Saturday, June 10, 2023

Google Provides Innovative Insights On Its Imagen Editor Tool For Text-Guided Photo Edits

Tech giant Google is giving out more insights on its respective Imagen Editor which is an exclusive tool that’s designed to enable inpainting.

For those who might not be aware, this is a unique form of text-guide picture edits where users have to practically edit visuals that are either taken manually or produced through technology. This means you’re saved from redoing an image completely with this endeavor.

On a bigger scale, this Imagen Editor enables users to put out pictures, select regions that they’d like to edit, and then add text prompts for a certain area. Meanwhile, the rest of the image isn’t touched, the Android maker revealed.

One common example that the company provided related to this particular tool was a picture where a dog’s body was on display and it was altered to include a new kind of attire featuring a red-toned spacesuit. On the extreme right, you’ll find a rocked produced from cardboard with the biggest impression being the addition of gaming headphones in the color blue.

On the other hand, we saw Google lay down a few more examples and some more research on the matter. But it’s not launching this Imagen Editor for the public to benefit as it cited major issues in regards to making the best use of AI technology.

In the same way, it was putting out EditBench which is a meaningful way to gauge the quality of models designed to edit pictures.

As far as the practicality of such a feature is concerned, it’s related to the tech giant pointing out how it may enable fast, controllable, and even automatic forms of edits as the best answer when you might be short on time or have a limited budget.

Remember, recreating an image may sound simple but it’s a complex task that consumes so much time, not to mention how it requires a hefty budget.

The news of this tool comes at a time when we’re seeing Google Photos attain a new project called Magic Editor. This is designed to leverage parts of the world of generative AI technology.

As far as products being offered to consumers are concerned, we’re talking about Imagen and more similar models that need to be up for grabs for those making use of Google Slides. But don’t worry as the testing for this feature has started only recently where users can design customized backgrounds for Google Meet.


Read next: ChatGPT May Have Launched Like A Rocket But It’s Declining In Growth As Google Bard Records Great Performance
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Microsoft Enables Users To Use Its AI Bing Chat For Communication Through Voice Commands

Microsoft is really proving to be a great pioneer in the world of AI as the computational giant was seen announcing a new change for users today.

The company has enabled its AI-powered Bing chat to be used for the sake of communication through voice commands.

And the change is rolling out today, it revealed. So from today onwards, users can press on the microphone in the chat and ask for any queries instead of penning them down.

The company acknowledged through a blog post seen today how it adored making use of voice inputs to conduct chats through smartphones. But now, it hopes to take things to the next level by allowing you to click on a microphone that’s located across the Bing Chat.

For now, the feature is gaining support in a few different languages that include German, Mandarin, English, and French but with time, it hopes to include a wide range of some more languages.

Those who wish to make use of the Bing Chat for replies through their own voices can also do that as the feature provides support for replies that are based upon the text-speech phenomenon.

In case you were still wondering, the Bing Chat innovation that was rolled out today will give out support to all of the user’s responses that entail the text to speech and it would enable people to produce replies to queries in their own tones.

This past week, we saw Microsoft also unveil support for its Image Creator by Bing which is going to be related to all the different chat modes out there that come into play after the complete integration of the AI tool into Bing, last March.

In the same way, we’re hearing more news about how the new Bing Chat can produce more visuals for questions linked to travel that would be rolled out by this week’s start and that would be accompanied by links for details related to Bing Travel.

The figure for turns enabled for one Bing Chat is increased to 30. Previously, it stood at just 20. Moreover, the number of turns carried out each day also saw a major rise, going up to 300.

Such new limits would be applicable to the chats being carried out and it would also be seen for any exchanges taking place in the past after getting stored in the chat history of Bing. Hence, you can go back and visit those places and return to any type of conversation that could have attained a particular limit and ended up continuing from the exact same location that people left off.

Microsoft first unveiled its Bing Chat in February of this year and not a lot of users knew what to expect from the software giant. But after learning more, it’s safe to say that people are in love with this particular version and can’t get enough of the new and exciting features that continue to be unveiled on a daily basis. This entails the most recent option of sidebar chats.

In the same way, we saw the tech giant also include Bing Chat across its Windows 11 search after it unveiled a new Windows update for a feature called Moment 2.

Meanwhile, seven days back, the company said it would be putting an end to support for the popular Cortana app which is a product of Windows. This had to do with the fact that a spot was already taken by a Windows Copilot at the start of the Build Event for 2023.


Read next: 15 Countries Break Trust by Imposing Internet Restrictions Despite Pledges for Freedom
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

15 Countries Break Trust by Imposing Internet Restrictions Despite Pledges for Freedom

In our modern, interconnected society, the freedom of the internet is vital for promoting access to knowledge and safeguarding basic human rights. Unfortunately, despite assurances from governments, numerous countries persist in imposing limitations and even completely shutting down internet services. Surfshark, a provider of virtual private networks (VPNs), has conducted a recent study that exposes the countries that made promises to support internet freedom but ultimately failed to fulfill their obligations.

The evaluation centers around a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) that addresses human rights on the Internet and seeks to protect and advance these rights. Surfshark conducts an analysis to uncover the inconsistencies between countries' stated positions on the resolution and their actual practices regarding internet restrictions.

Among the 193 member states of the United Nations, a total of 15 countries failed to fulfill their commitments. These nations, which include India, Sudan, Pakistan, Cuba, Uzbekistan, and Russia, either imposed continuous internet restrictions or faced interruptions in internet access after expressing support for the UN HRC resolution in July 2021. The data obtained from Surfshark's Internet Shutdown Tracker underscores the contradiction between their stated intentions and their actual actions.

Interestingly, out of the 193 UN Member States, 111 countries took a passive stance, neither voting in favor nor sponsoring the resolution, while 78 countries actively supported the resolution through their votes or sponsorship. Four countries, including Cameroon, China, Eritrea, and Venezuela, chose to abstain from voting, casting doubts on their dedication to the human rights promotion online.

According to Surfshark's tracking data, it has been found that in the 15 countries that did not keep their promise, there have been at least 66 cases of internet disruptions caused by political conflicts since the resolution was adopted. Surprisingly, a significant majority of these cases (88%) involved the implementation of new restrictions that occurred after the resolution was passed.

India stands out as the country with the highest number of internet disruptions since the adoption of the resolution. Notably, India's ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps, implemented in June 2020, preceded the resolution but was still ongoing. However, numerous restrictions occurred after the resolution, indicating a disregard for the pledge made.

Sudan comes in a close second with a notable frequency of internet interruptions happening after the country expressed support for the resolution. The first internet disruption occurred due to a military coup in Sudan, and it was followed by ongoing armed conflicts among various military factions, leading to further incidents of internet disruptions.

In contrast, while the resolution was adopted, Nigeria and Ukraine already had existing restrictions in effect, but they did not introduce any additional limitations thereafter. Nigeria's ban on Twitter, which remained in place until January 2022, and Ukraine's ongoing blockage of popular Russian apps since 2017 serve as illustrations of these ongoing restrictions that were not intensified following the resolution's adoption.

Comparing countries' positions on the 2016 and 2021 resolutions, it is evident that some nations have changed their stance on promoting human rights on the Internet. China and Venezuela, both of which previously supported the 2016 resolution, abstained from voting on the 2021 resolution. China's ongoing internet restrictions on social media platforms since 2016 might have influenced its decision. Venezuela, with no recorded internet restrictions before 2019, witnessed a surge in disruptions during a presidential crisis, leading to its change in position.

Moreover, 27 countries transitioned from supporting the 2016 resolution to adopting a passive stance on the 2021 resolution, even though they had no recorded cases of internet restrictions. On the other hand, 20 countries shifted from a passive stance in 2016 to actively supporting the 2021 resolution. Notably, half of the countries that supported the 2021 resolution but imposed internet restrictions displayed this specific change in stance.

As internet freedom remains a fundamental human right, it is disheartening to see countries disregarding their commitments. To promote an open and accessible internet, it is crucial to raise awareness about violators and advocate for the protection of internet freedoms.




Read next: Trust vs. Convenience Battle for Data Privacy Divides Social Media Users
by Ayesha Hasnain via Digital Information World

Mobile App Revenue Report Reveals TikTok's Monetization Dominance Over Gaming Apps

TikTok has accomplished an extraordinary milestone in the realm of mobile monetization by outperforming popular gaming apps in terms of revenue. During the initial quarter of 2023, TikTok became the first app to surpass $1 billion in consumer spending within a single quarter. This remarkable achievement showcases TikTok's capability to redefine the boundaries of mobile app monetization.

A comprehensive report on mobile app revenue in 2023, conducted by DataAI, offers valuable insights into the current state of mobile monetization. The report highlights the latest trends in in-app purchases and reveals that TikTok's revenue in the first quarter of 2023 surpassed that of even the most popular gaming apps. While Honor of Kings, a widely played game, secured the second position with global consumer spending on Google Play and iOS amounting to $570 M, YouTube, the renowned video platform, claimed the third spot with over $530 M in revenue.

TikTok distinguishes itself from other non-gaming applications through its unique approach to in-application purchases. In contrast to the majority of such applications that heavily depend on subscriptions for generating revenue, TikTok prioritizes one-time purchases. These purchases are frequently made to show support and appreciation to content creators, positioning TikTok as the only application (non-gaming) in the single-time purchases top ten list for earnings within the United States.

TikTok's success surpasses that of well-known games such as Pokémon GO, Candy Crush Saga, Minecraft, and Roblox. Through the establishment of a dedicated and enthusiastic fan community, TikTok has achieved remarkable prosperity without placing significant emphasis on subscriptions. Instead, the platform has amassed billions of dollars by leveraging the use of TikTok coins. This innovative approach has certainly captured the interest of other social platforms that have yet to explore alternative monetization strategies beyond traditional advertising methods.

The growing acceptance and utilization of in-app purchases are indicative of shifting consumer preferences and behaviors. With the increasing amount of time people spend on their mobile devices, they have become more comfortable engaging with apps for various purposes such as fitness, entertainment, health, and dating. This trend is fueled by the demand for reasonably priced options and the ease of services that automatically renew, which provide app developers with consistent and sustainable revenue streams. In the United States, the majority of non-gaming in-app purchase revenue in 2023 was generated from purchases ranging from $10 to $100, marking a 6-percentage point rise compared to the same period in 2022.

In mobile gaming, mid-tier in-application purchases (valued between $10 and $99) cover 42 percent of spending. Consumers either make multiple low-cost purchases or opt for higher-priced items above $100. Interestingly, nearly half of the revenue from in-app purchases in the US gaming market comes from transactions under $10, while a significant portion comes from purchases exceeding $100.

The impressive growth of Hinge, a well-known dating app under the ownership of Match Group, highlights the significance of providing appropriate features at competitive prices to fuel revenue expansion. Hinge's dynamic approach to monetization resulted in a substantial 60 percent increase in revenue year over year in the United States during 2022. Through the introduction of one-time purchases called Roses, which bear resemblance to the Super Likes of Tinder, Hinge's success with Roses in Q1 2023 boosted revenue by over 33 percent in the US, particularly on iOS.

TikTok's record-breaking consumer spending has positioned it as a mobile app monetization leader, highlighting the importance of adapting strategies to meet evolving consumer preferences. This success signals a new era of revenue growth based on innovative features and pricing.





Read next: ChatGPT Takes the AI Chatbot Market by Storm with 5 Million iOS Downloads
by Ayesha Hasnain via Digital Information World

ChatGPT May Have Launched Like A Rocket But It’s Declining In Growth As Google Bard Records Great Performance

ChatGPT launched into the tech world with a bang and boy did it take many experts by surprise.

It was not long before the world became familiar with the incredible tool that managed to attain a whopping growth in such a short span of time.

But new stats claim the law of gravity seems to have finally caught up with the popular offering by OpenAI and now, we’re seeing a much slower growth than before. What could the reason be? Well, it does not take rocket science to remember that Google’s Bard has been rolled out to the masses and while the initial period of success was slow and steady, things are quickly picking up the pace and we’re saying hello to mega sales with promising future results.

Today, ChatGPT has reached 1.8 billion visits from all over the world, thanks to recently published stats from SimilarWeb for the month of May. This is certainly so much more than the success witnessed by Microsoft Bing, despite it being rolled out a while back.

Remember, ChatGPT was first launched in November end. But let’s not forget the figure outlined above includes totals that entail repeats by similar people. You will find another special count for visitors that isn’t launched yet.

Moving on to the likes of Google Bard, well, this AI-powered chatbot saw a whopping 142 million people visit the endeavor last month and that’s almost 50 million more than the previous month.

Now Bard as well as Bing are both free of cost and they’re providing great benefits in terms of good access and more accurate and relevant data than your usual ChatGPT as it’s built across leading search engines.

The ChatGPT tool was attracting a whopping 1.8 billion visits from all over the place and when you look at the breakup per day for April and May, you’ll find little to no difference which means growth was stagnant.

It’s all very interesting because Google was so hesitant to introduce any AI chatbot, despite other leading tech giants taking over the tech world. On that note, the firm’s engineers sat down and opted to launch a new product that would really serve as major competition for others.

While some called it a rushed product, others were skeptical. And it was not until the month of May that we saw it get expanded to the world and also to Google’s own search engine and various other services.

Now the real question is linked to whether or not the decline in ChatGPT’s growth is something OpenAi should be worried about or not?

We feel the company has now reached a point in time where a lot of profit is related to API deals such as the ones related to Microsoft instead of traffic linked to the webpage of ChatGPT.

For now, OpenAI is yet to shed light on the costs linked to running this service but estimates from the external world say it’s close to $700,000 each day. And when you’ve got some users paying for a Plus variant at just $20 each month, the figure does not dramatically cause a fall in costs, despite what the firm may have hoped for.

Whatever the case may be, OpenAI does not seem to be too worried. It is making the most of this service to produce more awareness and allow more commercial deals to be accessed to all the various types of APIs across the board.





Read next: New Study Reveals the Current State of Global Economic Freedom
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Friday, June 9, 2023

New Study Reveals the Current State of Global Economic Freedom

Economic freedoms are a core part of liberal countries because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up facilitating easy trade and growth. The Heritage Foundation just revealed the state of economic freedom around the world, providing some insights into which countries are performing better than others with all things having been considered and taken into account.

It turns out that Singapore sits at the very top of this list with a score of 83.9 out of a maximum possible total of 100. Switzerland was close at its heels with a score of 83.8, followed by Ireland with 82 points. Taiwan was the only other country to surpass the 80 point mark, getting 80.7 points in total.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that these scores were aggregated based on four categories. These categories were then further subdivided into three indicators. The first of these categories is Rule of Law, with property rights, judicial effectiveness and government integrity serving as key indicators in that respect.

The second category was that of government size. Tax burdens, fiscal health and government spending all factored into this area. Following that we have regulatory efficiency, which included the key indicators of labor, monetary and business freedoms. Finally the fourth category of open markets is composed of financial, trade and investment freedoms that can make it easier to do business than might have been the case otherwise.

Europe was the best performing region by far, with seven of the top ten countries hailing from that continent. On the other end of the spectrum was Africa, with five of the ten worst ranking countries being located on the continent. Some countries like Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan were not ranked due to the difficulties in obtaining useful data from those regions.

At the very bottom of the list was the dictatorial East Asian nation of North Korea which managed to get a paltry score of just 2.9 out of 100. Cuba was second last, more specifically in 175th place, with a score of 24.3. Venezuela did not far much better with 25.8, and three African nations just barely squeezed past it, namely Sudan with a score of 32.8, Zimbabwe with 39 and Eritrea with 39.5.

The US is popularly believed to be the country with the highest possible amount of economic freedoms, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, it ranked 25th in the world with a score of 70.6. It didn’t even rank first in its region, with Canada and Chile both outranking it in the Americas with scores of 73.7 and 71.1 respectively.

Moving over to Asia and Oceania, Australia and New Zealand unsurprisingly came out on top with scores of 74.8 and 78.9 apiece. However, Taiwan managed to surpass them both with its 80.7 score, and South Korea also does admirably with a score of 73.7. Singapore’s 83.9 score makes the East Asian region a particularly useful locale for people who are looking to freely conduct their business, although Japan mirrored America by defying expectations with a surprisingly low score of 69.3.
H/T: Visualcapitalist

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

A Revolutionary Discovery Related to Scientific Writing Generated by Artificial Intelligence with Close to 100% Precision

ChatGPT, the revolutionary discovery of artificial intelligence, the chatbot captivates the world with its remarkably humanoid discussions. A recent study reveals intriguing hints that reveal the difference between artificial intelligence and humanoid talks. In a fascinating breakthrough, investigators have devised a tool with an astonishing up to 100% precision rate to recognize artificial intelligence-generated scientific writing.

Foremost writer at Kansas emphasized their diligent efforts in creating an easily comprehensible approach, enabling learners in college to construct an AI sensor for various writing styles. She further said that addressing artificial scientific writing is crucial, emphasizing that one doesn't require a CS degree to make meaningful assistance to this domain.

Additionally, she candidly points out the prevailing issues in artificial writing, stressing their value. One prominent challenge lies in the collection of text from multiple references without proper precision verification—a situation where comes a game name "two truths and a lie". This conceit vividly underscores the need to preach the glaring problems within AI writing, facilitating a thought-provoking speech on its precision and goodness.

In this digital world, artificial intelligence content recognition software, and existing online tools exhibit meritorious undertaking, yet their applicability to scientific writing remains limited. Recognizing this void, the group launched on a mission to develop a purpose-built tool with unique abilities. Their focus centered on views, a genre of articles authored by scientists, providing comprehensive insights into the precise analysis of the topics. To train their model, they meticulously specified sixty-four stances and generated a hundred and twenty-eight ChatGPTarticles on related subjects.

Distinguishing human writing from the artificial is now a challenging task, striking distinctions appear in para layouts. Humans exhibit complex interpretations in sentence count, density, and length, while artificial writing tends to lack such complexity. Furthermore, punctuation preferences and vocabulary choices become denoting signs. Scientists favor terms and words like "yet," "although," and "but," whereas ChatGPT leans towards "others" and "investigators" in its discourse.


During testing, the prototype astoundingly achieved a flawless hundred percent precision in discerning full-perspective writings authored by artificial intelligence from those crafted by human hands. Impressively, when tasked with specifying particular paras, the prototype exhibited a remarkable exactness rate of ninety-two percent. Surpassing an existing artificial intelligence sensor on the market by a substantial range, the research team's groundbreaking model stands as a testament to its unparalleled performance.

Embarking on the following phase, the research group aims to explore the prototype's relevance across various fronts. Expanding its horizons, the model will experience strict testing on vast datasets containing various academic scientific writing. With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence textbots, the researchers are eager to establish if their model can endure, standing as a stalwart in the face of rising intricacy.

As curiosity abounds, Desaire acknowledges the pressing question surrounding the detection of student-written papers. While the prototype excels in discerning AI from scientific writers, its primary focus doesn't encompass catching artificial essays written by students. Nonetheless, Desaire highlights the accessibility for individuals to replicate their methods, empowering them to construct customized models for their specific needs.

Read next: Navigating Through the Consumers' Concerns and the Future of Artificial Intelligence


by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World