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Facebook and Instagram began a week-long rollout of their first paid verification service on Friday, testing users’ willingness to pay for social media features that until now have been free. Facing a drop in advertising revenues, parent company Meta is piloting a subscription in Australia and New Zealand before it appears in larger markets. The service will cost US$11.99 on the web and US$14.99 on the iOS and Android mobile platforms. From Friday, subscribers […]
Facebook-owner Meta on Friday unveiled its own version of the artificial intelligence behind apps such as ChatGPT, saying it would give access to researchers to find fixes to the technology’s potential dangers. Meta described its own AI, called LLaMA, as a “smaller, more performant” model designed to “help researchers advance their work,” in what could be seen as veiled criticism of Microsoft’s decision to release the technology widely, while keeping the programming code secret. Microsoft-backed […]
Washington, United States (AFP) — US space agency NASA and SpaceX on Tuesday pushed back by 24 hours the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket that is to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates had been scheduled to blast off for the ISS at 2:07 am (0707 GMT) Sunday. Liftoff of the SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 from […]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a landmark case that could transform the internet by scrapping decades-old legal protections for tech companies, but gave no indication that a clear majority would opt to rework the law. In a two-and-a-half-hour session, the nine justices targeted their questions on better understanding the so-called Section 230, a US law that was signed in 1996 at the dawn of the internet era and before the creation […]
Paris, France (AFP) — Years after Facebook quietly removed a slogan that declared the site was “free and always will be”, parent company Meta announced on Sunday a paid-for subscription service that has already been widely criticised. Meta is following a well-trodden path to subscription services, with rivals from Reddit and Snapchat to Twitter and Discord already in the game. But critics raised deep concerns with the way Meta had chosen to structure its new […]
San Francisco, United States | AFP | For the first time ever, US adults will spend more time this year watching digital video on platforms such as Netflix, TikTok and YouTube than viewing traditional television, Insider Intelligence forecast on Wednesday. In the historic first, the market tracker expects “linear TV” to account for less than half of daily viewing, dropping to under three hours while average daily digital video watching climbs to 52.3 percent with […]
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Microsoft’s fledgling Bing chatbot can go off the rails at times, denying obvious facts and chiding users, according to exchanges being shared online by developers testing the AI creation. A forum at Reddit devoted to the artificial intelligence-enhanced version of the Bing search engine was rife on Wednesday with tales of being scolded, lied to, or blatantly confused in conversation-style exchanges with the bot. The Bing chatbot was […]
by Jonah Mandel Agence France-Presse Tel Aviv, Israel (AFP) — Behind a dark and opaque storefront in Tel Aviv, an Israeli company is speeding up online shopping by replacing staff with robots that manoeuvre around small storerooms. Whirring along a rail between two long shelves packed with coffee capsules, a robot stopped, pivoted to the right, shone a light before grabbing an item and dropping it into a paper bag. “Shoppers want to receive their […]
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (AFP) — Saudi Arabia will send its first ever woman astronaut on a space mission later this year, the latest move by the kingdom to revamp its ultra-conservative image. Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said. Barnawi and Al-Qarni will fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as part of a mission […]
Washington, United States (AFP) — SpaceX conducted a successful test-firing on Thursday of the engines on the most powerful rocket ever built, designed to eventually send astronauts to the Moon and beyond. The test, called a static fire, of the 33 Raptor engines on the first-stage booster of SpaceX’s Starship took place at the private space company’s base in Texas. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said one engine was turned off just before the test began […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said Thursday it was working on a rival to ChatGPT, joining a flurry of global tech firms rushing to match the popular AI-powered chatbot. ChatGPT has sparked a gold rush in artificial intelligence technology, with Microsoft, Google and China’s Baidu all working to develop chatbots that can mimic human speech. The service, created by San Francisco company OpenAI, has caused a sensation for its ability to write […]
Washington, United States (AFP) — NASA’s Curiosity rover has found wave-rippled rocks — evidence of an ancient lake — in an area of the planet expected to be drier, the US space agency said Wednesday. “This is the best evidence of water and waves that we’ve seen in the entire mission,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012, beamed back […]
