Is X's Time Up? New Survey Exposes Twitter's Nosedive After Musk Takeover

A report 'Infinite Dial Report' by Edison Research shows that X (formerly Twitter) usage is declining in 2024. The report talks about different social media trends based on a survey of over 1,000 US citizens over the ages of 12. The data indicates that many social media users are turning away from using X.

In November 2022, X claimed to have around 46 million monetized users on the app from the USA.

The report shows a 30% year-over-year decline in the rate of people using X in 2024 compared to 2023 among those surveyed. This aligns with other third-party reports also indicating X usage is dropping.

In October 2023, Apptopia's data showed X seeing a 13% decline in its monthly users ever since Elon Musk took over the app. SimilarWeb reported around a 14% decrease in X's mobile and web visits since September 2022. In March 2024, Sensor Tower reported X seeing a decline, but X immediately denied these claims without offering data to clarify.

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X's own data shows it has around 250 million daily active users in 2024, the same as November 2022 after Musk's acquisition, suggesting stagnant user growth.

The Infinite Dial Report also shows that X's ad revenue has declined by around 60%, but Musk claims many advertisers who left are now returning to the app. This suggests advertising success on X depends more on engagement with a brand's particular audience rather than overall trends.

Read next: Amazon, Microsoft and Google Are the World’s Biggest Cloud Service Providers
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Amazon, Microsoft and Google Are the World’s Biggest Cloud Service Providers

Three of the largest cloud computing service providers have made up 66% of the total revenue in the global market. The three of the biggest cloud computing service providers are Amazon, Microsoft and Google. These three providers have generated billions of dollars only because of their reliable clouds that help many big companies store their data. Moreover, many AI models have also been running on clouds that has increased the demand of cloud service providers.

According to Synergy Research Group, the biggest cloud service provider is Amazon Web Services with 31% of the total market share. Microsoft Azure is in second place and has 24% of the total market share. 11% of the market shares are taken by Google Cloud. All three of these service providers are based in the USA. Fourth place is taken by China’s Alibaba Cloud with 4% market shares. Salesforce has 3% shares of the total market shares. IBM Cloud, Oracle and Tencent Cloud, all have 2% market shares each. The remaining 21% of the market shares are from other cloud service providers.

With 31% of the market shares, Amazon Web Services have generated $24.3 billion revenue in Q4 of 2023. The annual sales growth of Amazon has increased by 13% from Q4 of 2022. Microsoft’s sales increased by 30% and Google’s sales increased by 26% as compared to in Q4 of 2022. As it is quite prominent, USA companies have taken over the cloud service market and China makes up 5% of the total market shares.

As AI is running on clouds, it is expected that the market for cloud service providers will be in more demand in the coming years. About 98% of the companies in the world rely on cloud for their data so as AI will incorporate itself in these companies, demand for cloud will grow.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Lethal AI Tech Export: Israeli Startups' Role in Gaza Conflict Raises Precision Concerns

The concerns are on the rise relating to Israel’s non-stop offensive behavior in the Gaza Strip where a huge number of innocent civilians are losing their lives daily.

Startup firms belonging to Israel are, as per Nikkei Asia, exporting dangerous and lethal weapons that make use of military tech that’s powered via the likes of AI, escalating concerns about precision amid ongoing conflict.

One of the AI systems that’s gaining publicity due to its sheer nature of devastation is Edge 360 which is curated with the help of Axon Vision and it keeps getting installed inside armored cars present in the Gaza Strip. This can give alerts about threats arising across the board while warning soldiers who are in charge of the vehicle too.

In the same way, the autonomous weapons system also trying to assist with enhancing the entire decision-making ordeal by carrying out tests that are usually performed by a human soldier during the war.

Edge 360 is just one of many systems that has been highlighted as spreading terror and possibly claiming the lives of many civilians while others are also scheduled to be used for the same reason.

Axon Vision was created nearly seven years back but its sudden delivery to Israel’s military is now being spoken of for the first time.

It’s providing the country’s army with so much power and the people behind the system claim to be in close contact with the military to ensure it’s working to strike the right targets that Israel continues to take immense pride in.

Axon Vision hopes to make greater enhancements in the technology and even export it to various parties. They are currently conducting research and the next step is to incorporate this into armored vehicles.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Another system being spoken about is the Orion Mission support platform that’s rolled out by Asio Tech. It’s the first time that we’re hearing about its use in the Israeli conflict in Gaza. This can determine the right target range and provide the military with the right hints about when and if there’s a target on the ground that they need to be aware of.

What’s even more concerning is how many systems such as Orion can function so well through offline mode. This means such platforms are very effective when the links for communication have been disrupted as per Asio Tech. Therefore, the firm vows to make bigger enhancements on this front depending on mistakes carried out in the past.

Next up is SmartShooter which is one innovative tech that has been drawing attention from the masses since the war’s start. It can provide fire control supplies for guns like rifles which can target to make sure a precise region was struck.

UK soldiers continued their training in the recent past where they were trying to shoot drones that use SmartShooter material linked to smaller arms.

• Also read: AI Image Generators Stumped: Can't Create Simple White or Black Backgrounds, Researchers Discover

Several startups located in Israel are now making use of drone-based tech which are added to drones to give great protection against acts such as the use of jammers.

So many innocent youngsters who worked in the Israeli army since the start are now getting dismissed as it appears that technology is on the rise to overtake their positions.

There has been a long list of conflicts taking place between the Palestinians and the Iranians. One such example is an engineer that continues to work in sectors like research as well as development where they are designed to better save people’s lives.

For instance, the creation of military tech has similarly raised some thoughts over the rising number of casualties. But seeing new AI military tech giving Israel more power can only be daunting for the world striving for peace.

No matter what Israel may say, it’s daunting to realize that the Israeli Defensive Forces are killing thousands and causing a famine where even aid supplies have been prevented from entering that could provide relief and save hundreds of lives.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

AI Image Generators Stumped: Can't Create Simple White or Black Backgrounds, Researchers Discover

Many generative AIs like MidJourney and Dall-E can generate perfectly crafted complex images but it was recently found out that these AI image generators are not good enough for generating simple images. A data scientist, Cody Nash, experienced AI struggling with generating a plain image when he asked the generator to create a White painting. Nash just wanted AI to produce an image with a plain white background but the AI generator couldn't perform such a simple task.

This experience led Cody Nash to write an detailed analysis, explaining whether AI is capable of creating an image with just plain color or not. He asked Dall-E 3 to generate an image with nothing but white color. Dall-E kind of understood the task but couldn't deliver the exact image needed. It added different shapes, images and features to a white background. This was not what Nash needed so he asked Dall-E 3 again to generate an image with nothing but smooth and plain white background. The results were close but not exactly right.

Nash told a media outlet that the purpose of his research was to see if AI could generate plain backgrounds. He added that it's good to see that AI is getting creative with its images because even though he was asking for something else, AI was giving him something more creative.

After Cody Nosh’s experiment with Dall-E 3, we also ran some experiments asking for a plain white background on Bing Image Creator, a few Stable Diffusion based tools and Dall-E. Not surprisingly, the images generated by these AI models were also not plain white. MidJourney suddenly froze, Microsoft Image Creator took way too much time, while Dall-E gave images which were not related to the prompt. All of them also gave the same results when they were asked for backgrounds of different colors but some are a little better than others. MidJourney started with generating images that were closer to the prompt, but continued adding shapes and features on the top.

We wondering if Google Gemini will do the same, but surprisingly it produce the most accurate result for plan black and white backgrounds.

However, it also struggled when we asked about other colors, this prompt for green color "create image a plain background of green color of this code #22B14C and nothing else" produced unwanted results.

This shows that even though AI tools are making our lives easier, there are still some areas where they lack. Not everything can be perfect and that's the deal with AI tools too.

Read next: 65% of Start Ups Are Now Paying for ChatGPT
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

65% of Start Ups Are Now Paying for ChatGPT

ChatGPT has become arguably the single most consequential new product of the past few years, and it turns out that it’s enjoying enduring popularity among start ups as well with all things having been considered and taken into account. While the market cooldown has created a situation wherein a number of start ups are struggling to make ends meet, they are still paying for a premium subscription of ChatGPT because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving them access to the latest version.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a financial consulting firm by the name of KruzeConsulting just put out some data about the start ups in its portfolio. Of the 800 or so start ups that are on its platform, 65% stated that they are paying for ChatGPT. It bears mentioning that the proportion was as low as 3% as of December 2022, which was when the paid version of ChatGPT became available.

This suggests a massive uptick in the number of start ups that are taking an interest in the paid version of this chatbot. It started gaining a lot of traction in early 2023, with ChatGPT Plus becoming an extremely useful tool. It has the ability to make work easier to do than might have been the case otherwise, and as if that wasn't enough, it offers GPT 4 which is considerably more advanced than the GPT 3.5 available in the free version.

GPT Plus also gives users the chance to utilize DALL-E 3. This ability to generate AI images is something that can prove useful in a wide range of scenarios. OpenAI stopped offering subscriptions for ChatGPT Plus last year, prompting some users to offer them on eBay for a marked up price. It is now offering them again at this current point in time, and that means that there will be a flurry of subscribers. Companies can get a customized version of ChatGPT as well that can cater to their precise and specific needs.

Chart: DIW

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Here Are the Most Impersonated Brands in Phishing Attacks

If you have ever received an email that asked you to click on a link lest your account with a particular service get disabled, it’s almost certain that it was a phishing attempt. These emails might look like they come from a legitimate source, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, they’re an attempt to get your log in credentials or payment information.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that phishing attacks like these are some of the most frequent cyber attacks that get made. They can result in issues such as you losing access to confidential information, or even intellectual property getting leaked to the Dark Web. As a result of the fact that this is the case, organizations should continuously train their employees for the purposes of making these attacks less successful than might have been the case otherwise.

Proofpoint just released the 2024 iteration of its State of the Phish report which reveals which brands end up getting phished the most with all things having been considered and taken into account.

It turns out that Microsoft was the most impersonated brand by far, with 68 million phishing emails sent out using its name in 2023 alone. Of these 68 million emails, 20 million talked about an Office 365 subscription because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making users more likely to click.

Adobe came in at a distant second with 9.4 million, closely followed by DHL with 8.8 million. Google then came in fourth with 6.1 million emails, and AOL managed to close out the top five with 4.4 million emails.

It bears mentioning that people still using AOL might be less tech savvy than those that are using more recent email clients, and that might create a situation wherein they’d click on links due to note knowing the harm that they can cause. It’s essential that people and employees alike be trained so that they steer clear of these links.

Chart: DIW

Read next: One Out of Six Phishing Email Attachments Get Opened, New Report Reveals
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

After Introducing Many Good Features Back to Back, Instagram is Set to Introduce a New feature Called Blend

Instagram is working on a new feature that will blend the reels that you have shared with your friends and will suggest you reels according to them. The feature is known as “Blend” and it will give you reels suggestions according to the type of reels you and your friends share with each other. App researcher, Alessandro Paluzzi, shared the example of this feature on X. He shows that Instagram is bringing out this feature that is going to facilitate a lot of users who love sharing reels with their friends.

Instagram’s chief said in 2022 that most friends interact with each other online more than offline. Now, friends talk to each other by sharing reels in the DMs, not by posting on their Instagram feed. Due to this, Instagram is working on a lot of features that can help the users who love DMing their friends.

Inbox notes is also one of these features that will highlight the chat prompts from your conversations and will highlight them at the top of your DM inboxes. Channels are helping a lot of influencers and celebrities stay in touch with their followers through the DMs. Collections is also a feature by Instagram that lets the users collaborate and interact with a post on their group feed. Instagram has also introduced a new feature that lets the users share a post to only their close friends on a feed.

Blend seems like it is a great feature to link more people with each other through reels and memes they share with each other. This feature can either make Instagram a more interesting app for friends or it won’t work as well as expected. This feature isn’t available for testing but soon it will be ready for use.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World