Tag: Microsoft

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Mobile Syrup

Microsoft introduces its Bing Chat AI to Swiftkey on Android

Thanks to Microsoft, Bing Chat AI is now available on its SwiftKey Keyboard for Android.

The addition launched on April 5th and allows SwiftKey Beta users to access Microsoft’s Bing chatbot with one simple tap in any app with SwiftKey.

The keyboard is capable of learning users’ writing styles and will allow text to be rewritten and web searches for answers to be made.

To access the new Bing Chat addition, users will need to download the beta version of SwiftKey from the Google Play Store. There is currently no word on when SwiftKey iOS users will be able to access a beta test.

Microsoft’s CTO of mobile and commerce, Pedram Rezaei took to Twitter to confirm that the feature is slowly being rolled out.

Microsoft did quickly return SwiftKey to the App Store after discontinuing support for iOS last year. At that time, Rezaei said Microsoft will be “investing heavily in the keyboard.”

Although updates have been rare for the iOS version of SwiftKey, the addition to Android could mean that it’s only a matter of time before Bing integration appears on the iPhone keyboard.

For now, Android users can enjoy Bing Chat AI through the SwiftKey beta.

Source: @pedram_re Via: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Microsoft stops offering $1 Xbox Game Pass trial to pursue other promotions

New Xbox Game Pass subscribers can no longer get their first month for $1.

In a statement to The Verge, Kari Perez, head of global communications at Xbox, confirmed that the introductory offer has been axed. She says Xbox is instead “evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future.”

It’s a notable move from the company, which has touted the low entry cost for years in its promotion of the service. As it stands, though, it’s unclear what will take its place.

One possibility is the Game Pass Friends & Family plan that Xbox has been testing in a handful of markets, including Ireland, South Africa and Chile. In Ireland, a single monthly fee of €21.99 (about $32.50 CAD) allows up to four people to share one Game Pass membership. While it’s unclear exactly what Perez was referring to when she mentioned “different marketing promotions,” it’s possible that the removal of the $1 introductory offer could have been done to expand the Friends & Family plan to other markets.

For now, though, the only Game Pass options are console and PC subscriptions ($11.99/month each) or an Ultimate membership ($16.99/month). Ultimate includes Game Pass for both console and PC, as well as EA Play, Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

In any case, Game Pass is a huge part of Microsoft’s gaming strategy. Since 2018, the company has been offering all of its first-party titles on the service on day one, including Gears 5, Halo Infinite and Hi-Fi Rush. It also intends to bring Activision Blizzard games like Call of Duty to Game Pass should its acquisition of the publishing giant be approved.

While Microsoft doesn’t often reveal how well Game Pass is performing, it admitted in U.K. filings from last year pertaining to the Activision Blizzard deal that the service had missed its subscriber target for two consecutive years. However, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in October that Game Pass is still profitable, even as growth has slowed on console. In its own U.K. filings attempting in November to block the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Sony estimated that there are 29 million Game Pass subscribers.

Ultimately, it remains to be seen how new promotions, as well as upcoming major titles like Bethesda’s Redfall (May 2nd) and Starfield (September 6th), might help expand the service’s subscriber base.

Image credit: Xbox

Source: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

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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Mobile Syrup

Microsoft overhauled Teams to make it two times faster

Microsoft Teams is getting a fresh coat of paint and performance improvements, available in a new public preview on Windows.

In a blog post, Microsoft detailed some of the improvements headed to Teams, including up to two times faster performance, a 50 percent reduction in memory use, and more. Microsoft also says the improvements lay the foundation for new AI features on the way, such as the company’s recently announced Copilot.

Microsoft says its “north star” for Teams was making it twice as fast. The company made a “ground-up investment to overhaul the platform” that will optimize the data, network, chat and video architecture to improve speed and performance. Microsoft says it isn’t done optimizing the performance of Teams, but it has already seen “very promising data” from the public preview that’s rolling out today.

Moreover, Microsoft working with an independent benchmarking firm, GigaOm, to quantify the performance gains. GigaOm reports that launching Teams and joining meetings are twice as fast and use half as much memory compared to classic Teams.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also made a number of enhancements to the core Teams experience that will make it simpler to use and require fewer clicks to get to the things you need to use. At the same time, Microsoft says it made Teams more flexible for people who use it across multiple accounts, with better sync and notification systems.

Microsoft aims to make the new Teams generally available later this year, but for now, it’s available in public preview on Windows, with Macs coming later. Users in the Public Preview program will have access to the new Teams right away, but commercial users will need an administrator to opt in first, and then a toggle will appear, letting users swap between classic and new Teams.

Source: Microsoft

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Mobile Syrup

Smartphones don’t come with chargers – laptops shouldn’t either

Yes, I said it. Laptop makers should stop including chargers with their laptops.

I fully expect this will be an unpopular opinion. After all, people are still upset that many smartphones no longer come with chargers in the box. And to an extent, I agree — it sucks to open up a brand new piece of tech and not be able to charge it if you don’t have a charger! But I’ve also lived on the other side, and there’s a glorious freedom to not getting a charger too.

First off, I am admittedly in a very niche group. As someone who reviews laptops for a living, I am blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with the ability to switch laptops on a somewhat regular basis — certainly more often than anyone should switch laptops. On one hand, this puts me in the unique position of having way too many laptop chargers. On the other, I also think it gives me some insight into the world of laptop charging.

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed two significant changes in the laptop world. First, the laptops I test almost exclusively use USB-C ports for charging. Even when they offer a different primary charging method, USB-C charging is still present. For example, Microsoft’s Surface devices offer the Surface Connect port but can also charge off USB-C. Similarly, Apple brought MagSafe back to MacBooks, but USB-C charging is still an option. In fact, I can’t think of a single laptop I’ve used in the last two years that hasn’t supported USB-C charging.

The other thing I’ve noticed? A rapid proliferation of USB-C chargers that rival the ones you get with a laptop. Since August 2022, I’ve tested a handful of charging accessories made by Ugreen, and they’ve been great for charging laptops. They were so good, I started leaving chargers that came with the laptops I was reviewing in the box. But more than that, I really appreciated not having to swap cables around whenever I started reviewing a new laptop. I set my desk up with a Ugreen dock so I could plug one cable into whatever laptop I was testing to charge it and also give access to my monitor as a secondary display.

Take control of your charging

Again, I recognize that I’m in a unique position compared to the average laptop user, but I think some of my experience can be extrapolated to larger trends. If you’re buying a laptop now or in the next few years, chances are it will charge via a USB-C port. And if you’ve already got a reliable USB-C charger for charging a laptop, do you really need another?

To be fair, there will also be plenty of people with laptops that don’t have USB-C chargers. Being forced to buy a new charger because your new device doesn’t come with one sucks. I won’t deny that. As with smartphones, I think companies should offer something to cater to people who might have an old charger that won’t work with their new device, like a charger trade-in program or a credit towards a charger if you don’t have one. Whether I think companies should do that or not, I doubt many will. But hey, if you have to buy a charger, might as well buy a good one that will outlast your laptop.

There are other benefits to not getting a charger, though how much any of these matter will vary from person to person. For one, less electronic waste (e-waste) by reducing the number of redundant chargers. As a knock-on effect, you’d reduce the amount of packaging too. For another, more consumer control over their gadgets and accessories. Oh, and if you forget your laptop charger at home, chances are someone can spot you if everyone’s rocking USB-C chargers.

All that said, there will still be some scenarios where it might be necessary to include a charger. Gaming laptops are one example that comes to mind since many have greater power demands than the average laptop (hence the massive bricks attached to most gaming laptop chargers).

Ultimately, most laptops already use one type of charger. Let’s commit to it and stop wasting time, money and resources on giving people the same charger they already have.

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Mobile Syrup

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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Mobile Syrup

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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Mobile Syrup

Microsoft signs 10-year deal to bring Xbox, Activision Blizzard games to PC streaming platform

Microsoft has signed a 10-year deal to bring its PC games to Ukrainian cloud gaming company Boosteroid’s platform.

The Redmond, Washington-based company says this will include existing and future Xbox games, as well as Activision Blizzard titles, should its acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher be approved.

Boosteroid says it’s the largest independent cloud gaming provider in the world with more than four million global users. Despite the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, Boosteroid also says it’s continued to see growth in the past 13 months. Some of the markets it serves beyond its native Ukraine include the U.S., U.K., France and Italy. It remains to be seen whether the partnership with Microsoft might push Boosteroid to expand into Canada.

This is the latest 10-year game licensing deal that Xbox has signed in an effort to get approval for its Activision Blizzard deal. This includes similar decade-long agreements with the likes of Nintendo and Nvidia. While Microsoft has said it’s willing to make a similar commitment with Sony, the Japanese tech giant has been trying to block the deal by arguing that it’s anti-competitive. Most recently, the company expressed concerns that Xbox would give PlayStation inferior versions of games like Call of Duty to prop up its own hardware and services.

Source: Microsoft

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Mobile Syrup

Bing AI has been running on GPT-4 since release

OpenAI today announced its advanced and highly sophisticated GPT-4 large language model that is reported to be much smarter than GPT-3.5, the model behind ChatGPT.

However, interestingly, it turns out that Microsoft has already been using the new model for a while now in its Bing AI bot.

According to a new blog post from the company, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, Yusuf Mehdi said, “we are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, which we’ve customized for search. If you’ve used the new Bing preview at any time in the last five weeks, you’ve already experienced an early version of this powerful model.”

He added, “as OpenAI makes updates to GPT-4 and beyond, Bing benefits from those improvements. Along with our own updates based on community feedback, you can be assured that you have the most comprehensive copilot features available.”

We knew that Microsoft’s Bing AI works on a novel “Prometheus” models, but we never knew that it also utilizes GPT-4. Microsoft was likely keeping it under wraps until OpenAI itself revealed the new model, hence why it came out today and informed the world about it.

Additionally, Jordi Ribas, corporate vice president at Bing and Microsoft revealed in a Tweet that the company has increased the limit on the Bing AI chatbot to 15 chats per session and up to 150 per day, up from five chats per session and 50 chats per day.

In other AI-related news, Google today announced that it is adding generative AI features to Docs and Gmail. Read more about it here.

Image credit: Microsoft

Source: Microsoft

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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