Here is today’s top trending news from the world of technology. News that I feel every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
Baidu claims its AI Chatbot surpassed ChatGPT on Multiple Metrics
China’s search engine giant Baidu has announced that its new AI model, Ernie 3.5, has surpassed ChatGPT on several important metrics during the latest tests. The tests were conducted by the state newspaper China Science Daily using datasets including AGIEval and C-Eval. According to Baidu, among other things Ernie 3.5 was able to easily generate different creative text formats like poems, code, scripts, musical pieces, email & letters while ChatGPT was only able to generate poems and code. Baidu’s announcement assumes significance in the context of China’s aim to leapfrog in the AI race. ChatGPT’s parent company Open AI has so far not commented on Baidu’s claim.
2)
Booking.com launches Trip Planner powered by ChatGPT
Booking.com on Monday announced the launch of an online trip planner that will be powered by OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. The new feature will allow users to ask several queries, such as “I am looking for a long holiday in Switzerland for three weeks in June” and ChatGPT will generate personalized recommendations like best hotels to stay and best places to visit in Switzerland. However, this trip planning feature is currently in testing phase, it is being tested with a limited number of users in the United States. But Booking.com plans to roll it out to more users in the coming months.
3)
Meta launches new Parental Control Tools for Instagram and Messenger
In order to make its platforms safer and secure for teens, Meta has rolled out new parental control tools for Instagram and messenger. Some of these new tools include a dedicated hub in Messenger that give parents a central location to view their teen’s privacy and safety settings and changes in the Messenger contact list. The new parental tools also offer an AI tool to block unwanted DMs from accounts that are not followed by the teens. However, despite Meta’s continuous efforts in updating its parental control features, some critics have argued that Meta’s social media platforms are still not safe for teens.
4)
Twitter Blue Users can now Tweet Longer Tweets
Twitter Blue subscribers can now post tweets of up to 25,000 characters in length. Until now Blue subscribers could type only 10,000 characters. Notably, anyone can read longer Tweets, but only Blue subscribers can create them. This is third time that Twitter has increased the tweet limit for Blue subscribers since Musk’s takeover last year, which reflects Musk’s aggressive monetization strategy. The microblogging platform is hopeful that this will help in increasing the number of Blue subscribers and eventually help the company in increasing its new revenue.
5)
Apple raises red flag over UK’s Online Safety Bill
Apple has become the latest tech giant to raise concerns over UK’s Online Safety Bill, which is still waiting for the final approval from the U.K parliament. The BBC has reported that Apple is especially critical over the fact that the bill could weaken end-to-end encryption and pose a grave danger to users’ privacy. Apple is also not happy with the bill’s definition of “harmful content, claiming that the definition is too broad and could be used to censor legitimate content. UK’s Online Safety Bill has been evoking a strong opposition from the big tech companies including Meta and Google.