Google unveils its solution against deepfakes at Google Cloud Next, Meta disrupts a massive pro-China propaganda network, and OpenAI debuts an enterprise-grade version of ChatGPT.
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These stories and more as we bring you the top tech news on today’s Hashtag Trending.
I’m your host James Roy.
At Google Next 2023, Google made piles of announcements, mainly geared towards sharpening its AI toolset.
That includes upgrades to Google Workspace, Vertex AI, its own foundation models, new compute offerings, adding Meta’s Llama to its portfolio and of course, many, many more.
SynthID, Google’s potential solution against deep fakes and the misuse of AI-generated images was definitely a highlight. Google DeepMind says the tool “embeds a digital watermark directly into the pixels of an image, making it imperceptible to the human eye, but detectable for identification.”
This means the AI-generated image will look normal on the surface but it has an easily identifiable marker to let folks know it’s not an authentic image.
Google said SynthID should be more effective than traditional watermarks and should remain visible even after filters or colors are added or an image is resized.
Source: Mashable
Another highlight is the torrent of Duet AI features added to Google Meet. It lets you make custom backgrounds, it takes meeting notes, creates action items/tasks and even video snippets.
You’ll get cards like “Summary so far” – which is helpful if you’re joining midway – and “Action items,” with the ability to pause the note-taking at any time. These notes can then be saved to Google Docs and will be sent as a summary to attendees after the meeting ends.
It does not stop there. You can get Duet AI to even attend a meeting for you, that is it’ll take notes during a meeting if you cannot make it. This is rolling out to Labs next year ahead of general availability.
Duet AI will also give meeting attendees in a conference room their own named dynamic tiles thanks to face detection. And, there’s automatic translated captions for 18 languages, with Google automatically detecting “when another language is spoken” and then overlays the real-time translations
Source: 9TO5Google
Meta revealed that it has disrupted a massive, pro-China propaganda network.
The company attributed the accounts to law enforcement figures within China, but didn’t name a specific agency or organization.
The operation spread pro-China messages, attacked critics of Beijing’s policies and denigrated U.S. and European policy using a network of fake accounts across more than 50 websites, from Facebook and Instagram to YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and dozens of smaller platforms and forums.
In all, Meta took down 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Pages, 15 Groups and 15 Instagram accounts, making it one of the largest networks of fake accounts the company has ever uncovered.
Source: Engadget
Amazon is hell-bent on bringing employees back to the office. It initially sent warnings to employees unwilling to return to the office for a minimum of three days a week.
Now CEO Andy Jassy is saying, well, “it’s not going to work out for you.”
Employees have been resisting the company’s return to office mandate, signing petitions and staging walkouts, none of which has made Amazon budge.
In a recording of the meeting obtained by Insider, Jassy told workers, “It’s past the time to disagree and commit,” adding that “if you can’t disagree and commit… it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week.”
Jassy also said employees can leave if they don’t want to comply.
In fact, documents obtained by Insider suggested that Amazon would force a “voluntary resignation” on employees who don’t relocate to the in-person hubs where their teams work, while others just began quitting on their own.
Source: The Verge
OpenAI released ChatGPT Enterprise, an enterprise-grade version of its popular generative AI chatbot.
The company is touting better security and privacy as well as unlimited access to a high-speed version of ChatGPT’s underlying large language model GPT-4.
OpenAI says that more than 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have set up ChatGPT accounts but there are resounding concerns that chatbots are not private because conversations may be fed back for training.
OpenAI aims to nip that concern in the bud by making sure ChatGPT Enterprise doesn’t use any conversations for training.
Admins in ChatGPT Enterprise can also access domain verification, single sign-on, usage insights, and manage users through a dedicated console.
Additionally, ChatGPT Enterprise data is encrypted in transit and at rest and is SOC 2 compliant, which the consumer version is not.
But chatbots have way more issues than what OpenAI attempts to address here. Jim Hare, VP Analyst in Analytics and AI at Gartner, told TechRepublic that ChatGPT Enterprise still doesn’t address concerns about copyrighted material appearing in the data sets. It also doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of AI hallucinations – aka, inaccuracies.
Source: Tech Republic
Wait, what Elon Musk, a hypocrite? No way…
Last year, he banned the ElonJet account which reveals public information regarding the flights of his private plane, claiming it was doxxing. That’s not what doxxing is but to him, it seems like it’s revealing information about Elon Musk that Elon Musk doesn’t like.
But late last week, during a livestream, when Musk was testing Tesla’s “Full Self Driving”, he joked about punching in Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home address and having the car drive to it.
He then cracks a few jokes with his colleague about his looming fight with Zuckerberg and searches his address which you can see pretty clearly on the screen.
He then catches himself, and says “You know, I don’t think… this can’t be considered doxxing if we just Googled it.”
What exactly is doxxing is a fair debate.
But what’s clear is Elon Musk’s hypocrisy, where he’ll come up with excuses to bring down those he dislikes and then insist it’s not wrong when he does it.
Source: TechDirt
That’s the top tech news stories for today. Hashtag Trending goes to air 5 days a week, with a special weekend interview show we call “the Weekend Edition.”
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I’m your host, James Roy. Have a Wonderful Wednesday!
