India stunned investors last month by abruptly suspending most activities of the banking affiliate of Paytm, a once high-flying fintech star that had attracted backing from Warren Buffett and SoftBank Group Corp. While the Paytm case was an extreme example of lapses in customer verification — it allegedly used a single identity document to open thousands of accounts — the crackdown signals growing impatience from authorities.
WhatsApp is said to be working on a guest call feature. This could let users reach non-WhatsApp users through secure links, enabling simple end-to-end encrypted calling without app installation. This functionality is said to be built on WhatsApp's existing guest chat mechanism. This could allow WhatsApp users to call people who do not use the messaging platform. WhatsApp will reportedly require the host to manually approve every guest's request before they join the call
Wix, a cloud-based website development platform, has launched its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot that can generate a customised website using simple text prompts. The AI website generator was first announced by the company in July 2023 but was not made available to the public. After seven months, Wix has launched the feature globally and users can begin creating their own websites.
Chakshu portal, a platform to report suspected communications of cyber fraud, was launched by the government of India on Monday. The portal was created alongside the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) which will be used for real-time intelligence sharing and coordination between all the stakeholders. The Chakshu portal can be used to report phone calls, SMS, and WhatsApp messages that appear to be fraudulent.
Brussels on Monday fined Apple EUR 1.84 billion euros $2 billion for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker's first ever penalty for breaching EU rules.
A group representing Indian startups has asked the country's antitrust watchdog to order Alphabet's Google to reinstate apps it removed for policy violations, a letter seen by Reuters shows, escalating a showdown with the US giant in a key market.
Anthropic has introduced its new family of artificial intelligence (AI) models called Claude 3. The third generation of the company’s AI-powered chatbot now comes in three separate versions — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus — where Opus is the most capable model, followed by Sonnet and Haiku.
Artificial intelligence (AI) models and generative AI models which are in any phase of testing or unreliable in any way will need to receive “explicit permission of the government of India” before it is deployed in India, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued in an advisory, as per reports.
Microsoft unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Copilot for Finance on Thursday, aiming to help financial professionals in easily navigating through everyday mundane tasks. The Copilot tool is not a new AI model, and instead builds on the existing Copilot for Microsoft 365 stack to bring new features specific to financial operations. It is currently available in public preview.
Flipkart launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service in collaboration with Axis Bank. The Flipkart UPI will be initially available for Android users and can be used for online and offline payments. With the latest update, customers can now pay bills and make fund transfers directly from the Flipkart app.
Google's decision to remove some apps in India from its app store "cannot be permitted", Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday, amid an ongoing dispute over service fee payments to the US firm.
India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) on Friday imposed a penalty of Rs. 5,49,00,000 ($662,565) on Paytm's banking arm, Paytm Payments Bank, for violations in reporting illegal money routed through its accounts, the country's finance ministry said.
Brave browser, known for its privacy-focused features, is bringing its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Leo to Android devices. The software firm first announced its AI chatbot in November 2023, when Leo was added to the desktop browser. The company’s chatbot can run on several large language models, which are available for both the free version (with rate limits) and the premium version.
Payments firm Paytm on Friday cut some ties with its payments bank unit, which India's banking regulator has ordered to be wound down, in its latest attempt to address compliance concerns that triggered a meltdown in its shares last month.
Adobe announced a new experimental artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool on Wednesday that can generate music from simple text prompts. Named Project Music GenAI Control, Adobe says the AI tool not only generates music, but also gives users “pixel-level control for music” by letting them edit, lengthen, shorten, remix, and create loops. There are more edit options available that allow for granular control of the generated clip.
Apple ID could witness a rebranding exercise and take on the Apple Account moniker before the end of 2024, a new report has revealed. The current version of Apple ID with a formal email address was first started after the introduction of iCloud in 2011. The reason behind the rumoured rebranding was not stated.
WhatsApp, Meta's popular messaging platform, has unveiled a new feature enhancing its search capabilities. The new ‘Search by Date’ feature allows users to choose a specific date to find the messages exchanged on those particular days. It is likely to help users retrieve specific information from past conversations more smoothly.
Meta and LG announced a strategic collaboration on Wednesday which is focused on extended reality (XR) devices and technologies. Meta has been working in this space has has launched multiple Meta Quest headsets, which offer virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences. Similarly, at the end of 2023, LG created an XR business unit within the Home Entertainment division to focus on building mixed-reality capable devices.
Tumblr and WordPress users might soon find that their data is being used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, as per a report. Allegedly, the parent company of the blog sites, Automattic, has struck deals with OpenAI and Midjourney to sell user-generated public content to help train their AI model.
Japan's Sony is cutting about 900 jobs at its PlayStation unit and shutting a studio in London, it said on Tuesday as the videogame industry struggles to recover from a post-pandemic slump.
Krutrim AI has been launched to the public and now anyone can try out the newest artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot. The founder of the startup, Bhavish Aggarwal took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to announce that the platform was being rolled out as a public beta and is now available to a wider user base.
Mark Zuckerberg has asked a US court to dismiss him as a personal defendant in two dozen lawsuits accusing Meta and other social media companies of addicting children to their products. If the US court decides that Zuckerberg cannot be held personally liable in the litigation, it would have no impact on the allegations against Meta.
Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant's artificial intelligence models, three people familiar with the matter said. The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million (roughly Rs. 497 crore) per year, according to one of the sources.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has requested the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to examine a request from Paytm to become a third-party application provider, in order to allow UPI payments on Paytm to continue working after the central bank's wind down date for Paytm Payments Bank.
Google SoundPod is coming to merchants in India in the coming months, the company said on Thursday. After a year-long limited pilot, the company revealed that it is bringing its device for payment alerts to merchants in the country, along with cashback offers. Google's SoundPod will compete with soundboxes from rivals like PhonePe and Paytm.
Instagram Creator Marketplace is expanding to eight new regions including India, the company announced on Wednesday. Meta will invite creators from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK to join the portal that connects brands and content creators for branded content or partnership ads on the platform.
Intel has signed Microsoft as a foundry customer for its 18A technology, the company said at an event. The chipmaker said it expects to beat its 2025 deadline to overtake TSMC in advanced chip manufacturing. The news of Intel's 14A technology is the first time the Silicon Valley company has given details of its plans beyond 2025.
Hanooman, a series of language models focused towards the Indian demographic was unveiled on Wednesday, February 21, as per a report. The AI model was reportedly showcased at a recent technology event in Mumbai. It supports 11 Indian regional languages and will operate in the fields of healthcare, governance, financial services, and education.
Apple is updating iMessage with a PQ3 new cryptographic protocol to protect users from sophisticated attacks using quantum computers. According to Apple, the new encryption protocol could protect users from scenarios where encrypted data has been stored, only to be decrypted using a quantum computer at a later date.
Adobe has announced generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features for its web client and desktop app of Acrobat. The software giant has added an AI Assistant that can do multiple tasks and help users easily understand and analyse large PDF files. One notable feature will summarise files and present it in a formatted and easy to follow text block.
Walmart-backed Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart has held discussions over potentially acquiring the on-demand delivery platform Dunzo, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
India's Zee Entertainment is making a final attempt to restart discussions with Japan's Sony Group to revive their $10 billion merger deal which was scrapped on Jan. 22, Indian business daily Economic Times reported on Tuesday, citing people aware of the matter.
The first human patient implanted with a brain-chip from Neuralink appears to have fully recovered and is able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts, the startup's founder Elon Musk said late on Monday.
WhatsApp Web will soon get support for secret codes for locked chats, according to details shared by a feature tracker. While users can already lock specific chats on WhatsApp for iOS and Android that are hidden behind a secret code, the same functionality is expected to arrive on WhatsApp Web in the future.
An investigation into possible foreign exchange violations at Paytm Payments bank by India's financial crime fighting agency has not yet found any breaches, a government source directly aware of the matter said on Monday.
Apple will face a European Union fine close to EUR 500 million ($539 million or roughly Rs. 4,475 crore) over the regulator’s investigation into allegations it silenced music-streaming rivals, including Spotify Technology SA, on its platforms.
The Reserve Bank of India does not plan to impose drastic measures on India's fintech sector after the recent action against Paytm Payments Bank, according to P Vasudevan, an executive director in charge of enforcement at the central bank. Paytm has been in the crosshairs of the regulator for some time, with multiple warnings over the past two years.
Paytm Payments Bank has been granted additional time by the RBI to wind down its operations in the country, the central bank announced on Friday. Customers won't be able to add fresh funds to their Paytm Payments Bank accounts after March 15 Meanwhile, parent firm One97 Communications has signed on a new banking partner to try to survive the ongoing crisis by keeping some of its popular products running.
Twenty tech firms including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Adobe, TikTok, and X announced on Friday they have agreed to work together to prevent deceptive AI content from interfering with elections across the globe this year. The accord was signed at the Munich Security Conference.
Google and Meta have announced new AI models. While Google has started an early testing of its Gemini 1.5 model which has the capability of long-context understanding across modalities, Meta’s Video Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (V-JEPA) model, which has been publicly released, can teach AI models about the real world through videos and using predictive analysis techniques.
OpenAI has introduced Sora, its first text-to-video generation model. The company claims it can generate up to 60-second-long videos. As per the company, it can generate complex scenes with multiple characters, multiple camera angles, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. At present, it is only available to the red teamers and a small number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback about the product.
Meta is advising small businesses on how to advertise on Facebook and Instagram without paying fees imposed by Apple. Instead of buying ads on the iOS apps for Facebook and Instagram, Meta is advising the companies to buy ads through a web browser.
Apple is preparing to add a critical new software tool for app developers that would step up competition with Microsoft. The iPhone maker has been racing to add more artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into its services and has been working on the tool for the last year as part of the next major version of Xcode. Apple is also said to be exploring the use of AI to generate code for testing applications.
Google’s Duet AI has started making an appearance for users who have enrolled into the Workspace Labs program. Duet AI was first unveiled by the tech giant during the Google I/O 2023, and since then it has been in a closed testing phase. Now, Google has started wider testing of the feature and the AI side panel has begun emerging in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google Slides.
Android Safe Browsing is coming to smartphones running on Google's smartphone operating system, according to details shared by Android expert Mishaal Rahman. The latest security feature from Google is aimed at keeping users safe while they are browsing in third-party apps, according to details spotted on a leaked screenshot.
OpenAI is testing a new memory feature for ChatGPT to help make conversations seamless and hassle-free. The feature will allow the artificial intelligence (AI)--powered chatbot to retain pieces of information beyond a specific conversation. The company says that users will have full control over what ChatGPT remembers and what it does not.
Apple's longest-serving designer, Bart Andre, is said to depart the company. Andre was one of the last remaining designers from the Jony Ive era and helped create the aesthetic for Apple products released over the past three decades. His exit marks the near-complete turnover of the team that was once headed by Ive.
Google has updated its Email Sender Guidelines, taking a strict step to reduce spam for Gmail users. Starting February, Gmail now requires bulk senders to authenticate their accounts to avoid getting error messages on sent emails, and eventually having them rejected. As per the updated guidelines, a bulk sender is someone who sends more than 5,000 emails to personal Gmail accounts in a 24-hour cycle.
Apple and Microsoft have managed to dodge strict new European Union rules reining in Big Tech platforms for iMessage and Bing, respectively. Both firms would have been obliged to adapt their services to meet a swathe of new obligations and prohibitions in the EU.
Amid the ongoing Paytm crisis, Indian non-bank lenders are looking at options other than the beleaguered firm for loan disbursal. These lenders are said to be worried about the regulatory crisis engulfing Paytm that has led to a temporary halt of lending services.
