Here is the top trending news from the world of technology. News that every tech enthusiast should be aware about.
1)
Reddit suffers major Outage amid API protest
Reddit suffered an hour-long outage on Monday. It suffered the outage at around 10:58 AM ET time. During this time thousands of Reddit were unable to access the website either on desktop or mobile app. The outage comes at a time when thousands of subreddit have gone private for protest over recent changes Reddit has made to its API policy. The company has unofficially blamed the ongoing protest for the outage. Reddit has said that the changes in API was important to defend its platform against spammy and abusive apps. However, developers complain that these changes are unreasonable as it makes more challenging for them to create legitimate apps.
2)
UN chief backs Idea of Global AI watchdog similar to Nuclear Agency
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has supported the idea of creating a global AI watchdog body like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Notably, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman had expressed a similar idea few days back. Guterres said that there is a dire need for global AI watchdog to make sure that AI is not used for malicious and unethical activities. He particularly pointed out potential dangers of AI such as ‘deepfakes’ that can greatly harm the society. However, there is still no clarity how a global AI watchdog would be structured or how it would be funded. But UN chief’s support for the idea is a significant step forward.
3)
FTC wants Microsoft-Activision Deal to be Blocked
In a major setback for Microsoft, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit in California federal court requesting the court to prevent Microsoft from closing its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The FTC has alleged in the lawsuit that the deal would give Microsoft a complete monopoly over the gaming industry. The regulatory body further added that Microsoft can even increase the prices of video games, harming innovation in the gaming industry. FTC’s decision comes barely a month after U. K’s anti-trust body issued an order to block the high-profile deal.
4)
Amazon is using Generative AI to Generate Product Reviews
E-commerce giant Amazon is using generative AI to summarize product reviews. Currently being tested on Amazon shopping app, this feature is not available on the website. The AI-generated summaries appear above individual reviews and are labeled “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.” Notably, Amazon is not the first company to use AI to summarize and generate product reviews. Few years back, retail giant Walmart had extensively used AI powered feature to summarize the customer reviews. The prominence of artificial intelligence in the retail industry is certainly growing and the use of generative AI for summarizing product reviews is a sure sign of this growing importance.
5)
Oracle Q4 results sees a good jump in Top line and Bottom line
Oracle reported better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. Its revenue was up 17% year over year to $13.8 billion vs 13.74 Bn as was expected by most market analyst. The company’s good performance could be attributed to cloud business, with cloud revenue increasing by 54% year-over-year to $4.4 billion Oracle CEO Safra Catz said in a statement that the company is “well-positioned for continued growth in the years ahead. The company’s shares were trading high by 3% hours after the quarterly results were announced.