Times Top News

Times Top News

Microsoft to launch own mobile-game store, to compete with Apple, Google

Microsoft to launch own mobile-game store, to compete with Apple, Google

by | May 10, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : May 10 2024 | 8:08 AM IST


By Cecilia D’Anastasio and Dina Bass

 


Microsoft Corp. will launch its own online store for mobile-game consumables in July, creating an alternative to Apple Inc. and Google’s app stores and their fees. 

 


The browser-based store will debut with Microsoft’s own games, offering discounts on in-game items associated with titles like Candy Crush Saga. Xbox President Sarah Bond announced the move Thursday at the Bloomberg Technology Summit. Later, Microsoft will open the store to other publishers.


Bond says the store is launching on the web, versus an app, so it’s “accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what, independent of the policies of closed ecosystem stores.” 


Microsoft saw an opportunity to create a store that “goes truly across devices — where who you are, your library, your identity, your rewards travel with you versus being locked to a single ecosystem,” Bond said. The company’s intention is to facilitate gaming across consoles, computers and mobile devices. Microsoft’s blockbuster cross-platform game Minecraft may be an early addition to the web store, Bond said. 


“This web-based store is the first step in our journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming,” an Xbox spokesperson said in an email.


Apple and Google dominate the app stores where game developers release titles, charging an approximate 30% fee on sales. In late 2023, Microsoft gaming head Phil Spencer shared that the company is in talks with partners to launch its own Xbox app store.


The European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which went into effect this year, freed tech companies to start their own direct-to-consumer web stores and avoid Apple and Google’s fees. In early May, some TikTok users reported seeing links to a TikTok web store, where they could purchase TikTok coins at a discount. 


Microsoft lagged behind game industry competitors in entering the $90 billion mobile gaming market. Now, the company’s Xbox unit is poised to make a big splash after its $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, owner of the Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Candy Crush has been downloaded 5 billion times since its 2012 debut and generated $20 billion in revenue.


Tech giants have been battling over the future of digital storefronts for mobile games since 2020, when Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. launched its Project Liberty campaign.


Epic announced users would get a 20% discount buying Fortnite currency on its own website. In response, Apple and Google deleted Fortnite from their app stores. Epic filed lawsuits against both tech giants, alleging illegal monopolistic control over their mobile phone ecosystems. 

First Published: May 10 2024 | 8:08 AM IST



Source link

Adversaries could use AI to spread disinformation about US elections: FBI

Adversaries could use AI to spread disinformation about US elections: FBI

by | May 10, 2024 | Technology


An incident in the US involved robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden that urged voters in New Hampshire to abstain from voting in January’s primary election | Photo: Bloomberg

3 min read Last Updated : May 10 2024 | 7:32 AM IST


The FBI is concerned that foreign adversaries could deploy artificial intelligence as a means to interfere in American elections and spread disinformation, a senior official said Thursday, describing the technology as an area that’s probably going to see growth over the coming years.


The threat is more than theoretical given the prevalence of AI deepfakes and robocalls and the way such technology has already surfaced in politics.


The official noted an episode in Slovakia early this year in which audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief purportedly capturing him talking about hiking beer prices and rigging the vote were shared widely on social media just days before parliamentary elections. The clips were deepfakes.


An incident in the US involved robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden that urged voters in New Hampshire to abstain from voting in January’s primary election. The robocalls were later traced to a political consultant who said he was trying to publicize the dangers of AI deepfakes.


AI technology is a challenge to law enforcement not only because it lowers the barrier of entry for people looking to make mischief but also because it adds to the arsenal of more sophisticated foreign governments that want to interfere in elections, said the official, who was one of several FBI officials to brief reporters on the topic of election security on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the FBI.


The three countries of most concern to the FBI in the current election year are Russia, Iran and China. Officials in the past have ascribed different motives and ambitions to the countries in terms of what they hope to achieve by influencing American elections.


In the case of Russia, intelligence officials in 2016 and 2020 have said Moscow had a clear preference for Republican Donald Trump and took steps designed to get him elected, including a sophisticated hack-and-leak operation of Democratic emails before he was elected eight years ago.


A recent intelligence community report assessed that, in the 2022 midterm election, Russia tried to denigrate the Democratic Party, with a goal of weakening US support for Ukraine, and undermine confidence in the elections.


The report said China sought to influence a handful of races featuring candidates from both major political parties, focusing on those with anti-China views and covertly denigrating a US senator. And it said that Iran conducted covert operations aimed at exploiting perceived social divisions.


In 2024, FBI officials said, China will likely continue its efforts to sow divisions, and the FBI is watching whether the Ukraine war will motivate Russia’s behavior.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: May 10 2024 | 7:32 AM IST



Source link

TikTok to start labelling AI-generated content as tech becomes universal

TikTok to start labelling AI-generated content as tech becomes universal

by | May 10, 2024 | Technology


4 min read Last Updated : May 10 2024 | 7:00 AM IST


TikTok will begin labelling content created using artificial intelligence when it’s been uploaded from outside its own platform in an attempt to combat misinformation.


AI enables incredible creative opportunities, but can confuse or mislead viewers if they don’t know content was AI-generated, the company said in a prepared statement Thursday.


Labelling helps make that context clearwhich is why we label AIGC made with TikTok AI effects, and have required creators to label realistic AIGC for over a year.


TikTok’s shift in policy is part of an broader attempt in the technology industry to provide more safeguards for AI usage.


In February Meta announced that it was working with industry partners on technical standards that will make it easier to identify images and eventually video and audio generated by artificial intelligence tools. Users on Facebook and Instagram users would see labels on AI-generated images.


Google said last year that AI labels are coming to YouTube and its other platforms.


A push for digital watermarking and labelling of AI-generated content was also part of an executive order that US President Joe Biden signed in October.


TikTok is teaming up with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity and will use their Content Credentials technology.


The company said that the technology can attach metadata to content, which it can use to instantly recognise and label AI-generated content. TikTok said it began to deploy the technology Thursday on images and videos and will be coming to audio-only content soon.


In coming months, Content Credentials will be attached to submissions made on TikTok, which will remain on the content when downloaded. This will help identify AI-generated material that’s made on TikTok and help people learn when, where and how the content was made or edited. Other platforms that adopt Content Credentials will be able to automatically label it.


Using Content Credentials as a way to identify and convey synthetic media to audiences directly is a meaningful step towards AI transparency, even more so than typical watermarking techniques, Claire Leibowicz, head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the Partnership on AI, said in a prepared statement. “At the same time we need to better understand how users react to these labels and hope that TikTok reports on the response so that we may better understand how the public navigates an increasingly AI-augmented world.


TikTok said it’s the first video-sharing platform to put the credentials into practice and will join the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative to help push the adoption of the credentials within the industry.


TikTok is the first social media platform to support Content Credentials, and with over 170 million users in the United States alone, their platform and their vast community of creators and users are an essential piece of that chain of trust needed to increase transparency online, Dana Rao, Adobe’s executive vice president, general counsel and chief trust officer, said in a blog post.


TikTok’s policy in the past has been to encourage users to label content that has been generated or significantly edited by AI. It also requires users to label all AI-generated content where it contains realistic images, audio, and video.


Our users and our creators are so excited about AI and what it can do for their creativity and their ability to connect with audiences. Adam Presser, TikTok’s Head of Operations & Trust and Safety told ABC News. And at the same time, we want to make sure that people have that ability to understand what fact is and what is fiction.


The announcement initially came on ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday.


TikTok’s AI actions come just two days after TikTok said that it and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, had filed a lawsuit challenging a new American law that would ban the video-sharing app in the US unless it’s sold to an approved buyer, saying it unfairly singles out the platform and is an unprecedented attack on free speech.


The lawsuit is the latest turn in what’s shaping up to be a protracted legal fight over TikTok’s future in the United States and one that could end up before the Supreme Court. If TikTok loses, it says it would be forced to shut down next year.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: May 10 2024 | 7:00 AM IST



Source link

Google unveils AI-led technology for predicting human molecules' behaviour

Google unveils AI-led technology for predicting human molecules' behaviour

by | May 9, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : May 10 2024 | 1:23 AM IST


By Cade Metz

 


Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation.


It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.

 


On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central artificial intelligence lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence technology that helps scientists understand the behaviour of the microscopic mechanisms that drive the cells in the human body.

 


An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem.”

 


Proteins are the microscopic molecules that drive the behaviour of all living things. These molecules begin as strings of chemical compounds before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define how they interact with other microscopic mechanisms in the body.

 


Biologists spent years or even decades trying to pinpoint the shape of individual proteins. Then AlphaFold came along. When a scientist fed this technology a string of amino acids that make up a protein, it could predict the three-dimensional shape within minutes.

 


When DeepMind publicly released AlphaFold a year later, biologists began using it to accelerate drug discovery. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, used the technology as they worked to understand the coronavirus and prepare for similar pandemics. Others used it as they struggled to find remedies for malaria and Parkinson’s disease.

 


The hope is that this kind of technology will significantly streamline the creation of new drugs and vaccines.

 


“It tells us a lot more about how the machines of the cell interact,” said John Jumper, a Google DeepMind researcher. “It tells us how this should work and what happens when we get sick.”

 


The new version of AlphaFold — AlphaFold3 — extends the technology beyond protein folding. In addition to predicting the shapes of proteins, it can predict the behaviour of other microscopic biological mechanisms, including DNA, where the body stores genetic information, and RNA, which transfers information from DNA to proteins.

 


“Biology is a dynamic system. You need to understand the interactions between different molecules and structures,” said Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s chief executive and the founder of Isomorphic Labs, which Google also owns. “This is a step in that direction.”

 


The company is offering a website where scientists can use AlphaFold3. Other labs, most notably one at the University of Washington, offer similar technology. In a paper released on Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature, Dr. Jumper and his fellow researchers show that it achieves a level of accuracy well beyond the state of the art.

 

The technology could “save months of experimental work and enable research that was previously impossible,” said Deniz Kavi, a co-founder and the chief executive of Tamarind Bio, a start-up that builds technology for accelerating drug discovery.
“This represents tremendous promise.”


DEEP DIVE




– An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years




– It was called “the protein folding problem”


– The new version — AlphaFold3 — predicts the shapes of proteins, in addition to predicting the shapes of proteins




– It can predict the behaviour of other microscopic biological mechanisms, including DNA and RNA




– The company is offering a website where scientists can use AlphaFold3


 


©2024 The New York Times News Service

First Published: May 10 2024 | 1:23 AM IST



Source link

Seek review of ruling on non-consensual intimate pics: HC to Google, MS

Seek review of ruling on non-consensual intimate pics: HC to Google, MS

by | May 9, 2024 | Technology


Delhi High Court (Photo: Twitter)

3 min read Last Updated : May 09 2024 | 6:09 PM IST


The Delhi High Court on Monday asked Microsoft, which owns ‘Bing’, and Google to seek a review of an order by a single judge directing them to identify and de-index non-consensual intimate images without requesting for their specific URLs, after the search engine giants filed an appeal against the ruling.


The senior counsel for the appellants said unlike in cases of child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate images cannot be detected by their current technology and therefore it was not possible for them to comply with the order passed by the single judge in April 2023.


Their senior lawyers assured the court a new technology is being developed but it has not yet reached a stage where it can detect such non-consensual content on its own.


They said the search engines do not “host” any content, and once an objectionable content has been removed from the site hosting it, it will not appear in search results as well.


Stating that “no one can ask you to do the impossible”, a bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Manmohan asked them to approach the single judge to reconsider his directions.


“Keeping view of the aforesaid, it would be appropriate if the appellants file a review and bring the aforesaid facts to the notice of the single judge. In the event the appellants are aggrieved by order of the single judge in the review petition, the appellants shall be at liberty to revive the present appeals,” the bench, also comprising Justice Manmeet PS Arora, said.


As the senior counsel for Google sought sought an assurance that no coercive action would be taken against them for non-compliance with the single judge’s directions, the court observed no such action has been taken till now.


In an order passed on April 26, 2023, the single judge had said it was the responsibility of the search engines to immediately cease access to any offending content and the victim cannot be made to face humiliation or harassment by having to approach the authorities again seeking the same relief.


The ruling came on a petition by a woman who sought blocking of certain sites exhibiting her intimate images.

 


The single judge had stated “Non-Consensual Intimate Images (NCII) abuse” , which includes “revenge porn, violates the right to privacy and causes psychological damage to the victim.


The single judge had asserted that search engines were obligated to observe due diligence while discharging their duties under Rule 3 of the IT Rules, including making reasonable efforts to prevent hosting, displaying, uploading or sharing of any information that is invasive of another person’s privacy and violates any law for the time being in force, or they will lose the protection from liability accorded to them under Section 79 of the IT Act.


“If information is relating to content which is prima facie in the nature of any (NCII) material.., the search engine is required to take all reasonable and practicable measures to remove or disable access to such content which is hosted, stored, published or transmitted by it,” the single judge had said.


“The time-frame as stipulated under Rule 3 of the IT Rules must be strictly followed without any exceptions, and if there is even minor deviation from the said time-frame, then the protection from liability accorded to a search engine under Section 79 of the IT Rules cannot be invoked by the search engine,” the single judge bench had stated.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: May 09 2024 | 6:09 PM IST



Source link

Pixel 8a can be located by Google's Find My Device even when switched off

Pixel 8a can be located by Google's Find My Device even when switched off

by | May 9, 2024 | Technology


2 min read Last Updated : May 09 2024 | 4:38 PM IST


The Pixel 8a joins its elder siblings, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, in advanced location tracking feature that enables Google’s Find My Device network to locate the devices even when they are switched off or out of battery power. In simple language, you can track down the Pixel 8 series smartphones, including the recently launched Pixel 8a, even when switched off or out of battery power by using Google’s Find My Device.


Google launched Find My Device functionality to Android smartphones last month. The feature uses a crowdsource network, essentially a network of Android smartphones to help locate misplaced Android devices. At the time of launch, Google said that the feature will be able to locate both Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones even when they are turned off. Now, this feature is extended to the Pixel 8a, which is a new addition to the Pixel 8 series.


According to a report by Android Authority, the Google Pixel 8a supports offline tracking through Find My Device using specialised hardware which has been inside all other Pixel 8-series smartphones too.


While Google has not officially confirmed the presence of any such feature on the new Pixel 8a, the report states that the smartphone supports Android’s Powered-Off Finding API. This Android API is responsible for sending location data in power off mode from the other Pixel 8 series smartphones.


How Google Find My Device works


Android devices that contribute to the Find My Device network broadcast location data over Bluetooth that other nearby Android devices can pick up on. When other devices in the network detect these signals, they securely send the locations where they detected them to Find My Device. The Find My Device network encrypts the locations of the lost items using a unique key that only the owner can access by entering your Android device’s PIN, pattern, or password.


How Find My Device works on Pixel 8 series


Majority of Android devices cannot broadcast their location data over Bluetooth when out of battery or turned off. This is because the Bluetooth chips do not receive power to run in this state. However, in a statement to Android Authority last month, Google said that the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones have reserve power channelled to the Bluetooth chip for several hours even after the battery drains out

First Published: May 09 2024 | 4:38 PM IST



Source link

About-us

Privacy Policy

Email: hansrajagrawalakola@gmail.com

YouTube
Instagram
WhatsApp