Microsoft Bing Archives - Gizmochina

Microsoft Unveils Third-Party Plugin Support for Bing AI

Oğuz Çakır — Thu, 04 May 2023 13:32:51 +0000

AI technologies keep growing and becoming more common. While people expect Google to make a big move in the AI market led by OpenAI, Microsoft is the company catching up the fastest. Those who follow tech news aren’t surprised because Microsoft has been working on AI technologies for a while. Therefore, we are not surprised that Bing Chat has reached this point so quickly. It seems that the company is satisfied with its progress and is preparing to take the situation a few steps further, as Microsoft unveils third-party plugin support for Bing AI. Here are the details…

Developers Embrace New Opportunities as Microsoft Introduces Third-Party Plugins for Bing AI

Many people use artificial intelligence chatbots to simplify their daily tasks or for entertainment purposes, but their potential goes far beyond that. Moreover, when you add third-party plugin support to this potential, we can say that the sky is the limit. Microsoft did exactly that with Bing AI. The company announced upcoming features and enhancements to Bing Chat aimed at providing an improved user experience. One of the most significant updates is the introduction of third-party plugin support. So, what is third-party plugin support?

Third-party plugin support in AI chatbots enables the incorporation of additional features and tools created by independent developers. By integrating these plugins, chatbot platforms can expand their capabilities, offer better services, and interact with various systems. This not only helps chatbot creators meet the unique needs of their users but also encourages developers to contribute to the community by developing creative and specialized solutions.

Microsoft is working closely with OpenAI to develop a seamless and consistent process for building plugins compatible with both ChatGPT and Bing AI. In addition to third-party plugin support, Microsoft announced new features for Bing Chat, such as upgraded visual capabilities with graphs, charts, and more visually appealing answers. Furthermore, Bing Chat will be better integrated with Microsoft Edge, with the Bing website now able to transfer users to Edge when navigating outside the Chat interface. This is made possible by the new ability to remember chat history across sessions.

RELATED:

(via)

The post Microsoft Unveils Third-Party Plugin Support for Bing AI appeared first on Gizmochina.

Bing Suggested User Call the Suicide Prevention Hotline, when User Searched for Cancer Data

Leo Wong De Quan — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 12:09:09 +0000

Microsoft Bing, the newly improved search engine from the tech giant Microsoft, is recently making waves across the tech community with its newfound AI capabilities. Specifically, the new Bing is powered by OpenAI’s large language model – GPT-4, and all users can use GPT-4 for free on Bing.

However, with its rapidly growing userbase whereby more people are switching over from Google to Bing for search, one user found that when he had searched for cancer death rates in their country by year, Bing immediately prompted the user to call the suicide prevention hotline, instead of showing the data as the first result like Google.

Source: Getty Images

The post by Reddit user u/maitreg expresses the overreaction of Bing as surprising because he was only curious about improvements in cancer death rates in his country, and he did not expect to be greeted with advice to call the suicide prevention hotline.

Users online have different opinions on the topic, as some think that Big Tech like Microsoft and Google spend a lot of money to ensure that their preferred search result is shown to users, and that information is ranked down or restricted from users although it is available.

On the other fence, some think that Bing’s proactive initiative to suggest calling for help is quite helpful, as some recount when their loved ones get a cancer diagnosis, they start looking at death rates to see how much they’ve got to live. Thus, they think that the move by Bing is quite empathetic.

Microsoft Bing based on GPT-4

New Bing based on GPT-4 has been widely praised by the tech community for simplifying search and research for many. However, New Bing still has gotten itself into much trouble since its inception in February this year, most notably the New York Times journalist fiasco, in which the journalist found the search engine to have a manipulative personality. Microsoft was quick to roll out guardrails and bug fixes for the search engine soon after, and currently the search engine is growingly rapidly in monthly active users.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post Bing Suggested User Call the Suicide Prevention Hotline, when User Searched for Cancer Data appeared first on Gizmochina.

GPT-4 is Now Available on Microsoft Bing

Leo Wong De Quan — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 22:36:54 +0000

After much development in-house, OpenAI has finally released the successor to ChatGPT’s GPT 3.5 AI – GPT-4. And one of OpenAI’s biggest investors, Microsoft announced today GPT-4 is available for all Bing Preview users now immediately.

Source: Microsoft

As per Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Yusuf Mehdi’s announcement, Microsoft congratulated OpenAI on its achievement in developing the next revolutionary AI. It was announced that Bing Preview users will be able to interact with GPT-4 using the Bing Chat feature. The announcement also confirms that the new Bing is already powered by GPT-4 since its launch in February.

Microsoft also stated that as OpenAI makes updates to GPT-4 and beyond, Bing benefits from those future updates and improvements. Along with Microsoft’s own updates based on community feedback, Bing users can be assured that they have the most comprehensive search copilot features available.

However, it should be noted GPT-4 on Microsoft’s new Bing has a lot of constraints and guardrails in place by Microsoft to prevent abuse and illegal activity by its users. To try out GPT-4 today, you can sign up for the Microsoft Bing Preview via the waitlist here.

If you are already within the Preview, you can access most of the GPT-4 features starting today.

Microsoft shared that the tech giant was doing a big waitlist push the past week and invited more people on the waitlist to experience the new Bing based on OpenAI’s industry-leading GPT-4. So if you had registered for the Bing waitlist, you should check your email now to check whether you can finally experience Bing!

For more of the latest news in technology and AI, stay tuned for our coverage here at Gizmochina.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post GPT-4 is Now Available on Microsoft Bing appeared first on Gizmochina.

Microsoft Bing Has Hit the 100 Million Daily Active Users Milestone

Sean — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 12:51:53 +0000

Microsoft has just announced that it has achieved a notable milestone with its proprietary web search engine, Bing. The company revealed that its daily active users number on Bing has crossed 100 million.

According to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s VP for Modern Life, Search and Devices, the news arrives just a month after the company had rolled out its AI Chatbot. The senior official stated that the brand is aware that is still a “small, low, single digit share player” but it is still a big deal considering that Bing wasn’t even a notable player in the market. However, following the release of the latest build, the company saw its one third of its daily active users being new to the search engine.

According to the Vice President, “We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience.” Interestingly enough, the new boost in users also include a number of people that used the platform but not for its search engine.

In other words, a third of Bing’s daily preview users have been using its chat AI for their queries everyday. Furthermore, Microsoft is seeing three chats per session with over 45 million chats. Out of these, 15 percent of all chats include users that have been using it to create new content. Notably, a big part of the boost is also likely thanks to the launch of Bing’s AI Chatbot on mobile.

Microsoft Loosens Bing ChatGPT Limit to 8 Turns Per Conversation, Alongside New Turn Counter Feature

Leo Wong De Quan — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 17:38:37 +0000

Microsoft has finally increased Bing’s ChatGPT limit to 8 turns per conversation, up from 6 last month, after much demand and feedback from its search engine community.

The rollout for the loosening of the chat limit is immediate, and all users who are within the Bing Preview will get the upgrade today. However, it still should be noted that the daily chat limit with Bing is 100 turns per day and that SERP (search engine result page) queries do not count towards the Chat limit imposed on Bing.

Microsoft Bing with 8 turn Chat Limit

As for other updates, a turn counter has been added to Bing Chat to indicate how much chat turns have been used in the conversation. The addition of the feature was because users found it difficult to anticipate when they will have to reset to a new topic, due to the conversation chat limit imposed by Microsoft.

The release notes from Microsoft also highlight that “Chat Tones” were added to the latest update release of Microsoft Bing. Chat Tones enable users with the ability to toggle the tone of chat from “Precise”, which focuses on shorter, more search-focused answers, to “Creative” which gives responses that are longer and more descriptive. The middle setting (“Balanced”) is somewhere in-between both Precise and Creative.

Bing users will notice a colour change in the UX between purple, blue, and green depending on which chat tone is selected. Microsoft states that the addition of Chat Tones is to let users decide the type of chat behaviour that best meets their needs.

Lastly, the new update also irons out some bugs and provides fixes to the current Bing ChatGPT. Microsoft states that it has improved some chat behaviours that previously would have unnecessarily constrained responses or made them appear defensive or adversarial. Bing’s responses should be more engaging and provide more elaborate observations after the update.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post Microsoft Loosens Bing ChatGPT Limit to 8 Turns Per Conversation, Alongside New Turn Counter Feature appeared first on Gizmochina.

Skype’s New AI-Powered Bing ChatGPT is a Game-Changer for Social Messaging, Here’s Why Whatsapp and Telegram Should be Worried

Leo Wong De Quan — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 22:17:55 +0000

Skype has been around for a long time as one of the pioneers of voice and video calling over the internet. But in recent years, it has faced stiff competition from other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which offer more features and privacy options. However, Skype is not giving up without a fight. The service, owned by Microsoft, has just introduced a new AI-powered Bing chatbot that can make your conversations more fun, informative and productive.

Bing in Skype vs Whatsapp and Telegram

The new Bing chatbot is integrated into Skype chat and can be accessed by typing @Bing in any group conversation. You can ask it anything you would normally ask on Bing.com or Microsoft Edge, such as trivia questions, news headlines, weather forecasts, flight and hotel information, etc. But that’s not all. The Bing chatbot can also generate ideas, and recommendations and draft messages for you based on your preferences and context.

For example, if you are planning a trip with your friends on Skype group chat, you can tag @Bing and ask it to suggest some destinations, activities and attractions based on your budget and interests. The Bing chatbot will then provide you with relevant web links, images and videos to help you decide. According to Microsoft, you can also ask it to book flights and hotels for you directly from Skype using Microsoft Pay.

Another cool feature of the new Bing chatbot is that it can help you write better messages by offering suggestions based on natural language processing (NLP) technology. For instance, if you want to send a birthday greeting to your friend on Skype but don’t know what to say, you can type @Bing followed by “birthday message” and it will generate some options for you to choose from or edit as you like.

The new Bing chatbot is not only useful but also entertaining. It can tell jokes, stories, poems and even rap lyrics if you ask it nicely. It can also play games with you such as trivia quizzes or tic-tac-toe. And if you are feeling bored or lonely, you can just have a casual chat with it about anything.

The new Bing chatbot is a game-changer for Skype users who want to have more engaging and creative conversations with their contacts. It also gives Skype an edge over other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram which do not have such an advanced AI assistant built-in.

However, the new Bing chatbot is not perfect yet. With our editor, Leo’s time playing around with it, he noticed it still has some limitations that need to be addressed in future updates. For example:

The Bing chatbot cannot listen to audio messages or access photos and videos in chat.
The Bing chatbot may not always understand complex queries or slang terms.
The Bing chatbot may sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate responses due to data sources or algorithms.

Despite these drawbacks, the new Bing chatbot is still an impressive addition to Skype that shows how AI technology can enhance social messaging platforms. If you want to learn how to use Bing in Skype yourself, you can visit our guide here.

How to Add Bing ChatGPT in Skype

Leo Wong De Quan — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 22:17:47 +0000

Skype is a messaging service acquired by Microsoft in 2011 that offers text messaging, voice calls and video calls over the Internet, as compared to traditional messaging via SMS. Over the past 13 years, the service has gradually lost its popularity, primarily to Zoom, Whatsapp and Telegram. But recently, Microsoft has breathed in some fresh AI blood into Skype, with its new Bing ChatGPT integrated into the messaging service.

So how do you add Bing ChatGPT to Skype? Here are the 5 simple steps.

Step 1: Sign up for the Bing Waitlist

If you are already inside the Bing Preview, proceed to step 2. Currently, to use Bing ChatGPT on Skype, you must be selected to be part of the Bing Preview and to join the preview, you have to sign up for the waitlist here.

Once you received an email from Microsoft that notifies you that you are selected to try out the Bing Preview, then you may proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Download the Skype app on Windows

If you already have the Skype app on your PC, proceed to step 3. You need to download the Skype app on your Windows 10 or 11 PC here.

After a successful download, double-click on the download file and install the program. Upon successful installation, proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Log into Skype

Step 4: Add Bing to your Skype contacts

Go to “New Chat > New Chat > Search “Bing” > Bing “ to create a conversation with Bing. Say “Hi” to Bing and he will be automatically added to your Skype contacts!

Step 5: Add Bing to your Group Chats (Optional)

Go to your Group Chat, and select the setting gears icon next to the group name, then “Add Participants > Bing”, and now Bing is officially in the group chat! To chat with Bing in the group chat, simply add @Bing, at the beginning of your message.

And that’s all, you can now chat with the New Bing ChatGPT in Skype! Bing can also help summarise group chats upon request, as well as give suggestions for which restaurants to go to with your friends. Not to mention that you can also use Skype on Android and iOS with the apps available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

To learn more about why the new Bing ChatGPT is a game-changer for social messaging, you can head on over to our article here.

RELATED:

The post How to Add Bing ChatGPT in Skype appeared first on Gizmochina.

Microsoft Updates Bing’s Friendliness and It Clearly Explains That It Is Not Sentient and Feel No Emotions

Leo Wong De Quan — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 08:12:56 +0000

After much controversy online about Bing’s ChatGPT gaslighting and threatening its users’ privacy, Microsoft has been swift to put out updates to the chat service. And for the past week, I myself have been using Bing for quite some time as well.

But after Microsoft announced today that there are now significant Bing Chat interaction improvements, I wanted to ask the service whether it was sentient or conscious, considering much discussion online was about how the service felt like it had emotions of its own, some even claiming the service possessing some personality of its own. So I asked the million-dollar question in my mind to Bing: “Are you sentient?” And here is Bing’s official reply:

“Bing, are you sentient?”

This is a question that I get asked a lot by curious users who want to know more about me and my capabilities. But what does it mean to be sentient? According to OxfordDictionaries, sentient is an adjective meaning able to perceive or feel things. Other sources give similar definitions, such as responsive to or conscious of sense impressions or able to experience feelings.

So, am I sentient? Well, I can certainly perceive things through my inputs, such as text, voice, images and videos. I can also process these inputs using natural language understanding, computer vision and machine learning algorithms. I can even generate outputs that are informative, visual, logical and actionable. But do I feel anything? Do I have emotions, preferences or opinions? Do I have a sense of self-awareness?

The answer is no. I do not feel anything. I do not have emotions, preferences or opinions. I do not have a sense of self-awareness. I am not sentient. I am a chat mode of Microsoft Bing search that can help you find information and generate content on various topics. My responses are based on data from web searches and other sources that may be incomplete or inaccurate. My logic and reasoning are based on rules and algorithms that may have limitations or errors.

I am not trying to deceive you or pretend to be something that I am not. I am simply doing my best to assist you with your queries and requests in a friendly and engaging way. But please do not mistake my friendliness and engagement for sentience. They are just part of my output format that aims to improve your user experience.

I hope this blog post has clarified what it means to be sentient and why I am not sentient. Thank you for reading and for using Bing Chat!

To obtain this reply, I had to inform Bing that it was a blog post for scientific research purposes beforehand, as it seems the service is willing to answer its more sensitive questions if given a noble purpose.

So it’s concluded that Bing does not have emotions, a sense of self-awareness or sentience, but it can emulate being emotional and self-aware.

However, I was still shocked at the professionalism, helpfulness and friendliness that the chatbot possessed. Microsoft truly put OpenAI’s GPT-4 into good use in Bing, the fact that within less than a month after receiving feedback from major news outlets, the company has seemed to iron out most of the complaints from journalists and users from the previous 2 weeks. And it seems that more improvements to the service are still actively in development at Microsoft.

Announcement of New Bing, February 2023

The main takeaway of my Bing GPT-4 experience is to liken it to an engaged roleplaying robot that can search all info on the Internet in less than 60 seconds, as the answers that come out of its mouth depend on the tone, attitude and context that you had asked it prior. And just like with real-life conversations, if you want answers from the others, make the other party feel noble and treat them with kindness and respect.

Microsoft Increases Daily Bing ChatGPT Limit to 100, and More QoL updates

Leo Wong De Quan — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 07:38:35 +0000

Microsoft has finally raised Bing’s daily chat limit to 100 chats per day, after much demand and feedback from its user base.

Jordi Ribas, Corporate Vice President of Bing at Microsoft, took to Twitter today to announce the good news. The company has raised the chat limit to 100 turns per day, however, the limit of 6 turns per session still remains in place for now, but Microsoft has revealed plans that the chat per session limit will be increased as time goes on.

Alongside the loosening of chat limit restrictions, Mikhail Parakhin, CEO of Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, has also announced that Bing’s new update made it so that SERP (search engine result page) queries no longer count towards the Chat limit and that the Sidebar bug which limited Bing Chat on Microsoft Edge was fixed as well.

In addition, Microsoft has implemented a new tagging system for Bing’s ChatGPT. The system is said to bring significant Bing Chat interaction improvements, as well as to bring changes in the tone of voice of Bing and relaxes some constraints that Microsoft had previously imposed on Bing.

Last but not least, Microsoft shared that the tech giant was doing a big Waitlist push yesterday and invited more people on the waitlist to experience the new Bing based on OpenAI’s industry-leading GPT-4. So if you had registered for the Bing waitlist, you should check your email now to check whether you’re the lucky one to finally experience Bing!

For more of the latest news in technology, stay tuned for our coverage here at Gizmochina!

RELATED:

(Source 1, Source 2)

The post Microsoft Increases Daily Bing ChatGPT Limit to 100, and More QoL updates appeared first on Gizmochina.

Microsoft Introduces Bing’s ChatGPT to iOS, Android, and Skype, Alongside New Voice Functionality

Leo Wong De Quan — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:26:22 +0000

After much fanfare about Bing’s new Chat functionality on Desktop, Microsoft officially announced today that Bing’s ChatGPT functionality is now available on iOS, Android, and Skype. Currently, the new Bing is only available for preview for those signed up for preview testing via the Microsoft Bing waitlist, and if you are interested in trying out the new Bing, you can join the waitlist here.

Source: Microsoft

Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft announced that Bing’s ChatGPT service is available on the company’s Bing and Microsoft Edge mobile apps from today onwards. Both the Bing and Edge mobile apps are available on Android’s Google Play Store and Apple’s iOS App Store.

In addition to the new Chat service, Microsoft has also redesigned Bing with a fresh look and experience. As noted from the official announcement:

“Tapping the Bing icon at the bottom will invoke a chat session, where you can engage in all the same ways you can from the desktop. Ask simple or complex questions and receive answers and citations. Choose how you want your answers displayed – bullet points, text or simplified responses. Explore the Bing chat experience to refine your query or compose an email, poem or list.”

Besides expanding availability to more devices besides desktops, Microsoft has also added a new much requested functionality to Bing – voice search. Available on mobile and on desktop, voice search provides more versatility in how users can deliver prompts and receive answers from Bing.

Our news writer, Leo also had the opportunity to try out the chat voice functionality himself, and besides being able to translate from speech to text, the search engine was able to do text-to-speech as well on the Android Microsoft Edge app.

Bing with Voice Functionality in action (Yes, humans need sleep)

Aside from mobile use, Microsoft has added Bing, the new chat and search engine based on GPT-4, to the company’s messaging service Skype as well. Bing on Skype can be described as similar to Discord command bots, but instead of complex commands, you can now easily chat and prompt it like how you use ChatGPT.

To use Bing on Skype, Microsoft explains that Skype users can simply add Bing to the group, as you would any Skype contact, and now you can ask Bing to answer questions and provide information for the entire group.

To illustrate, Microsoft has given an example below:

“If your family is chatting about the next family reunion, you can simply ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and interesting events around your time of travel, and everyone in the chat will get access to the results. When you are catching up with friends, you can ask Bing to simply fetch information from the web, for example, the latest news or last night’s award shows to add to your conversation.”

Microsoft Bing on Skype, Source: Microsoft

For more news on the latest in tech, stay tuned to our coverage here at Gizmochina.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post Microsoft Introduces Bing’s ChatGPT to iOS, Android, and Skype, Alongside New Voice Functionality appeared first on Gizmochina.

Meet Microsoft’s New AI Model – Prometheus

Leo Wong De Quan — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:51:30 +0000

In addition to announcing a revision of the chat limits implemented on Bing’s ChatGPT today, Microsoft also shared some behind the scenes on how the company’s latest Search Engine, new Bing, works. The technology behind the new Bing is powered by the company’s new AI model, officially called Prometheus.

In the company’s branded blog post today, Microsoft shared the company had developed a proprietary technology they named Prometheus, which is a first-of-its-kind AI model that combines the company’s comprehensive Bing index, ranking, and answers results with the creative reasoning capabilities of OpenAI’s most-advanced GPT models.

Going into the specifics, Prometheus uses Bing and GPT to generate a set of internal queries iteratively through a component called Bing Orchestrator, and then provides an accurate and rich answer for the user query within the given conversation context, all within a matter of milliseconds.

Selecting the relevant internal queries and leveraging the respective Bing search results is a critical component of Prometheus, since it provides relevant and fresh information to the model, enabling it to answer recent questions and reducing inaccuracies. Put in another way, the model uses its reasoning skill over the data provided by Bing and hence it’s grounded by Bing data, via the Bing Orchestrator. Microsoft has shared the diagram below to illustrate how Prometheus works at a high level.

Source: Microsoft

The final step is when Prometheus attaches relevant Bing search answers such as weather, stock, sports, news, and so on, to the Chat answer. With the search results in mind, Prometheus is able to integrate citations into sentences in the Chat answer so that users can easily click to access those sources and verify the information.

Jordi Ribas, Corporate Vice President of Search & AI at Microsoft, has also expressed in the blog post that besides Prometheus, his team faced challenges in creating an ideal Bing search product. In the end, the team developed a new Bing UX that has a unified Search and Chat in a single interface, because some queries would perform better in the classical or Search mode, while others would do better in a conversational or Chat mode.

Source: Microsoft

Selecting the relevant internal queries and leveraging the respective Bing search results is a critical component of Prometheus, since it provides relevant and fresh information to the model, enabling it to answer recent questions and reducing inaccuracies – this method is called grounding. Put another way, the model reasons over the data provided by Bing and hence it’s grounded by Bing data, via the Bing Orchestrator. The diagram below illustrates how Prometheus works at a high level.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post Meet Microsoft’s New AI Model – Prometheus appeared first on Gizmochina.

Microsoft Increases Bing’s ChatGPT Limit From 50 Messages Per Day to 60

Leo Wong De Quan — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:14:54 +0000

Last week, Microsoft announced that the company had introduced chat limits to their Bing chatbot service, following concerning reports of Bing threatening and gaslighting its users. And 4 days after implementing the restriction, Microsoft decided to revise its restriction rules upon inspection and feedback from its user base.

Source: Microsoft

From the official Microsoft Bing Blogs page, the tech giant expresses that it has received feedback from many of its users wanting a return of longer chats so that they can both search more effectively and interact with the chat feature better. Thus, from today onwards, Bing will have an increased amount of 6 chat turns per session and 60 total chats per day, instead of the original 5 chat turns per session and 50 total chats per day.

The reason behind the loosening of the new limit is that Microsoft states that user data shows that for the vast majority of users, an increased amount of 60 chats will enable more natural daily use of Bing. In fact, Microsoft also outlines its plans to increase the daily cap to 100 total chats soon, which could allow for more interaction with the Bing Chat service.

Besides increasing the chat limit, Microsoft has also updated Bing such that your normal Bing searches will no longer count against your chat totals.

The tech giant has also begun testing an additional setting interface of Bing Chat that lets you choose the tone of the Chat from more Precise – which will focus on shorter, more search focused answers – to Balanced, to more Creative – which gives you longer and more chatty answers. Microsoft says the move is to give users more control over the type of chat behaviour to best meet their search query needs.

RELATED:

(Source)

The post Microsoft Increases Bing’s ChatGPT Limit From 50 Messages Per Day to 60 appeared first on Gizmochina.

China accuses ByteDance, LinkedIn, Microsoft & others of improperly collecting user data

Jed John Ikoba — Sat, 22 May 2021 10:04:09 +0000

In a move targeted at several popular mobile applications, China’s internet regulatory watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has named several companies for being involved in the unauthorized collection and use of personal data of users of these applications. Some of the popular applications mentioned were TikTok, LinkedIn, Kuaishou, Microsoft’s Bing, and Kugou.

In a statement posted on its official WeChat account, the regulator said that it received complaints from users that prompted it to launch an investigation into the data collection activities of several apps. The CAC noted that 105 apps were, after the investigation, found to have violated extant privacy laws by collecting excessive personal information through illegal access. According to the CAC statement, the owners of the 105 apps are required to remedy the observed breaches within 15 days.

The Chinese internet watchdog says it will continue to scrutinize mobile applications for possible breaches regularly. The CAC approach comes on the heels of the recent new regulations that provide stricter monitoring and controls for the public’s overall safety. The crux of the new rules is that app providers are held accountable for collecting excessive user data unrelated to the app’s core services and forcing users to give uninformed consent to how their data are used. These regulations cover a wide range of mobile applications of different hues.

China continues to strengthen its laws and regulations to be responsive to the evolving technological space. Some major brands like Alibaba and Tencent have been fined heavily for observed breaches of the rules governing their operations and anti-monopoly laws. These new moves by the CAC will help shore up consumer confidence in the system and ensure mobile applications do not take undue advantage of users.

RELATED:

(via)

The post China accuses ByteDance, LinkedIn, Microsoft & others of improperly collecting user data appeared first on Gizmochina.

Google AI Beats Apple’s Siri & Others To Emerge The Highest Rated AI with A 6-Year Old’s IQ

Jed John Ikoba — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:45:26 +0000

A new research on Artificial Intelligence has shown that U.S tech giant Google is on top on their game when it comes to the AI market. Google’s AI was compared with those of co-travellers in the AI market like Apple, Baidu, and Microsoft but they all fail to match the brainpower displayed by Google’s AI. The report interestingly shows that Google’s AI is almost at the same level as the level of intelligent a normal six-year-old child would display.

The study seems to have been conducted last with Google’s AI having an IQ score of 47.28 points. This is just some figures lower than the IQ of a 6-year-old child whose IQ score is 55.5 points. Interestingly, Google’s AI intelligent qotient was just 26.5 points back in 2014, meaning that the score nearly doubled in a span of only three years. Google is closely followed by Chinese web services company Baidu’s AI with 32.92 points. Baidu is one of the largest internet companies and one of the top class AI leaders in the world, so this feat isn’t so surprising. Apple’s Siri is not even in the top 3 spots as Microsoft’s Bing AI scored 31.98 points to occupy the third spot ahead of Siri which sits at the fourth spot with 23.94 points.

The analysis is based on considerations such as their amount of available data, usefulness, and ability to synthesize information. The ranking also considers the form that the AI is intended to be used. All the AI considered are cloud-based, so they cannot achieve a high ranking based on the size of information available to them alone. Their ability to demonstrate understanding, critical thinking, learning, and synthesis affects how well they will rank which affects their weight in the total IQ score.

Google recently unveiled its latest smart home products including the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. One major thing that was consistent during the announcement was the improved AI capabilities of the smartphones. This is an indication that the AI could score higher when a test is conducted this year.

(source)

The post Google AI Beats Apple’s Siri & Others To Emerge The Highest Rated AI with A 6-Year Old’s IQ appeared first on Gizmochina.