Here are the top trending news from the world of technology and AI. News that every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
X has been using your posts to train its Grok AI without user consent
Last week, Elon Musk’s microblogging platform ‘X’ faced public backlash after it came to light that X has been clandestinely using its users’ posts and other data for training its AI chatbot Grok. The platform quite cheekily changed the default setting that permitted it to collect the data for training its chatbot. However, the bigger controversy is that users were completely kept in dark and no permission whatsoever was sought from them. X, after feeling the pressure due to mounting backlash, released a post categorically stating how users can change the default if they don’t wish to share their data. However, as of now this privilege is only available for X’s web version. Musk, who is otherwise known for its outspoken attitude, has so far maintained complete silence over this issue.
2)
Anthropic becomes the latest AI startup to face data scrapping accusation
Illegal data scrapping by generative AI startups has become a contentious issue with Anthropic, the company behind the Claude LLMs, becoming the latest AI startup to face data scrapping accusation. Two prominent freelancing websites Freelancer.com and IFixt have accused the Google backed AI startup of ignoring both websites’ robots.txt protocol, which prohibits crawlers and other bots from accessing content on their websites. In fact, Freelancer’s CEO told The Information that Anthropic’s ClaudeBot may be currently the most aggressive data scrapper on the internet. He claimed that recently their website Freelancer.com received 3.5 million visits from ClaudeBot within the span of 4 hours. Anthropic has so far not commented over this matter but there is no denying that AI startup will have to find legits means to source data for training its Ai models.
3)
Apple Intelligence’s launch pushed to October
Apple fans may have to wait a bit longer to experience Apple’s much anticipated AI system Apple Intelligence, which was unveiled at Apple’s WWDC event earlier this year. According to reports, Apple Intelligence may not be included in the initial IOS 18 release in September as was originally planned. Instead, it is now expected to arrive in October in IOS 18.1. The exact reason for this delay is still not known especially since Apple itself has not confirmed this news. But reports claim that Apple wants more time to incorporate AI features into IOS ecosystem, which is evidently a complex task. Apple’s meticulous attention to details is all too well known and ensuring that Apple intelligence fulfills users’ mighty expectations is key for keeping Apple’s reputation intact.
4)
TikTok is testing feature that lets you find songs by singing or humming them
TikTok is currently testing a feature called ‘Sound Search’ that will users to identify and search songs simply by singing or humming them. If you have been included in the beta testing phase then you can access this feature through a dedicated button on the app’s music interface. Whenever a TikTok user hums or sings a song, the Sound Search feature will harness the audio recognition technology to match the input with its extensive music library. Although this feature is still in testing phase, it has the potential to revolutionize the music discovery on TikTok. Interestingly, barely few days back YouTube has announced a similar feature.