Tag: AI

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AI expert sounds the alarm on possible new spam mail arms race

Credit: Tumisu via Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/email-marketing-online-marketing-2362038/#

Artificial intelligence is all the buzz these days, spurred on by the recent popularity of ChatGPT and Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. The technology is exciting – but also ripe for abuse by bad actors.

Director of the Advancing Human and Machine Reasoning lab John Licato has taken to Gizmodo to voice his concern. AI-powered spam mail might be reaching your inbox soon, he says.

Traditionally, spam mail has used deception to fool users into clicking unsafe links, installing malware, and giving out personal information. With the increasing availability of large language model technology, deceptive tactics are becoming easier to initiate than ever.

Spammers are likely to benefit from more detailed user information without needing as much data to work with, says Licato. Lifestyle, social values and political leanings are all factors that could be better deciphered and used for deceit.

The silver lining in all this? Spam filters will also benefit from AI in the same way the spammers will. The hope is that more sophisticated ways of flagging junk mail will be enabled by harnessing the power of large language models.

It’s unclear just how long it will be before this new spam arms race kicks off. If Licato’s predictions are correct, we might not have to wait very long to find out.

Header image credit: Tumisu via Pixabay 

Source: Gizmodo

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Report indicates Google will soon offer new AI tools in its ad program

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada – September 30, 2019: Google sign in the Google Canada Kitchener-Waterloo office.

The latest Google service to get the AI treatment, according to a report from The Financial Times, is its mammoth-sized advertisement business.

Allegedly, Google’s AI will soon be able to “remix” customer images, video, and text that it is given to work with. The Financial Times says the AI will then generate ads based on specified goals such as target audience.

The new toolset is expected to be rolled into Google’s existing Performance Max program, adding an element of artificial creativity to the campaign service.

The news comes amid a growing AI arms race between major tech companies. Google has been scrambling to modernize its search engine in the wake of a revitalized Bing, powered by ChatGPT.

With the pressure on, some are sounding the alarm on the speed of developments on the AI front, including Elon Musk.

Google’s new AI tools will reportedly be making their way to the public later this year.

Source: The Verge Via: The Financial Times

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DeepMind and Google’s Brain team to merge as Google DeepMind

The artificial intelligence company DeepMind is joining Google’s Brain team to merge as one company, Google DeepMind. According to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the combined groups will “significantly accelerate our progress in AI.”

The CEO of Google DeepMind will be Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind. Pichai will be in charge of developing the company’s AI systems. Jeff Dean, Google’s former senior vice president of Google Research and Health, will take the role of the company’s chief scientist.

Google DeepMind’s plans are clear from the start, with ambitions to do some big things in the AI space. “We have a real opportunity to deliver AI research and products that dramatically improve the lives of billions of people, transform industries, advance science, and serve diverse communities,” said Hassabis in a memo to employees.

The collaboration comes after a history of disputes between the two companies. In 2021, DeepMind reportedly lost its bid to gain more independence from Google after it began to push DeepMind towards commercializing its work.

In March 2023, Google launched early access to its AI chatbox, Bard. So far, the reception has been poor, especially among current and former Google employees who have recently been found to be pleading with the company not to release the service officially.

It’s safe to say that with Google taking big steps towards developing a presence in AI, it will need to put its past differences aside and use all the help it can get.

Image credit: Deepmind

Source: Google Via: The Verge

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Startups claim Microsoft is squeezing out search competition as it takes on Google

Microsoft’s Bing Chat put the company’s Bing search engine back on the map, but now search engine startups warn Microsoft is trying to squeeze them out.

Wired reports that startups that previously relied on licensing search results from Bing feel that Microsoft is unfairly squeezing them out of the search space. The main squeeze is a financial one — a week after rolling out Bing Chat in February, Microsoft announced as much as a 10 times increase to standard fees for search data that would come into effect in May.

Another squeeze comes from new rules that the startups say block them from competing with Bing Chat or Google’s Bard by applying steeper fees on those who provide Bing results on a page that also has content from a large language model (LLM). The increase for LLM users is potentially 28 times the previous rate.

LLMs, for those unfamiliar, are the underlying technology behind Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, which is what Bing Chat runs on.

Search startups using Microsoft data and hoping to add chat-style features told Wired that the cost would crush them. Plus, Microsoft doesn’t offer an API for its chatbot to customers (at least for now).

A Microsoft spokesperson told Wired that the price increase reflects the company’s investments to improve Bing, which includes using LLMs to help rank results. The company claims that has improved search quality more than any other upgrade in the last 20 years.

Bing has become essential to nearly every search startup trying to challenge Google, including DuckDuckGo and You.com. Wired notes that Yahoo stopped developing its own search engine tech in 2009 (and switch to licensing data from Bing), while Google’s comparable API can have differing results from Google’s own results and sometimes requires displaying ads.

As concerning as the price hike is, the new rules increasing prices for LLM use are even more worrying. Wired spoke with several search startups that expressed concern that Microsoft is trying to lock competitors out of what increasingly seems to be the future of search.

Source: Wired

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Opera browser adds AI tools, like prompts to shorten or explain text

Last month, Opera added OpenAI’s ChatGPT to the sidebar in its self-titled browser. Now the company is back with new AI additions to further complement the browsing experience with AI.

Opera detailed the new AI additions in a blog post. First up are ‘Smart AI Prompts,’ which give users quick access to helpful AI tools. Prompts include the ability to shorten text, whether it’s a paragraph, article, or even a whole website. Moreover, Prompts let you ask AI to tell you the main point of the page or help you craft a tweet.

Users will be able to access AI Prompts from a button in the address bar of the Opera and Opera GX browsers. It also looks like the Prompts will pop up when users select text in Opera. Clicking the Prompts will open the corresponding AI chat tool in the Opera sidebar to respond.

Speaking of which, Opera now has another AI chatbot in the sidebar alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT: ChatSonic. Billed as a ChatGPT alternative with additional capabilities, ChatSonic can handle some of the AI Prompts and even create images for users.

Opera warns that users will need to create or log into accounts with the respective AI tools to actually use them in the browser.

Moreover, Opera says it’s not stopping there with AI integrations. The company claims it’s working on the second stage of its Browser AI program and even its own GPT-based browser AI engine.

To get access to the new Smart AI Prompts and ChatSonic in Opera, you’ll need to update your browser or download the latest version from Opera’s website.

Images credit: Opera

Source: Opera

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Google’s Assistant team is helping with Bard

Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are all the rage right now thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, Microsoft’s Bing Chat (which runs on GPT-4) and now Google’s Bard, which is available in preview in the U.S. and U.K. The main way to interact with these services now is through text and chat interfaces. But what if you could speak to the AI instead? It might not be too far away.

At least, that seems to be the direction Google wants to go. As noted by 9to5Google, the search giant has previously expressed its Assistant as a product where it wants to incorporate “better conversational features.” Though that hasn’t happened yet, the Google Assistant team is helping lead Bard development, suggesting there’s a clear path to integration.

Google told 9to5 that Bard is an experimental service and is separate from Google Assistant, even though Sissie Hsiao, vice president and general manager of Google Assistant, joined Eli Collins, vice president of Google Research, to announce the company was opening access to Bard.

While the products remain separate for now, Google does see the potential crossover. For example, the Assistant team has worked on conversational AI and speech understanding for years, skills that can and have been applied to Bard.

Plus, 9to5 argues that the Assistant team has plenty of experience turning research into products and services that regular people can use with ease.

Given how quickly these AI tools have improved in the short time they’ve been publicly available, it’s hard to say how long it’ll be before we gain access to something like a Bard-powered Google Assistant. But I do think it’ll happen sooner than people expect, barring any significant problems arising from Bard.

Source: 9to5Google

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You can now ask Bing Chat to generate images using DALL-E

Microsoft’s Bing Chat is getting a visual upgrade courtesy of OpenAI’s DALL-E.

Announced in a blog post, Bing Chat will gain the ability to generate images using DALL-E, a generative image generator built by OpenAI. Microsoft didn’t provide specifics on the version of DALL-E used in Bing Chat, but it did tell TechCrunch that it was using the “very latest DALL-E models.”

Called the ‘Bing Image Creator,’ the feature is rolling out slowly to the Bing Chat preview. Users can access it through Bing Chat’s ‘Creative’ mode and it’ll eventually expand to ‘Balanced’ and ‘Presice’ too, though it’s not clear how these modes will impact image generation (if at all). Plus, Edge browser users will get access to it in the sidebar. Of course, it’s not available for everyone yet, so don’t sweat if you can’t get Bing Chat to generate pictures for you right away.

When you ask Bing to create an image, it will generate four high-res images using DALL-E, though they sport a Bing logo in the bottom corner.

And in an effort to prevent Bing Image Creator from going off the rails like Bing Chat did in the early days, Microsoft preemptively added safeguards:

“We have ensured OpenAI’s safeguards, plus additional protections, have been incorporated into Image Creator. For example, we have put controls in place that aim to limit the generation of harmful or unsafe images. When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user.”

You can learn more about Bing Image Creator here.

Source: Microsoft Via: TechCrunch

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Microsoft unveils Copilot AI-powered assistant in Word, Excel, more

Microsoft unveiled its AI-powered ‘Copilot’ for Microsoft 365 apps at an event on March 16th. Copilot will exist as an assistant with Microsoft’s apps like Word and Excel.

“It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more — to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and uplevel skills,” wrote Microsoft’s corporate vice president of modern work and business applications, Jared Spataro, in a blog post.

Users can summon Copilot to handle a variety of tasks, such as providing information about an upcoming Teams meeting or creating a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation based on a Word document. Per Microsoft’s blog, here are some of the things Copilot can do in:

  • Word – Copilot can help you draft and edit documents
  • PowerPoint – Copilot helps make presentations form a simple prompt
  • Excel – Copilot can analyze trends and make visualizations
  • Outlook – Copilot can help “clear out your inbox minutes”
  • Teams – Copilot can summarize key discussion points, including who said what and suggest action items
  • And more…

Microsoft stressed that users are “always in control” when using Copilot and can decide what to keep, modify, or discard. In the blog, Spataro was also quick to say that Copilot will get things wrong but promised it will “always put you further ahead.”

Copilot leverages OpenAI’s GPT-4, though Spataro wrote that Microsoft did more than just embed it in Microsoft 365. Copilot combines “the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your business data in the Microsoft Graph.”

Along with Copilot, Microsoft announced ‘Business Chat’ will work across all the Microsoft 365 apps and data, leveraging the company’s ‘Graph’ to bring everything into a single chat interface.

These new features and changes sound ambitious, and it remains to be seen how well they work in the real world. Moreover, there remain many legitimate concerns about AI — Microsoft’s rush to integrate AI into products doesn’t help, especially as the company shutters teams dedicated to responsible AI.

That said, Copilot won’t be available immediately. In the blog post, Spataro said the company will share more about pricing and details “in the coming months.”

Images credit: Microsoft

Source: Microsoft Via: The Verge

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Microsoft eliminated a responsible AI team as it integrates AI into products

Back in January, Microsoft announced it would layoff 10,000 employees across the company. One of the teams eliminated in the layoffs was Microsoft’s ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence (AI) organization.

The ethics and society team layoff comes as the company rushes to integrate AI tools developed by OpenAI into products, making AI widely available to the public.

In its recent newsletter, Platformer outlined that the ethics and society team played an important role in ensuring that Microsoft’s responsible AI principles are actually reflected in the products it ships. That includes identifying risks in the adoption of OpenAI technology in products like Bing.

The team was at its largest in 2020 with some 30 employees, including engineers, designers and philosophers. Platformer reports the team was cut to roughly seven people in October, and several members were moved to other areas.

At the time, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI, John Montgomery, told employees there was “pressure” from CTO Kevin Scott and CEO Satya Nadella to move current and upcoming OpenAI models “into customers’ hands at a very high speed,” according to Platformer.

Employees on the ethics and society team pushed back and asked Montgomery to reconsider, but he refused. Montgomery did promise the team wouldn’t be eliminated.

About five months later, on March 6th, the team was called into a meeting  to hear a “business critical update.” They were told their team would be eliminated.

An employee told Platformer the elimination leaves a foundational gap when it comes to user experience and the design of AI products. The employee warned that the elimination exposed Microsoft and human beings to risk.

Microsoft still has other responsible AI teams

Microsoft says it’s still increasing overall investment in responsibility work and that it maintains an Office of Responsible AI. Moreover, in a statement to Platformer, Microsoft said it is “committed to developing AI products and experiences safely and responsibly, and does so by investing in people, processes, and partnerships that prioritize this.”

Despite that, the elimination of a team focused on responsible AI work raises concerns, especially as Microsoft forges ahead with publicly available AI tools. These tools pose significant risks, but as employees told Platformer, Microsoft became less concerned in long-term, responsible thinking as it shifted focus to shipping AI tools quickly.

Moreover, it’s clear why Microsoft wants to move quickly with AI. Microsoft previously told investors that every one percent of market share it could take from Google in search would result in $2 billion USD in annual revenue. Since launching a revamped Bing Search with AI-powered Chat, Microsoft revealed that Bing now has 100 million daily active users, roughly a third of them new since the revamp.

Microsoft sees an opportunity with AI and its taking it, but time will tell if the gamble pays off.

Source: Platformer

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Microsoft Bing search passes 100 million daily active users

Microsoft says that its Bing search engine has passed 100 million daily active users following the release of Bing Chat.

In a blog post, Microsoft detailed the new number and noted that it includes a “million plus new Bing preview users.”

It’s worth noting that Microsoft hasn’t revealed daily active user counts for Bing before the release of Bing Chat, so it’s hard to saw how much of an improvement the company has seen. If I had to guess, I’d say probably a significant amount given how much attention Bing Chat received from the media over the last few weeks.

Beyond the daily active user number, Microsoft also revealed that about one-third of the daily Bing preview users also use Chat daily, with the company seeing roughly three chats per session and over 45 million total chats since the preview started.

While 100 million daily active users may sound like a lot, it’s worth putting the number in perspective. Google, the current king of search, pulls over 1 billion daily active users.

But for Microsoft, any ground gained against Google is worth it. Last month, Microsoft’s CVP of finance, Philippe Ockenden, said on a call with analysts that for “every 1 point of share gain in the search advertising market, it’s a $2 billion revenue opportunity for our advertising business.”

It’s also worth noting that Bing Chat isn’t the only thing driving users to Bing search. As pointed out in the blog post, Microsoft’s Edge browser is also growing, and Edge pushes Bing as the default search engine. Moreover, Microsoft pushes Edge and Bing very aggressively on Windows, often to the frustration of users. But it appears the aggressive push is working out for Microsoft, so expect it’ll continue.

Source: Microsoft Via: The Verge