Here are the top trending news from the world of technology. News that every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
Websites can now stop Google from using its data to train its AI models
Google has just announced that it will soon provide website publishers a feature that will allow them to stop Google from using their website content for training their AI models like Bard. This feature will be called Google-Extended. To use Google Extended, publishers will need to update their robots.txt file to include a new directive. This directive will tell Google not to include the publisher’s site in the training data for Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs. However, the website will still be crawled by Googlebot and will continue to feature in Google search results. Google Extended is currently available in beta, and it is expected to be rolled out to all publishers in the next few months. Commenting on this soon to be launched feature, Google said that it is committed to using AI responsibly and ethically and fully understands that some website publishers may not want their content to be used to train AI models.
2)
Google’s Generative AI search experience now available to U.S teens
Google has announced that it will be expanding its generative AI search experience, called Search Generative Experience (SGE), to U.S teenagers. Starting from this week, U.S. teenagers aging from 13 to 17 years of age will be able to access the same AI-powered features as adults, such as getting summaries of complex topics, getting help with coding, and shopping with more information. However, Google has assured that it has taken necessary steps to make SGE safe and appropriate for the teens. For instance, Google has implemented safeguards to prevent teenagers from seeing inappropriate or explicit content. The company also said that it is collaborating with educators and parents to create resources to help teenagers use SGE safely and effectively.
3)
Microsoft planned selling Bing to Apple
In a rather surprising revelation, it has come to light that Microsoft reportedly discussed selling its Bing search engine to Apple way back in 2020. There is still no clarity how much price did Microsoft quote while trying to sell Bing. However, these acquisition talks eventually failed, probably because Apple was concerned that Bing could not compete with Google in terms of quality and capabilities. If Apple had acquired Bing then it would have replaced Google as the default search engine on all Apple devices. This would have eventually helped Bing in increasing its market share and also help Apple in reducing its reliance on Google. Apple currently pays Google billions of dollars each year to be the default search engine on all Apple devices.
4)
Reddit to compel users to accept personalized ads
Reddit has just announced that it will soon update its privacy policy. Following this update, the Reddit will remove the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on the users activity on its platform. In simple words, this means that Reddit is removing the option to not track users’ activities on its platform. The company said that it was forced to take this unpopular step in order to deliver more relevant ads to users and create a more sustainable business model. But the company assured it will continue to offer users some control over their ad experience, such as the ability to block certain categories of ads and to report inappropriate ads. However, it will be no longer possible for Reddit users to opt out of ad personalization entirely. Reddit is not the only tech company to take such a step. In the past, other big tech companies like Google and Facebook had also taken similar step in order to boost their ad revenue.
5)
Amazon makes its Bedrock generative AI service available to everyone
Amazon has announced that it is launching its Bedrock generative AI service in general availability. This means that going forward all AWS customers will be able to use Bedrock generative AI service. Since its launch in April, Bedrock was initially available only to small number of developers. Bedrock essentially makes it easy for developers to build and scale generative AI applications. It also provides access to a variety of foundation models (FMs) from Amazon and other leading AI companies, including AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, and Stability AI. It also offers a number of other valuable features like easy model customization and native support for RAG, which stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation.
