Most of the Apps on Google Play and App Store are Making a Decent Chunk of the Revenue from Subscriptions

Most of the top apps on Google Play and App Store are making the majority of the revenue from in-app subscriptions. Out of 50 top grossing apps in the USA, 31 of them have subscriptions and make most of the money from it. 4% of the apps on App Store and Google Play had in-app subscriptions in May. This shows that there aren’t many apps that monetize through subscriptions. A lot of apps on Google Play and App Store are still free and do not have any ads.

The apps which are using the most subscriptions are gaming apps. Majority of the gaming apps are using subscriptions to monetize. Many of the developers of other apps are also using in-app subscriptions now. According to App Intelligence, 44% of the total revenue was generated from subscriptions.

This doesn’t mean that adding subscriptions to apps is going to make developers millionaires overnight. But many apps on App Store and Google Play are making billions collectively so adding subscriptions in apps does help in generating some good revenue.

H/T: AF.

Read next: Study Shows AI Models are Not Capable of Performing Tasks Which Are Beyond their Training
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Shows AI Models are Not Capable of Performing Tasks Which Are Beyond their Training

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researchers recently conducted a research to find out how different LLMs perform memorization and reasoning skills. Most LLMs go through complex training so they can perform complex tasks. The researchers gave different basic tasks to AI models like GPT-4 and Claude which were opposite to their default tasks, the tasks they were trained on.

The researchers developed some tasks which were entirely new to these two LLMs but these tasks were made according to the capabilities of these AI models. Different logical, evaluating and arithmetic tasks were designed for them. When large language models are trained with arithmetic tasks, they are mostly given arithmetic in base 10 so when users interact with them, the LLMs give the impression that they are good at arithmetic tasks. But they are unable to perform well in all arithmetic bases. The research showed that LLMs can just perform common tasks which are consistent and do not have any generalization. This pattern was the same when these LLMs were given altered chess problems, chord fingering and spatial reasoning.

Despite all this, the study has some limitations as it just experimented with specific tasks and not real life problems and challenges. But the research shows that AI models are not as capable as humans may think they are. They just do what they are trained about and cannot perform well if they are given tasks which were not in their training.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: Researchers Found Out that Writers Can Generate Interesting, Enjoyable and Stories with Good Plot Lines Using AI
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

New Claims Raise Eyebrows On Google’s Gemini Accessing Personal Data Without Consent

In the last few years, the trend of generative AI has picked up the pace.

From OpenAI to Microsoft and Google, the list of AI tools and chatbots keeps increasing. This has also given rise to a plethora of opportunities that come with increased usage but at the same time, the drawbacks related to privacy must be addressed.

Keeping that thought in mind, many are now raising questions about Android maker Google’s Gemini chatbot. The latter was accused of accessing and reading personalized documents related to tax via the tool’s latest sidebar.

Image: Solen Feyissa / Unsplash

This new sidebar was launched on an array of Google apps including Docs and Drive, giving the AI chatbot the chance to see what users are working on and at the same time, provide suggestions and an analysis of the documents at hand.

However, one user was baffled to see the tool go way beyond its authorized limits by reading his personal tax documentation when no consent was given. He explained how his tax returns were very confidential and for Gemini to summarize it was an eye-opener.

Seeing Gemini ingesting data present inside private documents is a huge wake-up call as it’s doing tasks that nobody has asked it to do and users aren’t aware of how they can stop this.

The fact that AI tools are pulling out commands without receiving any prompts is worrisome and now they’re racing to ask Google how they can disable settings for Gemini to stop it from breaching their privacy.

What was even more shocking is when the user actually found the setting to switch such actions off, he was confused as they were already disabled so why was the AI tool doing something that it was never instructed to do?

While tech giant Google does provide support documents that detail more about how Gemini should be used across Google Drive, the company fails in terms of detailing how the feature could be disabled or how to stop the AI chatbot from getting access to data inside Google Drive.

Google has failed to address the concerns of many who don’t think this should ever happen. It’s a huge eye-opener to the world in terms of what Gemini is capable of and how AI cannot be trusted at any given point in time.

Gemini is either hallucinating or this setting is so buried that I can't find it in either my @Google account or Drive settings or Gemini Privacy Hub after searching for 15 minutes. (Pardon my french in the screenshot but felt like expressing anger to the machine...) pic.twitter.com/xyRi8pyTTb

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...what if I still don't want it looking at my docs unprompted? I didn't *ask* it to summarize my taxes, it just did. It should be up to me whether/which private docs prompt the model.

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...which again highlights why *it shoudn't ingest my documents without my prompting it to*

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

I’m curious whether other people are showing the same (default?) toggles I’m seeing. Right now workplace and yt music are turned off but the others (yt video, flights, hotels, and maps (!!!) integrations are all on. Don’t think I’ve seen or touched these before…

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 10, 2024

...nor does it justify or explain why they made invocation of Gemini for one document sticky for all documents after that unless and until you close it, meaning all those doc summaries you didn't affirmatively ask for end up in your Gemini chat logs. So...

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 11, 2024

Yet, as shown above, I interacted with it just today. So...this is another privacy feature that doesn't appear to be working correctly? And/or was overridden by signing up for Workplace Labs? Who knows. I gotta go to bed but hopefully will get more info tomorrow.

— Kevin Bankston (@KevinBankston) July 11, 2024

Read next: AI Writing in Education: Study Shows Alarming Detection Gaps
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

AI Writing in Education: Study Shows Alarming Detection Gaps

A new study by University of Reading published in PLOS One finds that many students submit their AI generated exams and most of them go undetected too. The researchers of the university secretly submitted AI generated exams in addition to real exams done by students of psychology and made some examiners check the papers. The results found out that 94% of the AI generated submissions weren’t detected by examiners.

This wasn’t all because the AI generated answers didn’t only get passed by human examiners, but they also got more scores as compared to exams by human students. In some cases, a difference of full grade was also observed between AI generated exams and human written exams. Some AI generated exams also got first-class honors.

• Also read: How To Use Google Docs Secret Feature to Detect AI Content Writing

This study has raised serious questions about the future of education. As AI is growing fast and is used by a lot of people, how can colleges and universities administer AI detection methods? Many of the AI detection tools are inadequate and cannot detect AI writing efficiently. Many of the educational institutions are not using traditional exam procedures and are making their students write assessments. Assessments can easily be written using AI tools but no institute is prepared to detect AI in those assessments.

An associate professor at Reading’s School of Psychology says that educational institutes shouldn’t go back to hand-written exams but they should work to evolve with AI. The researchers say that this study should be seen as a call for action because if the students are using AI tools in their education, how can they work in a reputable institute without having any knowledge about the subject they studied. Educators and administrators should think seriously about it because the institution of education is not in a good place right now.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

WhatsApp is Going to Add a New Feature Which Will Let Users Translate Messages on App

WhatsApp is one of the best messaging apps out there because it provides all the features users need for messaging and staying in touch with other people. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is set to have a live translation feature that would provide users in-app translations. This feature will help users communicate well with foreign, languages, customers and companies.

Right now, users need to go to a translation website or app to translate messages on WhatsApp and most of the time users use Google Translate. This takes extra time so now Google Translate is going to partner up with WhatsApp so users can directly translate the messages. Google’s Live Translation Technology is going to provide leverage on WhatsApp. Users will have to download different translation packs to translate messages on the app. There is no news about how many languages are going to be supported on WhatsApp but Google Translate can translate more than 100 languages so the same will probably happen on WhatsApp.

This feature is currently available on Beta version but it is not activated right now. WhatsApp or Google has shared no news about how users’ privacy will be managed if these two tech giants are set to partner up for translation purposes on WhatsApp. Even though companies claim to protect users’ privacy, most of the time they share users’ data without their permission or even train AI models with that data without any consent. We will have to see how this partnership will affect the privacy of users.

Image: WBI

Read next:

• UBS 2024 Report Shows Decreasing Global Wealth in Most of the Countries this Decade

• Researchers Found Out that Writers Can Generate Interesting, Enjoyable and Stories with Good Plot Lines Using AI
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

UBS 2024 Report Shows Decreasing Global Wealth in Most of the Countries this Decade

According to UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, global wealth is decreasing fast this decade as compared to last decade. There was a 7% growth in global wealth between 2000 and 2010 but only 4.5% growth was seen in global wealth between 2010 and 2023. UBS analyzed 56 markets in the past and this decade and found out that four markets, Italy, Japan, Greece and Spain, have seen a decrease in growth this decade. The factors which play the role in negative growth are aging societies and decrease in population in these countries.

The growth in wealth in China and India have decreased more than half between 2000 to 2010 and 2010 to 2023. Qatar had the highest global wealth in 2000-2010 but now it has come down to the same level as China. The country which saw an increase in global wealth in 2010-2023 is the US as it had lower wealth in 2000-2010. Japan and Greece were the countries with most negative growths in global wealth as compared to the rest of the countries.

Read next: Global Mobile App Consumption to Exceed 58 Trillion Hours, Revenue Reaching $2 Trillion
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Researchers Found Out that Writers Can Generate Interesting, Enjoyable and Stories with Good Plot Lines Using AI

According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, AI can enhance the creativity of the writers and can write stories better and more enjoyable than most writers who do not use AI assistance. 300 participants were asked to write an eight sentence short story for young adults. With the help of AI’s assistance, some writers could write 26.6% better written and 15.2% less boring stories than the writers who didn't use AI.

The study was only about AI use in creative writing and it did not cover content writing. The study also mentioned that while AI written creative work may be interesting, there's no novelty in works as many AI writings are similar. There was a 10.7% increase in similarity between the works of writers who used generative AI in their stories.

The researchers gathered 300 participants and divided them into three groups. The first group was asked to use no AI for writing, the second group was given permission to use AI’s help for just a starting idea and third group was given permission to use one AI generated idea from five AI generated ideas for their inspiration.

600 people were recruited to judge the content produced by these groups and were asked to judge on the basis of uniqueness, plot lines, twists, target audience and if the content is good enough to get published. The results proved that writers who were given permission to use AI had more creative stories with 8.1% higher in novelty than the stories which didn't use AI. The writers who used five AI generated ideas produced more creative, emotional, interesting and funnier stories.

Researchers also used a Divergent Association Task (DAT) to evaluate writers’ creativity and found out that the writers with most DAT scores used less AI generative ideas. The stories which were produced after using an AI generated idea were 22.6% more enjoyable and 26.6% better written. This made writers with high DAT score and writers with low DAT score somewhat similar because the writers with low DAT score can enhance their creativity using AI.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: New Report Shows that 80% of the Companies in China Have Adopted Generative AI in their Businesses
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World