerland this week to showcase their potential to help it reach increasingly improbable global goals. Set in 2015, the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) aim to improve human life and the planet by 2030including eradicating poverty, reducing hunger, ensuring access to education, and ending discrimination against women and girls. The SDGs are integrated-they recognize that achieving one goal depends

Taiwan’s Foxconn, a major iPhone assembler for Apple Inc (AAPL.O), said on Wednesday that second-quarter revenue dropped 14% year-on-year, but the outlook for the third quarter was brighter ahead of the peak shopping season at the end of the year. The world’s largest contract electronics maker, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd and known globally as Foxconn, said revenue in the April-June period reached T$1.3 trillion ($41.76 billion), in line with its expectations. The company mainly produces upstream

South Korea is a manufacturing powerhouse for items ranging from chips and displays to automobiles, but the country’s companies have been feeling a growing threat from rivals in China. Last month, prosecutors said a former Samsung Electronics executive was arrested on suspicion of stealing company technology for a copycat chip factory in China, jeopardizing national economic security. Now, Samsung has taken another shot at the Chinese rival, filing a lawsuit against BOE Technology for allegedly infringing five of its patents

The parent company of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook is preparing to release a text-based conversation app that rivals Twitter. The app, dubbed Threads, will allow users to follow the accounts they currently follow on Instagram and keep the same username while using the new app, according to a listing on Apple’s App Store on Thursday (July 6). The listing also includes photos showing a dashboard that looks similar to Twitter. Tech analysts see the app as a formidable challenger to

Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Amazon’s (AMZN.O) retail and cloud services, Apple’s (AAPL.O) devices and software, and Meta Platforms’ (META.O) generative artificial intelligence software all have notified the European Commission that they qualify as gatekeepers under new EU tech rules, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Tuesday. The companies must now comply with new restrictions designed to curb their power. The rules, which come into force in May 2023, will prevent them from giving their services a higher ranking on their