Apple Equips Siri With ChatGPT While Opening Up Endless AI Opportunities To Other First-Party Apps

Tech giant Apple just confirmed how it was going to equip its systems with a vast array of brilliant AI opportunities and the first amongst many entails the addition of ChatGPT to Siri.

But that’s not all! The company hopes to have a wide range of apps owned by the company be equipped with OpenAI’s powerful AI-based chatbot endeavor. This was certainly major news and a serious highlight at this year’s WWDC conference that took place yesterday.

The company explained how it was so thrilled for this new collaboration that sees two tech giants uniting on one front most uniquely. Apple shared how it was still committed to giving users the safest and most innovative experience out there today. And these types of collaborations would make the feature accessible to everyone in search of advanced AI.

Siri would be asking ChatGPT for its expert advice when needed and when it feels it could be useful, the company explained during its keynote last night. For instance, if you require menu ideas or need help with your next garden project, don’t be afraid to ask. All you need to do is request Siri for help and that would feed the data into the app automatically and roll out the answer if and when permission to do so is given.

Users can use images alongside queries that are thrown in ChatGPT’s direction via the Siri assistant. Furthermore, you can ask queries linked to docs of any kind of PDF. Meanwhile, Apple has also chosen to combine the feature of OpenAI with a host of writing tools that enable users to curate content using the technology such as pictures or even requests for ideas that can be sent out to the assistant to get revised editions or any kind of variation.

The combination of ChatGPT with Siri would be arriving on all iOS 18 devices, including Macs and iPads, the company revealed. The launch would take place during the latter part of this year and would be free without the need to produce OpenAI accounts like one would normally do to use the powerful AI tool.

At the start, all the Siri assistants would be powered using GPT-4o which is the company’s newest and flagship form of Generative AI model.

On the other hand, we know that subscribers to OpenAI’s premium plans would be able to attain paid features that come with a host of Apple’s leading apps including the likes of Siri as they’re in-build now.

Many critics feel this is serious or major news. Who knew Apple who is so strict on privacy and security would ever reach a day that it would partner with ChatGPT? Well, in case you’re wondering. Apple claims all privacy protections are built inside such systems. So any request generated from the user’s end would not be stored by OpenAI while the user’s IP address would always stay obscured.

Read next: Apple Finally Embraces RCS in Latest iOS 18 Update
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Apple Finally Embraces RCS in Latest iOS 18 Update

Tech giant Apple has just rolled out RCS support for Messages on iOS 18.

The company shared the glad tidings with users yesterday and how this new standard would soon be replacing the classic SMS that’s deemed to be the default means of communication amongst Android as well as Apple phones.

The decision is certainly a major one after the company faced mega backlash and scrutiny from regulators who asked the company to do more so that others could find it simpler to communicate.

That’s all that we know so far in regards to the release and how iOS 18 users can benefit from it. To find out more, we dragged ourselves to the company’s website which reveal what the upcoming release is going to appear like on devices.

The text field would entail RCS that shows you’ve attained connectivity. Meanwhile, the rest would remain the same and is deemed to be the usual standard with nothing new being observed.

In case you did not know, those with the usual iOS and Android devices have trouble messaging and when they do, it tends to fall upon SMS. Meanwhile, all images and videos are rolled out at poorer quality while the texts are shortened. And if that does not sound daunting enough, the chats have no E2E encryption like that witnessed across iMessage.

All texts seen on Android devices pop up in green bubbles and it’s just a little chaotic for so many people.

RCS was first rolled out as the key replacement for SMS. It gave rise to plenty of offers including read recipients and typing field indicators that enable users to generate long texts and provide more support for pictures and videos featuring better quality.

So as one can imagine, it’s quite similar to iMessage. Today, this is deemed to be a standard tool for Android devices as American wireless carriers fully take on the ordeal nearly five years ago.

But when it came down to Apple joining hands, it refused to do so and just behaved in the most stubborn manner imaginable and withheld any support in this regard.

Beginning with the iOS 18 device, some of the iMessage-like offerings would be seen through cross-app conversations. We would also witness pressure campaigns getting rolled out from Google and Samsung’s end.

Apple mentioned last year in November how it would include RCS support by next year. However, the timing in this regard is not a huge coincidence. We saw the Cupertino firm’s rollout very similar in effort as one trying to win the support of regulators across the European Union.

For now, we’re all going to breathe a huge sigh of relief in this regard. We want to know that this change is here to stay and so far, that’s exactly what Apple has aimed for, despite years of trolling and backlash for stubborn behavior.

Read next: Meta, Amazon, Apple Most Impersonated in Phishing Scams: Study
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Meta, Amazon, Apple Most Impersonated in Phishing Scams: Study

Cybercriminals are currently running rampant, trying their best to generate and distribute phishing scams, as per a recently published study.

The research speaks about which tech giants are amongst the most impersonated in this regard and from what we can see, Meta, Amazon, and Apple lead the pack.

The study by MailSuite sheds light on which companies continue to be targeted between January 2022 and March 2024. Meta's Facebook for instance has received more than 10,000 attempts in around two years span where scammers try their best to impersonate the company to get more out of it.

The threat actors involved are really doing wonders in terms of making sure their moves don’t get noticed as fake, leading to so many falling into the trap.

Further more, scammers have impersonated Microsoft 4,518 times, with PayPal being imitated 4,111 times. Meanwhile, when you look outside the US, it was a top mobile brand from Japan called "au by KDDI" that led the pack in terms of being scammed over and over again.

• Also read: Online Scams Are Getting Worse Thanks To AI, New Study Reveals

As per MailtSuite, near to 25% of phishing scams linked to impersonation entail those names which had to do with IT and tech sector. Meanwhile, banking and the finance sector were not left behind, coming in a close second position.

This analysis was based on phishing reports that served as scams getting listed across Phish Tank which is a top name in terms of impersonation attempts.

Experts urge industry professionals to rigorously verify emails to avoid phishing scams that prompt clicking on malicious links and sharing personal information.

Clicking on links in phishing emails can install ransomware, leading to data theft over time. It's crucial to verify emails to distinguish legitimate messages from scams.

Read next: How to Create a Strong Password in 2024

And: Scammers Are Now Tricking Victims More With Phishing Emails And Texts Than Phone Calls
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Survey Reveals 80% of Firms Use AI for Visuals, But 70% Fear Data Leaks, Plagiarism

A survey by Morning Consult which was powered by Canva found out how many business firms are using AI for their visual content. Even with the extensive use of AI in workplaces, there are still some worries that executives face. According to a new survey of 3707 business leaders, four in five business firms are using AI to create visual content. Even though these firms are using AI for their content, they are worried that they can face a number of issues. 70% of business leaders are worried about "accidentally sharing sensitive information" while the same number of them are also worried about plagiarism/copyright-infringement around the content produced by AI. 68% are worried people will confuse AI-generated content with human-produced content. 64% of them are also worried that the increase in AI for visual content can result in job loss.

Many designing and editing tools like Canva, Figma and Adobe have introduced AI features. Because of this, many companies are using AI for producing visual content. CEO of Klarna Sebastian Siemiatkowski said (in a deleted post on X) if we produce visual content with the help of AI, it can save $10 million on marketing this year. One thing to know is that marketing isn’t the only thing that needs visual content generation as it is also used in decks and proposals by sales leaders.

46% of the business leaders who were surveyed said that their PR professionals use AI to create their communication material while 96% of the leaders said that they are using AI to train their employees. Because businesses are interested in using AI, Canva has introduced its package known as Canva Enterprise that has all the tools and AI features under one subscription. Canva also says that due to its Magic Media Tool, users have generated over 1.4 billion images.

Read next: 

• Study Shows How Skin Color, Followers and Age Impact Influencer Earnings

• eMarketer Report Shows Video Takes Center Stage on Facebook and Instagram

by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

AI Systems May Soon Run Out Of Human Content Used To Keep Them Updated

AI systems have been called out for months regarding how they end up eating so much data published online.

The systems in use today are now gobbling up collections of human data at a rate that not many people had anticipated. This is why authors of new research are ringing alarm bells to make others realize how data might run out soon.

So can you imagine what would happen if content used to keep making AI smarter no longer exists? It’s like turmoil because that means systems cannot be updated and therefore won’t be working at the pace that most of us may wish it to.

Wee now know that AI systems including ChatGPT might soon be out of trillions of words produced by humans that keep getting published online.

The study by Epoch AI mentioned how the human supply of such content would soon get exhausted and that means they couldn’t be trained any further in terms of what keeps getting shared and produced on a usual basis.

The research was rolled out on Thursday where it was mentioned how tech firms that have been taking content without consent for so long to transform their AI models into the best thing out there today might be facing more hurdles now than before.

You might like to liken it to the gold rush witnessed when you deal with a long list of finite natural resources. One author of the study highlighted how AI will soon be facing some serious challenges on this front.

To ensure progress is maintained after natural reserves are diminished means so much.

This is why you’ll find plenty of companies working in the short term who are racing against time to pay for quality data like Google and OpenAI. So what we can confirm is that such AI chatbots won’t have access to new articles or blogs that carry on with AI development and therefore won’t be putting a lot of pressure on firms to tap into data deemed to be private.

Yes, so as you can tell, the bottleneck here is not small but it’s massive. If you begin hitting such constraints, it’s high time models are scaled up as a means to expand capabilities and better quality of what they produce.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: eMarketer Report Shows Video Takes Center Stage on Facebook and Instagram
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

eMarketer Report Shows Video Takes Center Stage on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social media platforms right now. Both are under Meta Platforms umbrella and also have some combined features to facilitate the users. Meta tries so hard to add many features to these two platforms to make them fun and interactive for users. As a user of these two apps, you must have noticed that there are a lot of videos on the app, commonly referred to as reels. According to a new report by eMarketer, many of the adult users spent half of their time watching videos on Facebook last year. Users of Instagram are set to spend 60% of their total time on the app watching videos this year.

In 2024, it is predicted that adult users of Facebook are going to spend 17 minutes average of their day watching reels while they will spend 21 minutes watching videos on Instagram. So, according to eMarketer, this year users will spend 32 minutes on Facebook and 36 minutes on Instagram on average everyday. This shows how Meta is trying hard to push users to spend time on their apps. This year, it is predicted that US adults will spend 40% of their social media time on Instagram and Facebook, and this percentage is expected to grow 9.4%.

Meta is still trying to get back its market shares after they fell down to 37.4% in 2022 to 51.8% in 2019 because of TikTok. The report by eMarketer also said that users are going to spend 54 minutes everyday on average on TikTok this year.

Read next: New Analysis Finds that Webmasters and SEOs Need Thousands of Backlinks to Appear in Google's Top Search Results
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Shows How Skin Color, Followers and Age Impact Influencer Earnings

According to a report by SevenSix Agency, influencers on social media sites are paid based on their skin color. The report says that influencers who have darker skin are paid 44.63% less than influencers who have light skin. This pay disparity is also seen among influencers with different hair colors and textures. The 2024 influencer-pricing report studied the difference in pay between white influencers and influencers of color in the UK and it was found that influencers' pay varies according to the ethnic background and age of influencers.

It was found that creators or influencers who were Black were paid 34% less than White influencers in 2024. This difference was 22% in 2022. South Asian influencers are paid 30.70% less, Southeast Asian influencers are paid 57.22% less and East Asian influencers are paid $38.40% less than White creators.

SevenSix Agency's founder Charlotte Stavrou said that she approached different brands to educate them about this racial disparity. Most of the brands do not do it voluntarily as most of the time they aren’t even aware that they are not treating creators from different ethnic backgrounds equally. Stavrou also suggested brands some ways that can help them in negotiating with creators for pay rates.

The report also talked about the pay rates creators of different colors get on their reels. The creators with deep tan on their skin are paid $1,187 on average for a reel while creators with light skin can get $2,142 for the same reel. There was also a difference in pay between creators with straight and curly hair. Influencers with type 2A hair, which are slightly wavy, were paid more ($2,191) as compared to influencers with type 4B hair, which are extremely curly hair. Their pay was reported to be $1,023 on average.

Another pay disparity could be seen among Gen-Z creators and Gen-X, Boomers and Millennials. Influencers between 18 to 39 years of age are paid 144% more than the influencers older than 40 years. On the other hand, influencers between the ages of 40 to 59 are paid $1,978 while influencers between the ages 18-25 are paid less ($1592). 60% of the older influencers also said that they are treated differently than younger influencers on social media apps.

• Also read: New Analysis Finds that Webmasters and SEOs Need Thousands of Backlinks to Appear in Google's Top Search Results

Similarly, the data reveals that influencer earnings significantly increase with follower count. For example, influencers with 1,000 to 5,000 followers earn between £250 and £350 per feed post, while those with 300,000+ followers command £4,000 to £15,000. Similarly, reel fees range from £300-£400 for smaller influencers to £4,500-£18,000 for those with large followings. Story fees for a set of three also rise dramatically, from £150-£200 for the smallest influencers to £3,000-£15,000 for the largest. These examples illustrate how follower count directly impacts influencer earnings.

Read next: TikTok Leads May 2024 App Revenue with $203M, YouTube Follows with $131M; Top 10 Hit $791M

by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World