TikTok has stored the most sensitive financial data of its biggest stars — including those in its “Creator Fund” — on servers in China. Earlier this year, CEO Shou Chew told Congress “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore.”



Over the past several years,&nbsp;thousands of TikTok creators and businesses around the world have given the company sensitive financial information—including their social security numbers and tax IDs—so that they can be paid by the platform.



But unbeknownst to many of them, TikTok has stored that personal financial information on servers in China that are accessible by employees there,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;has learned.



TikTok uses various internal tools and databases from its Beijing-based parent ByteDance to manage payments to creators who earn money through the app, including many of its biggest stars in the United States and Europe. The same tools are used to pay outside vendors and small businesses working with TikTok. But a trove of records obtained by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;from multiple sources across different parts of the company reveals that highly sensitive financial and personal information about those prized users and third parties has been stored in China. The discovery also raises questions about whether employees who are not authorized to access that data have been able to. It draws on internal communications, audio recordings, videos, screenshots, documents marked “Privileged and Confidential,” and several people familiar with the matter.



In testimony before Congress earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew claimed U.S. user data has been stored on physical servers outside China. “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore in the past, and access of this is on an as-required basis by our engineers globally,” he said under oath at a House hearing in March.



TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement that “we remain confident in the accuracy of Shou&#8217;s testimony.” ByteDance did not respond to a detailed request for comment. At publication time, neither company had answered basic questions about whether sensitive tax information of U.S. citizens is stored and accessible in China.



Over the last year, TikTok has been touting its plans to cordon off Americans’ data from China in a $1.5 billion undertaking called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-project-texas-bytedance-user-data" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Project Texas</a>. That initiative has been central to negotiations with the Biden administration on a deal that would allow the wildly popular app to continue operating in the U.S., despite longstanding national security concerns about its Chinese ownership and the potential for the platform to be used&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/22/tiktok-tracks-forbes-journalists-bytedance/?sh=5a6afb397da5">to surveil</a>&nbsp;or influence the 150 million Americans using it. But since those talks hit a snag late last year, with both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaking out about national security issues with the app, the Biden administration (through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.) has demanded that TikTok split from its Chinese parent company or face a possible ban.



“There’s ongoing litigation over TikTok that is not yet resolved,” Yellen, whose department leads CFIUS, said at a hearing in March. And many in Congress have cast doubt on Project Texas altogether: “I don’t believe that it is technically possible to accomplish what TikTok says it will accomplish through Project Texas,” California Republican Jay Obernolte told the TikTok CEO at the March hearing. “There are too many backdoors.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Even if TikTok was not a subsidiary of a Chinese company, this would be pretty alarming IT security malpractice.”Former White House and CIA national security lawyer Bryan Cunningham
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Identity theft using stolen social security numbers is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/taxpayer-guide-to-identity-theft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">not uncommon</a>&nbsp;in the U.S., and the Chinese government&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/us/politics/equifax-hack-china.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has been accused</a>&nbsp;of stealing personal financial information from Americans before. One expert told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;this is precisely why TikTok’s mishandling of such information is troubling.



“Even if TikTok was not a subsidiary of a Chinese company, this would be pretty alarming IT security malpractice,” Bryan Cunningham, a former national security lawyer for the White House and CIA, told&nbsp;Forbes. He described tax records as some of the most sensitive data there is.



&#8220;It could be just bad IT practice, it could be they felt like they had a legitimate business need,” Cunningham said of TikTok. “But whatever the nuance of that turns out to be… if you store information in the PRC, you better assume that the intelligence services can have it if they want it. They may not target you, but boy, on the face of it, it&#8217;s highly questionable.”



TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to questions about how many people at the companies can access creators’ financial information, where those employees are located and whether there has been unauthorized access to this data. They also did not respond to queries about how long TikTok users and vendors’ payment data had been stored in China and whether it still is today.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Raising regulatory alarms on both sides of the Atlantic</h2>



TikTok or ByteDance&nbsp;employees in China having access to American users and businesses’ sensitive financial records is potentially problematic for geopolitical reasons, particularly against the backdrop of intense regulatory scrutiny in the U.S.



Though there is no national privacy law in the U.S. to protect against the mishandling or misuse of personally identifiable information,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8152/text" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one top contender</a>&nbsp;introduced last Congress would require companies to clearly disclose in their privacy policies whether data they collect “is transferred to, processed in, stored in, or otherwise accessible to the People’s Republic of China” and other adversaries. And though a past Federal Trade Commission&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/02/video-social-networking-app-musically-agrees-settle-ftc-allegations-it-violated-childrens-privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">settlement with TikTok</a>&nbsp;(then Musical.ly) dealt with a markedly separate set of issues—children’s privacy violations—the agency could take that order into consideration when evaluating the company’s conduct today.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Jessica Rich, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a case like this, the agency would likely consider whether the company had made false or deceptive statements about how it handles users’ information—in a privacy policy, for example—or if the handling of that information had created a real risk of harm. She would not comment specifically on TikTok and ByteDance.



TikTok’s policies suggest that it takes appropriate steps to protect its users’ data. Creators who join TikTok’s Creator Fund&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/global/tiktok-creator-fund-terms/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">agree to</a>&nbsp;“all” TikTok policies, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/us/privacy-policy/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">privacy terms</a>&nbsp;stating that “certain entities within our corporate group… are given limited remote access to information we collect” if it’s necessary for the platform’s operations. They also emphasize that “we use reasonable measures to help protect information from… unauthorized access.” (It does say TikTok may transmit user data to servers outside the U.S. for storage or processing, and that no data storage or transmission is guaranteed to be secure.)



Rich, the former federal regulator, said that if any company claims to be locking down access to information but then making it available to employees around the world who do not need it, the FTC could see that as a deceptive statement and grounds for a potential data security complaint. She also said that the agency generally views financial information and social security numbers as more sensitive than email addresses or phone numbers, and that it may scrutinize those data-sharing cases more aggressively.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“I would like everything to stay in the U.S.—like, I wouldn&#8217;t see why it would ever need to be stored on a China database.”TikToker and Creator Fund member Zack Fairhurst
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



TikTok’s storage of European creators’ bank information in China could also be problematic under Europe’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation.



Even as TikTok launched&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-ie/project-clover-ireland" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Project Clover</a>—a Project Texas counterpart across the Atlantic—to safeguard the data of its European users, the Irish Data Protection Commission (TikTok’s lead regulator in the European Union) is already conducting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/latest-news/dpc-launches-two-inquiries-tiktok-concerning-compliance-gdpr-requirements-relating-processing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">two investigations</a>&nbsp;into whether the company has complied with GDPR. One of those probes is looking specifically at whether TikTok has unlawfully transferred European users’ personal data from the EU to China, and whether it was adequately transparent with users about how it was handling their information. Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, vice president for global privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum, said ByteDance tools storing European creators’ data on servers in China could be problematic for that reason.



&#8220;This is the sort of thing that would confirm there are transfers [of personal data] to China happening, so I&#8217;m sure they would be interested in knowing this,” she said of Ireland’s privacy watchdog. (Just last week, the body issued&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/05/22/meta-fined-record-13-billion-for-violating-eu-privacy-rules/?sh=2eff164772c9">a record $1.3 billion fine</a>&nbsp;to Facebook parent Meta, one of TikTok’s biggest rivals, over its own data transfer issues.) GDPR also requires companies to restrict access to sensitive user data on a need-to-know basis, Zanfir-Fortuna added, raising questions about how broad access to these payment tools has been and whether it was necessary.



The Commission would not comment on its ongoing inquiry into TikTok except to say it expects a public update after this summer. TikTok’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/eea/privacy-policy/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">policies for Europe</a>&nbsp;say “certain entities in our Corporate Group, located outside your country of residence (see&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/legal/transferee-countries" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>), are given limited remote access to this information” and that this access is “secure and only granted where necessary under strict security controls.” The link included (“here”) lands on a 404 error page.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Creators reacts</h2>



TikToker&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@maddzak?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zack Fairhurst</a>,&nbsp;a member of its Creator Fund who participated in the company’s blitz on Capitol Hill this spring, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;he had no idea his tax information and social security number might be stored in China. (TikTok brought some creators to Washington in March to raise awareness around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/03/22/how-a-tiktok-ban-would-affect-creators-businesses-economy/?sh=3cbf8eb25608">the benefits of the app</a>.)



“It wouldn&#8217;t really make sense for it to be over there,” Fairhurst told&nbsp;Forbes. “I would like everything to stay in the U.S—like, I wouldn&#8217;t see why it would ever need to be stored on a China database. … I am actually surprised by that.”



Other creators recalled uploading social security and financial information into TikTok but told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;they were unfazed by the possibility that it’s stored in China because putting themselves out there online is par for the course for those who want to build audiences and careers through social media.



&#8220;There are so many more pressing issues in the U.S.,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@kathrynanja?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kathryn Cross</a>, a 24-year-old creator in the TikTok program, told&nbsp;Forbes. “My mom grew up in China, so I just know that the Chinese government is so stringent about maintaining a proper public figure, essentially, that they would never allow something like a Cambridge Analytica scandal to compromise their global position.”



“The benefit TikTok has brought to people&#8217;s businesses and lives, and the innovation behind the For You Page, to me seems so much more valuable than any minute chance that China&#8217;s storing our data… more so it seems like a foreign policy type of conflict,” she added.



Internet star and TikTok Creator Fund member&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@yourrichbff?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vivian Tu</a>—a former Wall Street trader who doles out financial advice under the handle “YourRichBFF,” said joining any app’s monetization program is “a calculated risk.”



&#8220;If you&#8217;re okay with being on TikTok,” she told&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;“you probably don&#8217;t care that much about your banking information being everywhere it&#8217;s stored.”



Emily Baker-White contributed reporting.

Trump Approves TikTok Takeover By Oracle And Walmart

TikTok Creators’ Financial Info, Social Security Numbers Have Been Stored In China

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Although AI has become popular in recent months for its ability to perform advanced tasks and make life easier, there’s also increasing concern it can be used negatively, creating racial biases in the fields of healthcare, law enforcement and big tech.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at MIT,&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5520558/artificial-intelligence-racial-gender-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">discovered</a>&nbsp;some facial analysis software was unable to detect her face until she covered her dark skin with a white mask, and chalked this up to AI systems’ lacking data as they’re largely trained on white faces.



A major U.S. technology company claimed its facial recognition accuracy rate was 97%, but through her research, Buolamwini&nbsp;<a href="https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-type-bias-artificial-intelligence-systems-0212" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">found</a>&nbsp;the company’s training set was more than 77% male and 83% white.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/face-verification-subject-to-varying-age-ethnicity-and-genderdemographics-using-deep-learning-2155-6180-1000323.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;published in the&nbsp;Journal of Biometrics and Biostatistics&nbsp;found Black women between the ages of 18 and 30 are the demographic with the poorest facial recognition accuracy.



A 2022&nbsp;<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3531146.3533138" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;conducted by institutions including Johns Hopkins University and the Georgia Institute of Technology programmed AI-trained robots to scan blocks with people’s faces from different races.



After the robots scanned the faces, they were tasked with designating which blocks were criminals—they consistently labeled the blocks with Black faces as criminals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news-peg">NEWS PEG</h2>



In 2015, Google Photos came under fire after its AI-based search tool pulled images of Black people when the term “gorilla” was searched. After this controversy was revealed, Google stopped its software from categorizing any image as a “gorilla” and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33347866" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">promised</a>&nbsp;to fix the problem. However, after saving pictures of gorillas and different primates, a recent&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/technology/ai-photo-labels-google-apple.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;found that the issue hadn’t been fixed, and Google Photos’ software was still programmed to prohibit generating any images categorized as gorillas. It wouldn’t generate images for searches of any primates.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“AI is just software that learns by example,” Reid Blackman, who has advised companies and governments on digital ethics and wrote the book&nbsp;Ethical Machines,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/politics/ai-chatgpt-racist-what-matters/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a>&nbsp;CNN. “So, if you give it examples that contain or reflect certain kinds of biases or discriminatory attitudes . . . you’re going to get outputs that resemble that.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



According to a Pew Research&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/20/most-americans-say-racial-bias-is-a-problem-in-the-workplace-can-ai-help/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poll</a>, 53% of Americans who believe racial and ethnic bias in the workplace is a problem think it would get better if employers used AI more in the hiring process, asserting that AI might potentially be beneficial in fighting against racial bias.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dermatology">DERMATOLOGY</h2>



According to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq6147" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;published in&nbsp;Science Advances,&nbsp;diagnostic and decision support tools used in dermatology are AI models trained on a dataset of skin tones and skin conditions. However, the dataset the AI is trained on is limited, as it lacks images of uncommon diseases, as well as diverse skin tones. A&nbsp;<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33969523/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;published in the&nbsp;Archives of Dermatological Research&nbsp;found that Covid disproportionately affects non-white ethnic groups. However, the dataset used to train dermatologists included 92% of pictures of Covid skin lesions on fairer skin tones, only 8% showed lesions on more olive skin tones, and none of them included dark skin tones. Because skin conditions show up differently in different skin colors, the need for diverse training is essential. For example, melanoma is rare in African Americans, according to a&nbsp;Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(03)02091-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>, but because training and education on dark skin tones in the field of dermatology is poor, it’s more likely to go undiagnosed than in white Americans, leading to a drastically lower survival rate. A 2019&nbsp;<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31157429/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;published in the&nbsp;British Journal of Dermatology&nbsp;found 47% of dermatologists felt they weren’t adequately trained to diagnose skin disease in people of color.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-tech-companies">BIG TECH COMPANIES</h2>



In 2022, Apple was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/12/27/apple-watch-blood-oxygen-oximeter-dark-skin-lawsuit/10955942002/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sued</a>&nbsp;over allegations that the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor was racially biased against those with a darker skin tone. The Blood Oxygen app can measure oxygen levels in the blood by using sensors on the wrist, providing users with insights into their health, the app&nbsp;<a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211027" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claims</a>. The lawsuit points to the Food and Drug Administration’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2029240?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&amp;rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&amp;rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed#article_citing_articles" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a>&nbsp;of pulse oximeter technology created after the Covid pandemic increased its use in hospitals. The review found Black patients were almost three times more likely to have dangerously low blood oxygen levels go undetected by pulse oximetry compared to that of white patients. In an October 2022&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/healthcare/docs/site/Blood_Oxygen_app_on_Apple_Watch_October_2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">white paper</a>, Apple acknowledged the potential difficulties that come with pulse oximetry taking measurements on darker skin, but claimed its device “automatically adjusts . . . to ensure adequate signal resolution across the range of human skin tones.” In 2020, Twitter released its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57192898" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">photo cropping</a>&nbsp;feature, which crops and focuses on photos to allow for a better viewing experience, especially when scrolling through Twitter’s timeline. However, it was soon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/global-tech-race-twitter-idUKL5N2GI5R2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revealed</a>&nbsp;that the tool favored white faces, focusing on their faces in the photo preview and only revealing the Black faces when the users clicked to view the full photo. This led Twitter to&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2021/sharing-learnings-about-our-image-cropping-algorithm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research</a>&nbsp;the algorithm, and it found in 2021 that it indeed had racial bias that favored white faces, leading to the company ditching the feature.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-law-enforcement">LAW ENFORCEMENT</h2>



Facial recognition software is used in a number of different entities, including on smartphones, for police face recognition, airport passenger screening and employment decisions. However, the AI behind facial recognition has proven to be used to promote a racial bias.&nbsp;<a href="https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination-in-face-recognition-technology/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According</a>&nbsp;to Harvard’s Science in the News, police facial recognition software is trained on mugshot data, in which Black people are overrepresented. Racist policing strategies contribute to this, like the New York Police Department maintaining a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stopspying.org/latest-news/2019/7/23/the-nypds-gang-database-a-new-age-of-stop-and-frisk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">database</a>&nbsp;of “gang-affiliated” people made up of 99% Black and Latino people, though there are no requirements to prove these people are gang affiliated, thus incentivizing false reports.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740624X22000892?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Research</a>&nbsp;published in&nbsp;Science Direct&nbsp;found law enforcement agencies that use AI-based facial recognition technology disproportionately arrest Black people due to their overwhelming presence in the training dataset.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ajl.org/facial-recognition-technology" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According</a>&nbsp;to the Algorithmic Justice League, “Face surveillance threatens rights including privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association and due process.” Its controversial use in law enforcement has led to several cities across the country&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/movement-ban-government-use-face-recognition" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">banning</a>&nbsp;police from using facial recognition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-related-targeting-ethnic-groups">RELATED: TARGETING ETHNIC GROUPS</h2>



Israeli authorities are relying on facial recognition to track Palestinians and restrict their passage through key checkpoints, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/6701/2023/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;by Amnesty International. The software, known as Red Wolf, is used at checkpoints, scanning Palestinians’ faces and using a color-coded system of either green, yellow or red to determine whether to allow them to pass, stop them for questioning or deny entry. This is just the latest example of Israel restricting Palestinians’ freedom of movement as the software heavily focuses on Palestinians, Amnesty argues, and the report calls it an “automated apartheid.” China has also used AI and facial recognition to identify minorities. The country came under fire for using the technology to racially profile the Uyghurs, a vastly Muslim minority group, the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>. The facial recognition technology is embedded into China’s widespread network of surveillance cameras and exclusively looks for Uyghurs based on how they look, keeping a record of where they’re coming from—and going to. The U.S. even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/06/china-sensetime-facial-recognition-uyghur-surveillance-us-sanctions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sanctioned</a>&nbsp;SenseTime, China’s largest facial recognition firm, for its alleged role in the surveillance of the Uyghurs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google’s Photo App Still Can’t Find Gorillas. And Neither Can Apple’s</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/14/youre-already-using-ai-heres-where-its-at-in-everyday-life-from-facial-recognition-to-navigation-apps/?sh=37c1cfb127ac">You’re Already Using AI: Here’s Where It’s At In Everyday Life, From Facial Recognition To Navigation Apps</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/10/heres-how-to-use-ai-like-chatgpt-and-bard-for-everyday-tasks-like-creating-a-budget-finding-airfare-or-planning-meals/?sh=43627396190d">Here’s How To Use AI—Like ChatGPT And Bard—For Everyday Tasks Like Creating A Budget, Finding Airfare Or Planning Meals</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/25/republicans-share-an-apocalyptic-ai-powered-attack-ad-against-biden-heres-how-to-spot-a-deepfake/?sh=4ac38d717753">Republicans Share An Apocalyptic AI-Powered Attack Ad Against Biden: Here’s How To Spot A Deepfake</a> (Forbes)

Students Working On Computer Assignment During Seminar Group

Racism And AI: Here’s How It’s Been Criticized For Amplifying Bias

Where does the continent fit into the chatbot conversation, and why it needs its own startups that focus on AI.



The ability to be able to have a conversation with someone else is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being but today, it’s becoming more and more confusing to figure out whether you’re talking to a bot… or not.



Technology has advanced to the point where AI-powered conversational chatbots, like ChatGPT or Meta’s BlenderBot 3, are deceptively realistic. (More so when they go off the rails and say things like ‘I want to be alive’, which is exactly what Bing’s AI bot expressed earlier this year.) While chatbots like these are trained to avoid expressing personal or biased views, and are known to make factual mistakes and mix up information, they’re becoming smarter, more streamlined and sometimes, a little strange…



“Conversational AI is one of the first applications of NLP in artificial intelligence and this kind of technology has existed since Eliza in the sixties,” explains Professor Mpho Raborife, the deputy director at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.



Natural Language Processing, or NLP, is a way for computers to understand human language. NLP uses AI tools like machine learning and neural networks to process and interpret large amounts of data.



“With the rise of big data, ChatGPT was inevitable. It’s trained on a very large dataset and the technologies behind it make it a lot more advanced than other conversational AI applications.”



One of the reasons for this, explains Raborife, is that ChatGPT uses reinforcement learning alongside sophisticated algorithms that manipulate its dataset. “It’s so sophisticated that people don’t realize that it really possesses no intelligence whatsoever,” she adds, “it really doesn’t understand the meaning behind anything, it just know how the words are supposed to work but not what they mean.”



OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a research experiment gone wild that has shown the incredible potential of conversational AI yet Africa is still being left behind. Consider smartphone voice assistants like Siri or Alexa – both examples of conversational AI used regularly; they work with English but struggle to understand local accents. They don’t support African languages.



“We know that the Global North is not going to include our languages. Therefore, we need to find a way to make sure that we create an environment that the startups that come from Africa which do incorporate our languages have the same kind of impact,” Raborife adds. Duolingo, for example, is a popular language learning mobile app that uses an AI system called Birdbrain to personalize its content. Duolingo has 43 different languages (including made-up dialects such as Klingon, High Valyrian and Esperanto) but only isiZulu and Swahili are available when it comes to African language learning courses.



“When we talk about AI, our languages are not supported or even represented by these technologies,” says Raborife. “But conversational AI has the potential to bridge the language divide as it can be used in a variety of ways because it surpasses literacy levels. If people cannot read or write, they can use their voice to access services and this is something that is important to Africa.



This is why we need our own startups that focus on AI. Recently launched, Lelapa AI is an African AI research and product house looking to make a real difference within the continent with a special interest in agriculture, education, energy, healthcare, microfinance and language.



“There are so many problems on the continent that AI-type technologies can help with so there’s a responsibility for us to use our skills to help create better lives for everyday Africans,” says Pelonomi Moiloa, Lelapa AI’s co-founder and CEO. 



“What we intend to do is use technology in a very smart, resource-efficient way because there are challenges on the continent like rolling blackouts, water shortages and network issues…” Lelapa AI have already debuted an app called VulaVula which offers NLP-as-a-service for under-represented languages. Moiloa describes VulaVula as an underlying technology that supports other technologies. A banking chatbot, for example, could use VulaVula’s AI language capabilities to help customers interact in their own languages.



“The idea is that if an organization has a place for us to plug our models into and we can collaborate agreements around how that work can be done, then – ideally – if we have the resources and capacity we will help businesses do what they need.”



For Moiloa, creating African data sets to work from may be challenging but it’s also something she sees as a competitive advantage for Lelapa AI. “We’re having to think around clever ways of dealing with Africa’s data scarcity problem. We have to create models that are able to cope with less amounts of data, but models that can get really good at curating and gathering data,” she says.



And the fact that ChatGPT doesn’t necessarily draw its information from African data sets (it was apparently trained using real human conversations) means startups like Lelapa AI have the opportunity to develop responsible methods of dealing with problems that are relevant to the continent.



“I don’t think we should be trying to develop our own ChatGPT but maybe we can develop other textual tools that can help solve the problems that ChatGPT is meant to – but at the moment, it seems to be creating more problems,” she ends.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) concept. Electronic circuit. Communication network.

Talking A-‘bot Africa: The Potential For Conversational AI

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Instagram has been secretly testing a text-based app similar to Twitter for months with celebrities and influencers and is preparing to launch it as early as June, Bloomberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-19/instagram-readies-twitter-competitor-for-summer-release?srnd=premium&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;Friday, as some people look to leave Twitter due to changes made under CEO Elon Musk.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The app will be separate from Instagram—which is owned by Meta—though users will be able to connect their accounts and follow all of the people they follow on Instagram on the new app with just one click, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/liahaberman/status/1659553280891179010/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">screenshot</a>&nbsp;posted by Lia Haberman, professor of social and influencer marketing at UCLA and author of the newsletter&nbsp;<a href="https://liahaberman.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ICYMI</a>.



The app may eventually be compatible with others attempting to appeal to former Twitter users—including Mastodon—according to Haberman’s screenshot, which says users on Mastodon will “soon” be able to follow and interact with posts on Meta’s new platform without needing to create a new account.



Haberman said users will be able to post up to 500 characters of text, along with images and pictures.



Meta has been testing the new app secretly with celebrities and influencers for months, people familiar with the project told Bloomberg.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



In March, Money Control first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/meta-is-building-a-decentralized" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;that Meta was exploring the creation of a social network for text updates to compete with Twitter. Shortly after that, Meta officials&nbsp;<a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/meta-is-building-a-decentralized" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a>&nbsp;Platformer they “believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.” Many users have been looking for an alternative to Twitter since billionaire Elon Musk took over in October 2022 and began quickly making changes to the platform ranging from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/12/heres-how-twitters-appearance-has-changed-under-elon-musk/?sh=75eb23385f68">adding</a>&nbsp;an algorithm-driven “For You” page to charging people to be verified and get access to features like an edit button. Mastodon launched shortly after Musk bought Twitter, offering a similar&nbsp;<a href="https://joinmastodon.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">platform</a>&nbsp;but with “no algorithms or ads to waste your time.” But it doesn’t seem that platform is filling the need.&nbsp;Wired&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-mastodon-bump-is-now-a-slump/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;that Mastodon’s number of active users had fallen to 1.4 million at the end of January—dropping by more than one million—since people flocked to it in November 2022.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



A recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/17/how-us-adults-on-twitter-use-the-site-in-the-elon-musk-era/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;by Pew Research Center found that while people are still logging on Twitter, the most active Twitter users are posting about 25% less after Musk’s acquisition. The study also found that six in 10 Americans who used Twitter in the past year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/17/majority-of-us-twitter-users-say-theyve-taken-a-break-from-the-platform-in-the-past-year/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;taking a break from the platform, and 25% of respondents said they aren’t likely to be on the platform one year from now.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-19/instagram-readies-twitter-competitor-for-summer-release?srnd=premium&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Instagram Readies Twitter Competitor for Summer Release</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/12/heres-how-twitters-appearance-has-changed-under-elon-musk/?sh=75eb23385f68">Here&#8217;s How Twitter&#8217;s Appearance Has Changed Under Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/"></a>By Molly Bohannon, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration the Instagram logo seen displayed

Instagram Is Preparing A Twitter-Like App To Be Launched This Summer, Report Says

After two months of testing its new natural language-based AI tool&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/03/16/microsoft-announces-new-ai-powered-tools-for-its-office-apps/?sh=5edc5d075bce">Copilot</a>&nbsp;with 20 large companies, Microsoft announced an expanded preview of the feature on Tuesday for 600 customers, widening access to a tool embedded in its Office application that was initially met with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/17/23644501/microsoft-copilot-ai-office-documents-microsoft-365-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reviews as a game-changer</a>.



The “early access” program will be invitation only and a paid preview that requires an additional fee, said Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for modern work, who would not share when the tech giant planned to roll out the program more widely to its full customer base, even though “the demand to me seems almost bottomless right now,” Spataro said in an interview with&nbsp;Forbes. “I don’t talk to a customer right now that isn’t interested in it.” The company said it is not disclosing pricing externally.



Spataro said early customers reported Copilot’s meeting tools—the ability to summarize what happened in a missed meeting and act as a real-time assistant while a meeting is going on—have been most frequently cited by early customers as particularly useful. In a blog post, he also identified early feedback Microsoft has gotten on the tool, such as the need for more conversational, multi-step interactions with Copilot.



Asked about concerns that generative AI tools might&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/chatgpt-poised-to-expose-corporate-secrets-cyber-firm-warns" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expose</a>&nbsp;corporate secrets or customer information—with some employers even instituting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-02/samsung-bans-chatgpt-and-other-generative-ai-use-by-staff-after-leak" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bans</a>&nbsp;of ChatGPT’s use following leaks of sensitive data—Spataro said Copilot does not use corporate users’ data to “train” the larger model.



“Everything that happens related to large language models and the use of AI happens within what we call a ‘tenant boundary’” in the Microsoft Cloud, Spataro says. “No data ever leaves your ‘tenant’ and no data is ever used to train the large language models. Even those statements give us a really good foundation with most customers.”



The company, which purchased an exclusive license to the underlying technology behind ChatGPT&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/09/22/microsoft-teams-up-with-openai-to-exclusively-license-gpt-3-language-model/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in 2020</a>, also announced a new “semantic index” capability that will require Microsoft 365 users to have its E3 and E5 versions to access Copilot’s capabilities. Rather than finding files by title names or keywords, Microsoft says the feature maps data and uses a conceptual understanding of the data to retrieve it.



Microsoft also announced new features on Copilot such as integrating DALL-E, OpenAI’s image generator, into PowerPoint and adding AI-powered coaching tips in Outlook to improve email writing, an enhancement that could help workers struggling with the “digital debt” phenomenon Microsoft identified in its&nbsp;annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Work Trend Index</a>, the results of which it also released Tuesday.



The report, which surveyed 31,000 people in 31 countries and analyzed data from Microsoft 365, found that 68% of respondents said they don’t have enough uninterrupted time during the workday to focus. It also found that nearly 60% of users’ time spent in Microsoft 365 is using communication tools like Outlook or Teams, with just over 40% being used for actually producing work with tools like Excel or Word. The heaviest email users, the analysis found, spend nearly nine hours a week on email, while the most prolific Teams users spend 7.5 hours a week in meetings.



Respondents cited ineffective meetings—not too many meetings—as their biggest obstacle to productivity in the survey. Microsoft, of course, hopes its customers will add on AI features that will help change that. “What many people are feeling now is it takes work to do work,” Spataro says.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/"></a>By Jena McGregor, Forbes Staff

Logo Photo Illustration

Microsoft Expands Copilot AI Tool To 600 Customers In Paid Preview As ‘Digital Debt’ Weighs On Workers

This writer stepped into the metaverse for a flying taxi ride at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And roll, fold, flip – more nifty tech is coming up in the world of mobile phones.



One of the most popular stands at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona, Spain, this year was from South Korea’s SK Telecom, with its air taxi ride simulation using virtual reality (VR) headsets. Visitors queued up for hours to get on. As you step into the front seat of the four-seater air taxi mock-up, you wonder: will you be able to last the whole ride; what if you end up with a headache and dizziness from the VR experience?



The ride was three minutes long, but once I was strapped in with a seat belt and VR headset, another passenger’s headset had to be configured at least three times. I felt anxious sitting around indefinitely with a VR headset, not being able to see the real world. “We’re experiencing technical difficulties,” said SK Telecom.



Once the four of us in the taxi were equipped with working VR headsets, our flight from a futuristic Busan took off. It involved our seats physically moving in the direction we flew with a vertical drop towards the end, to landing on a rooftop.



Not unfamiliar to VR, I got off feeling a bit disoriented. Would I test other VR experiences again?



Absolutely.



There’s only one way to follow this journey and see how it improves or if it ever takes off.



Stepping into the metaverse for a flying taxi ride was just one of many innovations on display at MWC Barcelona, which returned to full force since the pandemic.



According to the GSMA (which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide), over 88,500 people attended from around the world with 56% coming from industries adjacent to the mobile ecosystem. 



Another innovation, 3D-holographic telepresence, which is still a work in progress, was showcased by Telefónica, one of Spain’s biggest telecom operators that combines 5G, fibre and edge computing technologies. 



Chatting to FORBES AFRICA, Telefónica said it generates 3D avatars to use in different environments. “We have 21 cameras equipped in the cabin to generate an avatar, with each one producing two to three gigabytes of information per second, so that’s 40GB-50GB every second.”



Once the 3D avatar is created, it can be teleported in realtime to augmented reality (AR) and VR environments using different scenarios, useful for live streaming or recordings, explained Telefónica 



The company’s combination of various technologies is a means of access for augmented, virtual, mixed or metaverse reality applications in the future.



Despite the metaverse being in the limelight, the nextgeneration of mobile phones were on full display: roll, fold, flip – there was something for everyone.



Oppo showcased its new Find N2, and Find N2 Flip, its first clamshell foldable that will make its way to South Africa this April. The pocketable N2 Flip will go head-to-head with the Samsung Z Flip 4 and Huawei P50 Pocket, expanding on the growing segment. Elvis Zhao, Chief Marketing Officer for Overseas Markets at Oppo, told FORBES AFRICA: “Oppo is confident in the future of foldable phones; we estimate that in 2023, growth rates will be 100%, and better than 2022.” 



Its first folding phone, Find N, released in December 2021 exclusively in China, reportedly sold out within five minutes. “Moving forward, Oppo will offer two form factors, a clamshell and a horizontal folding phone to overseas markets,” said Zhao.



The Find N2 Flip has a unique design choice of a 3.26-inch vertical cover display, making it larger than Samsung’s 1.9-inch offering. It currently supports Oppo-only apps with third party support expected.



The pocketable device features a waterdrop Flexion Hinge that underwent durability tests for 400,000 folds. When opened, the crease is hardly noticeable. It can be used hands-free propped between 45 to 110-degree angles.



The device opens to 6.8-inches and at 191g, is marginally bigger than the Z Flip 4. It is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 9000+ chip, 8GB of RAM, and a 4300mAh battery, which is the largest on any clamshell currently on the market. It has a 50MP Hasselblad camera and a 32MP selfie-cam that supports hand gestures to take photos and videos.



Oppo also showed prototypes of its Zero-Power Tag, a rival to the Apple AirTag; the Air Glass 2 assisted reality glasses suitable for the hearing impaired; and an OHealth H1 monitor to check your vitals at home. Available on the floor were more foldables like the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2, Honor Magic Vs and Tecno Phantom V Fold, which are not slated for the African market.



And behind a glass box were proof-of-concept rolling screens from Lenovo on a laptop, and its Motorola branded Rizr smartphone. The laptop appears to look its ThinkPad but can transform from 12.7-inches to 15.3-inches at the push of a button. The company said it aims to get between 20,000 to 30,000 rolls from the laptop, which is nowhere near what smartphone folds have been tested against.



Similarly, the Motorola Rizr rolls open from 5-inches to 6.5-inches, and when using certain apps like YouTube in landscape mode, the handset rolls open automatically. Lenovo has not shared further hardware specs for its rollable screens, other than it being in a conceptual stage.



Admittedly, it’s too early to get excited about rolling screens, but on the other hand, foldables have shown promise with each iteration over the years. A space we’re following closely, and if rumors are anything to go by, perhaps we can expect a foldable from Apple in a couple of years.

The Metaverse In Your Pocket: Nifty Tech And Trends That Africa Will See

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The sister of a Saudi activist who was imprisoned in 2018 sued Twitter on Tuesday for allowing its employees to give private information identifying anonymous users to the Saudi government, which allegedly used the data to target and arrest dissidents—the latest allegation of Saudi government operatives using Twitter to spy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Areej Al-Sadhan, an American citizen, filed the case against Twitter and several Saudi officials in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of her brother, Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan, who was arrested in 2018 and is serving a 20 year sentence in Saudi Arabia for dissent against the current regime.



Al-Sadhan alleges Twitter gave identifying information about her brother to the Saudi government, which she said “blatantly violates” the social media company’s terms and conditions and “puts every Twitter user at risk.”



Her brother worked for the Red Crescent, a Red Cross-like aid group that operates in most Muslim countries, and allegedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/abdulrahman-al-sadhan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ran anonymous Twitter accounts</a>&nbsp;mocking government officials and religious clerics before he was sentenced to prison in 2021, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.



In addition to sharing information about her brother, Al-Sadhan claims Twitter allowed Saudi officials to access information on “thousands” of anonymous users, most of whom posted “critical or embarrassing information” about the Saudi regime, over a seven-month period in 2014 to 2015.



Forbes&nbsp;reached out to the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Tuesday’s lawsuit builds on the August 2022&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/08/09/ex-twitter-employee-convicted-of-sending-private-data-to-saudi-government/?sh=42db68ed0626">conviction</a>&nbsp;of former Twitter manager Ahmad Abouamm, who was allegedly recruited by the Saudi government to use his insider knowledge to share personal information of dissidents. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook played a major role during the Arab Spring, a youth uprising against governments in the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012. Its main purpose was facilitating communication among participants of the mass protests during that time. “Once the chosen platform for Arab youth revolutionizing to liberate their countries from despotic leadership during the Arab Spring, [Twitter]enabled its co-conspirators in the Saudi Criminal Enterprise to crush that very dissent,” Al-Sadhan’s lawsuit says.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is the&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/10/28/elon-musk-twitter-shareholder-alwaleed-bin-talal-binance-morgan-stanley/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second-largest shareholder</a>&nbsp;in Twitter after principal owner Elon Musk, holding almost 6% of shares. He is the first cousin of Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, who has been the crown prince of Saudi Arabia since 2017.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



When he took over the company last year, Musk provided internal communications to various journalists in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/12/09/twitter-files-2-elon-musks-hyped-up-expos-unveils-secret-blacklists-and-shadow-banning--which-seem-very-similar-to-his-own-policies/?sh=49f5b4b56b38">series</a>&nbsp;called the Twitter Files, which was meant to bring to light some of the communications between Twitter executives and political campaigns or government officials. Although Musk has been critical of Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, a report in April found Twitter has fully&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/?sh=7890378724ea">complied</a>&nbsp;with more than 80% of government requests to remove or alter content since Musk acquired the company—an increase from 50% before his ownership. The majority of those requests came from foreign countries such as Turkey, India and Russia, but Saudi Arabia was not included.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/16/twitter-rico-saudi-arabia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jailed Saudi dissident, sister sue Twitter under RICO act in spy case</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/11/06/former-twitter-employees-charged-with-spying-for-saudi-arabia/?sh=3ba77bc01a3f">Former Twitter Employees Charged With Spying For Saudi Arabia</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/08/09/ex-twitter-employee-convicted-of-sending-private-data-to-saudi-government/?sh=42db68ed0626">Ex-Twitter Employee Convicted Of Sending Private Data To Saudi Government</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/"></a>By Katherine Hamilton, Forbes Staff

Twitter tests several new features for its mobile app

Twitter Sued For Allegedly Helping Saudi Government Arrest Dissident

Is Africa’s tech industry missing out on top female talent?



By Tiana Cline



While African women continue to defy the odds as they assume various political leadership roles, the continent’s tech industry faces a serious gender issue. Despite endless global conversations around diversity within the tech sector, women still face significant barriers and are noticeably underrepresented in many roles, making it difficult for them to enter – and eventually lead – the industry.



According to a global women in leadership study conducted by IBM, gender equity is not a women’s issue, it’s an organizational one. “Women are significantly underrepresented at nearly every level of the workforce,” says Lindsay Kaplan, co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of Chief, a private network of executive women on a mission to change the face of leadership. “If companies prioritize gender diversity across their entire organizations through policies, investments, and a culture that meaningfully supports women, we’ll see a transformative impact — equity for everyone in the workplace and stronger, more resilient businesses.”



The study found that in Kenya, for example, there is even more stagnation in senior professional and non-executive managerial positions. Even though there are some incredible African women in IT like Catherine Muraga, the Managing Director at the Microsoft Africa Development Centre in Nairobi and Kendi Ntwiga, who heads up misrepresentation at Meta, the percentage of women hasn’t budged since the 2019 drop — and at a senior manager, it has even declined somewhat. And while the pandemic continues to have a disproportionate impact on women at work, in Kenya, geopolitical unrest was ranked the number one disruption facing women.



While Kaplan is happy to see slight progress in the representation of women at the C-suite and board level, she maintains that it is imperative that companies do more to fill the pipeline that leads to powerful positions.



One global technology company that is making massive strides in creating a place for women in technology is Cisco and more so, their Vice President for Middle East and Africa, Reem Asaad. Born in Egypt, Asaad moved to the United States at the age of 16 to study computer science.



“I had to leave because there weren’t a lot of accessible universities at the time and I wanted to study computer science. I went to the University of Houston in Texas and that was the beginning,” she says. Now based in Dubai, Asaad’s focus is collaborating with government, customers and partners but creating and developing female leadership is her passion. “Cisco should mimic the communities that it serves. That’s already inclusive and a starting point. We have amazing resources in Africa and we need to invest in female talent,” says Asaad. “Africa is fascinating because we talk about diversity in the region as if it’s something you have to do but our region is diverse by nature.”



Within her role, Asaad is working hard to change the diversity ratio in the Middle East and Africa. She is responsible for 77 countries – some advanced, others emerging – and within those countries, there are over 2,000 languages and six time zones to take into account.



“Cisco operates in 95 countries and 52 of those are in the mid-East and Africa. It’s diversity whether you like it or not, from age groups to colour to ethnic backgrounds. What you learn when you work in this region is how to understand the difference between equity and equality,” she says.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-equality-or-equity">EQUALITY OR EQUITY?</h3>



One McKinsey study on women in the workplace found that gender disparity can emerge as early as the first promotion opportunity – women account for 48% of entry-level hires but only 38% of first-level managers.



This ties in Asaad’s view that even though mentoring and coaching can help grow women into leadership positions, being on the ground is what gives her true visibility. “It’s important because if you don’t know the women around you, those women who could be the next leaders, you will miss them,” she says. “With men, you tend to hire someone because they have ‘potential’. With women, historically, it’s different. You always have to prove yourself in that position. This is a narrative we have to change. We need to hire female leaders because you see the potential.”



For Asaad, this is the difference between equity and equality: equality means giving everybody the same opportunity and the same tools and assuming that you will get similar outputs. Equity is the exact opposite. “Equity is giving everybody what they need. It’s about understanding that people have different strengths and weaknesses. For women, there are certain barriers, certain challenges… what if you could help them to bypass these things?” she asks. “Then women in positions of power can be treated on an equal footing to their male counterparts—judged for their actions and output alone.



Post-pandemic, the hybrid world of work has helped to level the playing field for women to take on leadership roles. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the rate of women participating in the IT sector is now higher than Silicon Valley. “You will be amazed at the number of female engineers, the quality, dedication, commitment and retention that you get,” adds Asaad. “One of our first engineers that got CCIE certified is a female leader in Saudi. We have the talent, but we need somebody to recognize that these women are out there and give them the opportunity.”



Digital transformation is a big part of job creation. Despite geopolitical challenges, governments with an appetite for innovation breed talent and new roles like the chief sustainability officer, renewable energy analyst or green engineer require future-forward skills. “In Africa, we have the skillsets. We have the workforce. We have Cisco Networking Academies that can step in where needed and females have a very big part in this transformation,” she says. “My role is to solve for three things: getting women in the door by managing unconscious bias to open access. Once women are in, how can you involve and retain them? And once they have been there, how can we progress them to goals.

gettyimages-1084167640-170667a

Let’s Tech About It: Why This Industry In Africa Has Gender Issues

After the MtGox hack, Tokyo put in place tough rules that later protected FTX customers. Now, from that secure base, it’s moving to allow blockchain technologies to flourish.



More than a million investors around the world were left stranded when FTX suddenly collapsed in November with an astonishing hole, estimated at $8.7 billion, in its balance sheet. The cryptocurrency exchange and its 130-plus affiliates have been operating in bankruptcy for five months, and a new management team claims to have recovered $7.3 billion of the missing cash and tokens. Yet only one component of the company has returned money to clients.



FTX’s Japanese unit allowed all verified accounts to resume withdrawals on February 21. As of April 25, nearly 10,000 individual and corporate clients had withdrawn crypto and cash worth approximately 23.4 billion yen ($175.4 million),&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.liquid.com/ja/%E5%87%BA%E9%87%91-%E5%87%BA%E5%BA%AB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%BC%E3%83%93%E3%82%B9%E3%81%AE%E9%80%B2%E6%8D%97%E7%8A%B6%E6%B3%81%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6-1682390331847?_ga=2.70873552.1915823815.1682596738-1460639900.1681400607&amp;_gl=1*1be4ztb*_ga*MTQ2MDYzOTkwMC4xNjgxNDAwNjA3*_ga_KM66WLZ8WM*MTY4MjU5NjczOC4yLjEuMTY4MjU5Njc4Mi4xNi4wLjA." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a>&nbsp;the company.



Count this as a victory for Japan’s financial regulators and the strict rules they’ve put in place to protect consumers in the wild and wooly world of crypto.



Japan cracked down with safety and soundness rules from a unified regulator after two big exchange hacks. But now, from that stable (and some in the industry would say overly restrictive) base, it’s seeking to come up with a strategy to become a leader in the collection of mostly decentralized, blockchain-based technologies known as web 3. The U.S., by contrast, has arguably been open to more innovation, but its dueling oversight agencies and lack of rules have created gaps in oversight and a culture of regulation by enforcement that makes strategic planning perilous.



Japan, an early adopter of digital assets, learned the value of regulation early and the hard way, through what remains arguably the most notorious crypto hack ever–the 2014 plunder of 800,000 bitcoins from MtGox, which had been the world’s largest bitcoin exchange. Four years later, Coincheck, another cryptocurrency exchange based in Tokyo, was robbed of $500 million worth of NEM blockchain’s xem coins.



“The drama and shakeup that the U.S. is experiencing around Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, the Bahamas situation is not relevant in Japan,” says Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for the industry worldwide. That’s because Japan has already been there and done that.



After the MtGox and Coincheck shocks, Japan’s primary financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), tightened rules on crypto exchanges, notes Ananya Kumar, associate director of digital currencies at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, the think tank’s unit addressing foreign policy, finance, and economics.



The FSA’s rules include:



<ul>
<li>Customer and company assets must be held separately, with holdings verified in annual audits.</li>



<li>Investors can&#8217;t borrow more than twice their investments for leveraged trades on exchanges. (Many cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, allow trading at 100x leverage.)</li>



<li>Exchanges must hold at least 95% of customer funds in cold wallets, which are not connected to the internet.</li>
</ul>



The measures proved instrumental in enabling clients of the Japanese subsidiary of FTX to withdraw their assets after its parent filed for bankruptcy in November. It remains unclear when other FTX clients will be able to get their money back, and how much of it they’ll get.



Japan has thus become a customer-friendly crypto haven but at the expense of stringent supervision of the freewheeling digital assets industry.



Now, Japan is building on that secure base, with a national economic strategy and a bid to lead its allies in creating rules that will effectively govern the industry.



“The FSA contributes to international policy discussion, including the one at the Financial Stability Board—an international organization that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system—on crypto-assets by leveraging its experience as a global forerunner in the regulation and monitoring of crypto-asset activities and markets,” the agency told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in written comments.



On April 6, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s web3 project team, tasked with drafting crypto-focused policy proposals, released a&nbsp;<a href="https://note.com/akihisa_shiozaki/n/n669dee962b15" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">white paper</a>&nbsp;outlining several recommendations, including a call for Tokyo to take the lead.



“After crypto winter, Japan may be the first to welcome spring,” the 35-page document predicts. “As a country that has overcome many hardships in the cryptocurrency industry, we are in a position to persuade the world about the immeasurable potential of web3.”



Suggestions in the paper cover tax reform, improved accounting standards, and regulation of blockchain-based finance. There’s even a recommendation for the government to drive the conversation about digital assets at the next Group of Seven (G7) summit, scheduled to be held in Hiroshima later this month.



“While Western financial regulators appear to be single-mindedly focused on tightening regulations in the midst of what is being called a crypto winter, I assess that Japanese financial regulators correctly understand the potential of blockchain and other technologies and are working to design regulations in a forward-looking manner,” Masaaki Taira, the team’s leader and a member of the House of Representatives, said in written comments to&nbsp;Forbes.



In February, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okslrifMl4M" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Budget Committee of Japan’s House of Representatives</a>&nbsp;that there are “various possibilities for using web3” in Japan. He said that the Japanese government could employ blockchain-based mechanisms like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/article/what-are-nfts/?sh=609abead296f">non-fungible tokens</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2022/02/03/daos-arent-a-fad-theyre-a-platform/?sh=210b8c1719d0">decentralized autonomous organizations</a>&nbsp;to revitalize regions and promote “Cool Japan” — a national strategy aimed at promoting the country’s innovations and culture to the rest of the world that dates back to the early 2000s and echoes the U.K.’s “Cool Britannia” policies of the 1990s.



According to Taira, his team–including about 10 members of the Diet (Japan’s national legislature), six lawyers from the private sector with expertise in web3 and 10 leading Japanese digital influencers acting as advisors–works directly with Kishida and several government bodies. “The policy proposals compiled by the project team are adopted almost directly by the LDP, and a significant portion is adopted into government policy. It is an extremely powerful team,” he says.



“The way they talk about crypto is very crypto-native in terms of what the technology enables and what aspects of current regulation are just not workable,” says the Crypto Council’s Warren. “They are saying analogue regulation doesn&#8217;t work in digital environments.”



Japan does not have a long history of being hospitable to blockchain entrepreneurs. In addition to its heavy-handed regulation, Japan&#8217;s tax code is particularly hostile to the industry. It&#8217;s also hard to get new cryptocurrencies approved. After founding their gaming company Murasaki on home shores last year, Shinnosuke Murata and Shunsuke Sasaki recently decided to move their business to the Netherlands. “Why would two Japanese entrepreneurs with considerable experience starting companies in their own country go halfway around the world to set up a new business? wrote Murata in a&nbsp;<a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Why-I-had-to-leave-Japan-to-launch-my-gaming-company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nikkei op-ed</a>&nbsp;in October. “Simply because it just was not feasible to do so in Japan.”



With a corporate tax rate set around 30% on unrealized gains from cryptocurrency holdings, it is a real struggle to get a new blockchain-based business off the ground, Murata tells&nbsp;Forbes. “Suppose you issue 100 tokens each worth $1 million. Even if you don’t realize gains, you will need to pay $30 million next year. Practically no startup founders can issue a token,” Murata explains.



Major U.S. crypto exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase have recently shut their subsidiaries in Japan,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/halting-operations-in-japan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">citing</a>&nbsp;“market conditions”. Overall, there are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fsa.go.jp/en/regulated/licensed/en_kasoutuka.xlsx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">37</a>&nbsp;crypto exchanges registered in the country, according to the FSA.



Additionally, the agency can take months to review proposals to list new tokens, which results in Japan&#8217;s trading market growing much slower at lower levels of liquidity than those of other countries, says Murata.



“Japan loses entrepreneurs that could build $100 million businesses because of those barriers,” he laments.



The existing framework makes it difficult for local entrepreneurs, agrees Roi Hirata, head of a new Japanese subsidiary of the Avalanche blockchain’s main developer company, New York-based Ava Labs. Avalanche’s brand recognition in Japan is exploding, Hirata says, which has prompted Ava Labs to start building a presence in the island nation. As a first step, his team has partnered with Japanese media giant GREE on a new blockchain game.



“I see a huge opportunity for both intellectual property providers and traditional businesses in Japan to adopt a blockchain like Avalanche, providing both decentralization and compliant service,” Hirata noted in an email to&nbsp;Forbes.



For now, its deep-pocketed tech giants that are leading the blockchain push in Japan.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2023/02/07/forbes-blockchain-50-2023/?sh=577ea334319d">This year’s&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Blockchain 50</a>, an annual list highlighting the best enterprise applications of the distributed-database technology, features three Japanese companies, Fujitsu, LINE and NTT.



Social media giant LINE helps create NFTs for 26 big customers including SoftBank, South Korea’s Naver search engine and Visa. According to the company, more than two million wallets have registered on its DOSI NFT platform since September. NTT Docomo, the country’s dominant mobile-phone service provider,&nbsp;has&nbsp;<a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/NTT-Docomo-to-invest-4bn-in-Web3-using-mobile-infrastructure" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pledged&nbsp;</a>to invest up to $4 billion in web3 infrastructure.



Electronics powerhouse Fujitsu teamed up with financial-services giants including Mitsubishi UFJ Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui to build the “Ryugukoku,” or the “Japanese Metaverse Economic Zone.” The initiative,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2023/0227-02.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;in February, seeks to build a shared metaverse infrastructure for large enterprises.



Meanwhile, the FSA is planning to lift its ban on the domestic distribution of stablecoins later this year. The exact date and the coins that will be allowed have not been determined, but decisions are scheduled for June.



“This does not mean that all foreign issued stablecoins will be allowed without any restriction,” the agency told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;via written comments. “We will allow stablecoins to be handled after individual examination, if there are no problems from the viewpoint of user protection, etc. Examples include: foreign issuers in their countries being subject to the equivalent regulations as in Japan, and underlying assets being preserved appropriately.”



Late last year, the ruling party’s tax committee approved a proposal to exempt crypto startups that issue their own tokens from paying corporate taxes on unrealized gains. New proposals introduced in the white paper include tax exclusions for companies holding tokens issued by other companies that aren&#8217;t going to be traded short term and to limit taxable events only to instances when the assets are exchanged for traditional currencies.



“I think it is not only really exciting, but it&#8217;s actually paving the way to demonstrate to the rest of the world here is how you create forward-thinking flexible regulation that can navigate this tricky balance of preserving a wide space for innovation while also protecting consumers,” says Warren.



The overarching <a href="https://note.com/akihisa_shiozaki/n/n669dee962b15" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">message</a> is “Japan is back, Again.”\<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/"></a>



By Nina Bambysheva, Forbes staff

financial technology flowchart and basic income mining cryptocurrency with blockchain startup unicorn crypto money virtual diagram.businessman hand working with new modern computer.

What Japan Could Teach The U.S.—And The World—About Regulating Crypto

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The already stuffed wallets of several billionaire insiders at Alphabet grew even fatter Thursday as shares of Google’s parent company rallied, after the company’s Wednesday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/05/10/google-io-2023-ai/?sh=448f91e95704">announcement</a>&nbsp;of various new artificial intelligence features—capped by integrating AI into Google’s search engine——largely cooled investors’ fears about a wide gap in the AI space between Google and rival Microsoft.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Alphabet’s stock surged more than 4% Thursday, bringing its two-day gain to 9% following CEO Sundar Pichai’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/10/google-adding-ai-to-search-engine-for-some-users-closing-in-on-microsofts-ai-push/?sh=73fba5123502">presentation</a>&nbsp;introducing a variety of ways the company plans to utilize AI in its search engine and beyond.



Shares of the Silicon Valley stalwart are now at their highest level since August.



Google demonstrated “AI powered search can still be the gateway” to online activity and drive advertising revenue growth, according to Bank of America analysts Justin Post and Joanna Zhao, deeming Wednesday’s presentation “a positive step in changing the AI narrative” that Microsoft and its ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">better-positioned</a>&nbsp;to cash in on the AI craze.



Alphabet’s market capitalization swelled by nearly $120 billion over the last two trading sessions, solidifying its place as the fourth-most valuable public company in the world.



Largely reaping the benefits of the stock surge are Google’s billionaire current and former executives who added a total of more than $9 billion, including cofounders and board members Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who added $4.1 billion and $3.9 billion to their fortunes Thursday, respectively.



Fellow Alphabet board members Ravitark Ram Shriram and John Doerr added about $330 million to their combined fortunes Thursday, while early Google investor David Cheriton and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt grew more than $900 million richer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuations">FORBES VALUATIONS</h2>



Page (worth $99.6 billion) and Brin ($95.3 billion) are the seventh- and 10th-richest people in the world, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ real-time billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5ce0a38e3d78">tracker</a>. Page’s fortune surpassed that of Microsoft mogul Steve Ballmer and Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim Helu on Thursday, while Brin’s wealth pile surged past those of L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and financial data king Michael Bloomberg.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Alphabet has the “leading collection of AI/machine learning-driven businesses” of any technology company, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Eric Sheridan wrote in a Wednesday note to clients, adding the latest rollout caused the bank to become “increasingly constructive” on Alphabet’s long-term business strategy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



The freshly announced generative AI improvements are a “positive [step] in the AI battle” against Microsoft, but Alphabet continues to operate in “major catchup mode,” according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Microsoft’s early investment in ChatGPT parent OpenAI gave it a “key head start” in the field that could prove challenging for Alphabet to overcome in the struggle for market share, Ives added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November to significant fanfare and was integrated into Bing in February, shortly after Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/">announced</a>&nbsp;it made a multibillion-dollar equity investment in OpenAI. Many&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/03/10/google-peacetime-ceo-sundar-pichai/?sh=359f71584ab1">considered</a>&nbsp;Google’s early response to the AI-fueled stiffer search competition to be subpar, with Alphabet shares&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">sliding</a>&nbsp;as much as 10% in the months following ChatGPT’s rollout.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/05/10/google-io-2023-ai/?sh=448f91e95704">Google Tries To Straddle Being &#8216;Bold&#8217; And &#8216;Responsible&#8217; In AI Product Blitz</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/10/google-adding-ai-to-search-engine-for-some-users-closing-in-on-microsofts-ai-push/?sh=73fba5123502">Google Adding AI To Search Engine For Some Users—Closing In On Microsoft&#8217;s AI Push</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/03/10/google-peacetime-ceo-sundar-pichai/?sh=359f71584ab1">Google’s ‘Peacetime’ CEO Sundar Pichai Faces Criticism As The AI War Heats Up</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">Google Stock Loses $57 Billion Amid Microsoft’s AI ‘Lead’—And Reports It Could Be Replaced By Bing On Some Smartphones</a> (Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/"></a>By Derek Saul, Forbes Staff

FRANCE-ECONOMY-TECHNOLOGY-VIVATECH

Google Insiders Are $9 Billion Richer After AI-Fueled Stock Rally

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Google&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;Wednesday that it’s giving its signature product, the search engine, an AI makeover—potentially transforming the way users view search results after Microsoft announced a similar plan.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Google results with AI will be available to select people in the U.S. who apply for a waitlist to be part of Search Lab, where they’ll be able to test out how the product is working and give Google feedback, the company announced Wednesday at its annual developer conference, Google I/O.



Search with AI will be labeled as an experiment for users—though it won’t be available for at least a few weeks—and Google said the AI-generated information will be more factual than conversational, unlike other AI tools like ChatGPT, AP&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/google-artificial-intelligence-search-engine-chatgpt-microsoft-fd0538018df958388991772ced6e693d?utm_source=homepage&amp;utm_medium=TopNews&amp;utm_campaign=position_06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>; however, Google also announced Wednesday that&nbsp;<a href="https://bard.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bard</a>, its chatbot-like experiment, is now widely available for people to try.



PROMOTED



Combining AI with Google Search will let users type a question into the search bar and receive one main result that synthesizes the information gathered—but there will still be normal search links provided below the generated answer.



The company did not provide a timeline for when AI-based results will roll out to the general public.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



The service will not be able to respond to certain questions about health and finance matters. People searching for those will continue to be directed to normal search results for their answers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The AI-based updates and changes to Google products come as Microsoft, one of its main competitors, is also working to incorporate AI into its search engine, Bing, and as ChatGPT continues to grow in popularity. Google has maintained its status as the go-to search engine for most of the world for at least two decades, but the stock of Google’s parent company, Alphabet,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/tech/google-ai-search-engine-stock-drop/index.html#:~:text=Shares%20of%20Google%2Dparent%20Alphabet,powered%20rivals%2C%20including%20Microsoft's%20Bing." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dropped</a>&nbsp;significantly when Bing incorporated AI. The share price has since recovered—even as rumors swirl of Samsung dropping Google, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/tech/google-ai-search-engine-stock-drop/index.html#:~:text=Shares%20of%20Google%2Dparent%20Alphabet,powered%20rivals%2C%20including%20Microsoft's%20Bing." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNN</a>. Microsoft also has an early advantage in the AI chatbot race, investing billions of dollars into ChatGPT creator OpenAI and unveiling plans to integrate ChatGPT technology into its suite of products.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“We are at an exciting inflection point,” said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. at the conference. “We are reimagining all our products, including search.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



AI search tools weren’t the only update from Google on Wednesday, as the company announced plans to infuse more AI technology into its products. Soon, Gmail will have a “Help Me Write” option that people can use to write long responses to emails in seconds, and the company announced “Magic Editor,” a tool for Google Photos that will automatically edit pictures.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



5%. That’s how much Alphabet’s shares increased after the series of Google and AI announcements, rising to $112.65. The increase brough Alphabet to its highest level since Bing remodeled its search engine using AI in February, AP&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/google-artificial-intelligence-search-engine-chatgpt-microsoft-fd0538018df958388991772ced6e693d?utm_source=homepage&amp;utm_medium=TopNews&amp;utm_campaign=position_06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://apnews.com/article/google-artificial-intelligence-search-engine-chatgpt-microsoft-fd0538018df958388991772ced6e693d?utm_source=homepage&amp;utm_medium=TopNews&amp;utm_campaign=position_06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google is giving its dominant search engine an artificial-intelligence makeover</a>&nbsp;(AP)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/10/google-search-ai-io-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AI is changing Google search: What the IO announcement means for you</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/ai-search-google-io/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The most popular search engine in the world is about to look different</a> (CNN)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/"></a>By Molly Bohannon, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, a woman holds a smartphone with

Google Adding AI To Search Engine For Some Users—Closing In On Microsoft’s AI Push

Where does the continent fit into the chatbot conversation, and why it needs its own startups that focus on AI.



By Tiana Cline



The ability to be able to have a conversation with someone else is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being but today, it’s becoming more and more confusing to figure out whether you’re talking to a bot… or not.



Technology has advanced to the point where AI-powered conversational chatbots, like ChatGPT or Meta’s BlenderBot 3, are deceptively realistic. (More so when they go off the rails and say things like ‘I want to be alive’, which is exactly what Bing’s AI bot expressed earlier this year.) While chatbots like these are trained to avoid expressing personal or biased views, and are known to make factual mistakes and mix up information, they’re becoming smarter, more streamlined and sometimes, a little strange…



“Conversational AI is one of the first applications of NLP in artificial intelligence and this kind of technology has existed since Eliza in the sixties,” explains Professor Mpho Raborife, the deputy director at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.



Natural Language Processing, or NLP, is a way for computers to understand human language. NLP uses AI tools like machine learning and neural networks to process and interpret large amounts of data.



“With the rise of big data, ChatGPT was inevitable. It’s trained on a very large dataset and the technologies behind it make it a lot more advanced than other conversational AI applications.”



One of the reasons for this, explains Raborife, is that ChatGPT uses reinforcement learning alongside sophisticated algorithms that manipulate its dataset. “It’s so sophisticated that people don’t realize that it really possesses no intelligence whatsoever,”



she adds, “it really doesn’t understand the meaning behind anything, it just know how the words are supposed to work but not what they mean.”



OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a research experiment gone wild that has shown the incredible potential of conversational AI yet Africa is still being left behind. Consider smartphone voice assistants like Siri or Alexa – both examples of conversational AI used regularly; they work with English but struggle to understand local accents. They don’t support African languages.



“We know that the Global North is not going to include our languages. Therefore, we need to find a way to make sure that we create an environment that the startups that come from Africa which do incorporate our languages have the same kind of impact,” Raborife adds. Duolingo, for example, is a popular language learning mobile app that uses an AI system called Birdbrain to personalize its content. Duolingo has 43 different languages (including made-up dialects such as Klingon, High Valyrian and Esperanto) but only isiZulu and Swahili are available when it comes to African language learning courses.



“When we talk about AI, our languages are not supported or even represented by these technologies,” says Raborife. “But conversational AI has the potential to bridge the language divide as it can be used in a variety of ways because it surpasses literacy levels. If people cannot read or write, they can use their voice to access services and this is something that is important to Africa.



This is why we need our own startups that focus on AI.”



Recently launched, Lelapa AI is an African AI research and product house looking to make a real difference within the continent with a special interest in agriculture, education, energy, healthcare, microfinance and language. 



“There are so many problems on the continent that AI-type technologies can help with so there’s a responsibility for us to use our skills to help create better lives for everyday Africans,” says Pelonomi Moiloa, Lelapa AI’s co-founder and CEO.



“What we intend to do is use technology in a very smart, resource-efficient way because there are challenges on the continent like rolling blackouts, water shortages and network issues…” Lelapa AI have already debuted an app called VulaVula which offers NLP-as-a-service for under-represented languages.



Moiloa describes VulaVula as an underlying technology that supports other technologies. A banking chatbot, for example, could use VulaVula’s AI language capabilities to help customers interact in their own languages.



“The idea is that if an organization has a place for us to plug our models into and we can collaborate agreements around how that work can be done, then – ideally – if we have the resources and capacity we will help businesses do what they need.”



For Moiloa, creating African data sets to work from may be challenging but it’s also something she sees as a competitive advantage for Lelapa AI. “We’re having to think around clever ways of dealing with Africa’s data scarcity problem. We have to create models that are able to cope with less amounts of data, but models that can get really good at curating and gathering data,” she says.



And the fact that ChatGPT doesn’t necessarily draw its information from African data sets (it was apparently trained using real human conversations) means startups like Lelapa AI have the opportunity to develop responsible methods of dealing with problems that are relevant to the continent.



“I don’t think we should be trying to develop our own ChatGPT but maybe we can develop other textual tools that can help solve the problems that ChatGPT is meant to – but at the moment, it seems to be creating more problems,” she ends.

Asian woman using smartphone surrounded by beams of light. Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence

In this photo illustration the American online social media

2023 Layoff Tracker: Latest Meta Cuts Could Hit 4,000

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



A new TikTok trend known as “Watertok” has made a splash in recent weeks — as users experiment with flavored water “cocktails” — but the trend has raised many questions, including a debate over whether the drinks are still technically “water” and whether there are health risks associated with the latest viral craze.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



“Watertok” videos often feature women filling up large cups—Stanley tumblers are usually the mode of choice—with ice and water, and then creating an elixir by adding different water flavorings, typically in pursuit of drinking more water throughout the day



Some of the most infamous “water recipes” include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3c5wPF/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">birthday cake</a>&nbsp;water,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3cwP2a/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">peach ring</a>&nbsp;water and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3cyXrV/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">piña colada</a>&nbsp;water—the creators use powdered flavorings from brands like Skittles, Sonic, Crush and Jolly Ranchers and syrups by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.skinnymixes.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jordan’s Skinny Mixes</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kerryfoodservice.com/collections/sugar-free-syrups?scroll=780" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DaVinci</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.makeitmio.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MiO</a>&nbsp;to create the drinks.



While the flavorings are typically zero-calorie and sugar free, Watertok’s popularity and the vibrant color and sweetness of the drinks have caused people to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3c2VCD/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wonder</a>&nbsp;where to draw the line between water and juice.



Others have resorted to mocking the trend, like this TikTok&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3cUaCY/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a>&nbsp;with over 330,000 likes and 2.5 millions views, in which the creator pretends to make a water recipe, but makes a pitcher of Kool-aid instead.



The trend, which began among patients of weight-loss surgery who were advised to consume water before and after their operations, has picked up steam on TikTok, causing some health experts to praise increased water consumption while others warn that replacing meals with water could lead to disordered eating.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



134.2 million. That’s how many views the hashtag&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3vswEU/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">#WaterTok</a>&nbsp;has accumulated on TikTok.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“In a perfect world, [people] would be drinking just regular water, but we know some people just don&#8217;t like it or don&#8217;t don&#8217;t drink enough,” obesity medicine specialist and medical director of diabetes reversal company Virta Health, Jeff Stanley, told&nbsp;Forbes. “So, adding in a bit of [flavoring] can be helpful.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-watertok-origins">WATERTOK ORIGINS</h2>



WaterTok originated from bariatric patients who needed to spice up their water intake while on pre- and postoperative liquid diets that last no more than&nbsp;<a href="https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-treatments/c/colorectal-cancer-surgery/what-to-expect/clear-liquid-diet-guidelines.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">five days</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/watertok-tiktok-water-experts-concerned-1234714010/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to popular WaterTok creator Tonya Spanglo. Stanley told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;the reason for the liquid diet is for “people to lose a little bit of weight before the surgery… and shrink the liver a little, which makes the surgery easier.”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=135&amp;contentid=82#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20types%20of,the%20top%20of%20your%20stomach." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According</a>&nbsp;to the University of Rochester Medical Center, there are three common types of bariatric surgeries: gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy (or the gastric sleeve) and adjustable gastric banding (or the lap band). During the gastric sleeve, 85% of the patient’s is removed, creating a narrow tube that resembles a sleeve, during gastric bypass the surgeon removes part of the stomach to create a pouch and the lap band involves an adjustable band being placed at the top of the stomach and a port under the skin to tighten the band. Spanglo, known on TikTok as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3vg4uy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">takingmylifeback42</a>, is a bariatric patient with almost 800,000 TikTok followers. In a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3cNUDN/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a>&nbsp;addressing the hate she’s received, she made it clear her “dietician and surgeon approved [flavored water].” Spanglo is no longer on a liquid diet as she got her&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3cPLxg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">surgery</a>&nbsp;three years ago, so she drinks flavored water to meet her water intake goal of at least 64 ounces a day.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-benefits">BENEFITS</h2>



The main reason people drink flavored water is to up their water intake. TikToker Haley Staggs&nbsp;<a href="https://www.today.com/food/trends/watertok-flavored-water-recipes-tiktok-rcna79555" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a>&nbsp;NBC’s&nbsp;Today&nbsp;show that WaterTok has helped her drink more water, and she now consumes “over 100 ounces of water a day.” Stanley said water recipes help his diabetic patients curb their sweet tooth, and he found flavored water was a good alternative to juice and soda because most flavorings use sugar substitutes. For the most part, Stanley believes the WaterTok trend is harmless and a way to “keep things interesting,” while having fun, and considers it water “for all intents and purposes.” Dietician Frances Largeman-Roth told&nbsp;Today&nbsp;“it’s a fun thing to make and drink,” and she loves how people are leveling up their water intakes, but advised against using artificially colored and flavored syrups.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-it-dangerous">IS IT DANGEROUS?</h2>



Just like any trend, WaterTok has become popular among people who were not originally the target audience. Some WaterTok videos are also hashtagged as weight loss videos, though the trend is not overtly related to weight loss outside of the bariatric surgery requirements. However, chief strategy officer for the eating disorder treatment organization the Emily Program and Veritas Collaborative, Jillian Lampert,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/watertok-tiktok-water-experts-concerned-1234714010/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a>&nbsp;Rolling Stone&nbsp;flavored water is a recipe for a potential eating disorder. Lampert labels people drinking water in place of food as “long-term, old-school eating disorder behavior.” Around 28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetimes, the Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders&nbsp;<a href="https://anad.org/eating-disorders-statistics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>. Abdul Matin Azizi, principal dentist at Harley Private Dental,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/watertok-hydration-flavoured-water-receipes-healthy-b2320966.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">warned</a>&nbsp;The Independent&nbsp;about the dangers the trend can pose for dental health. Azini said the additives, artificial sugars and citric acid in the flavorings can “erode tooth enamel and cause tooth decay,” and recommended rinsing the mouth after consumption. Most flavorings, like Skinny Mixes syrup, are sweetened with stevia and erythritol, both sugar alternatives used in the diabetic community. However, a recent study&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/03/01/new-warning-about-zero-calorie-sugar-substitute-what-experts-are-saying-about-erythritol/?sh=3c1ac8ca5385">linked</a>&nbsp;erythritol with an increased risk of heart disease, though the study only featured participants with heart problems.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/03/01/new-warning-about-zero-calorie-sugar-substitute-what-experts-are-saying-about-erythritol/?sh=3c1ac8ca5385">New Warning About Zero-Calorie Sugar Substitute: What Experts Are Saying About Erythritol</a>&nbsp;Forbes)



<a href="https://www.today.com/food/trends/watertok-flavored-water-recipes-tiktok-rcna79555" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">#WaterTok: Why ‘water recipes’ are taking over TikTok</a>&nbsp;(Today)



<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/watertok-tiktok-water-experts-concerned-1234714010/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TikTok Is Obsessed With Water. Experts Are Concerned</a> (Rolling Stone)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/"></a>By Arianna Johnson, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration the TikTok logo seen displayed on

Divisive TikTok Trend ‘WaterTok’: Why Some Experts Warn Against It And Others Encourage It

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Alphabet shares are on pace for their worst day in over two months following a report indicating the Google parent company is in danger of losing a key multibillion-dollar search engine contract to Microsoft, as the artificial intelligence rivalry between the two technology giants rages on.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Samsung is mulling a switch from Google to Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its smartphones and tablets, the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;Sunday, putting a contract worth a reported $3 billion per year in jeopardy.



Though that represents just over 1% of Alphabet’s roughly $280 billion in annual revenue, it’s the latest indication that Google’s search engine dominance may be fading, with the&nbsp;Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reporting</a>&nbsp;there was “panic” among Alphabet employees over the Samsung contract.



Alphabet shares slid as much as 4.1% in early trading Monday, shedding $57 billion in market capitalization, while Microsoft shares climbed 1.6%.



That continues a months-long trend of Microsoft’s stock outperforming Alphabet’s, as Microsoft shares are up 21% since the November launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral chatbot incorporated into Bing; Alphabet shares are up 10% during the same period.



Microsoft has an “early lead” in the artificial intelligence space as it exhibits a “renewed vigor” in the search market, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Kash Rangan wrote in a note to clients last month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/?sh=7e64a4253c0c">announced</a>&nbsp;in January it made a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/?sh=7e64a4253c0c">reportedly</a>&nbsp;infusing $10 billion into the budding generative AI company and taking what will be a 49% stake in the firm. Just three weeks later, Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/07/reinventing-search-with-a-new-ai-powered-microsoft-bing-and-edge-your-copilot-for-the-web/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rolled out</a>&nbsp;its integration of ChatGPT into Bing and its Edge web browser. Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT, has received more lukewarm feedback, with Alphabet shares&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tanking</a>&nbsp;7% on February 8 after the chatbot provided inaccurate information during a demo.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Microsoft is the “clear early leader” in the generative AI space and has “potential to achieve escape velocity” and separate itself from competitors, JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy wrote earlier this month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



20%. That’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">roughly</a>&nbsp;the proportion of the roughly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/270223-The-Mobile-Economy-2023-Infographic.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">4.4 billion</a>&nbsp;smartphone users worldwide that use a Samsung device, according to Counterpoint Research and GSMA Intelligence data.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/?sh=1c90f134290f">AI 50</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/03/01/ai-is-the-new-electricity-bank-of-america-picks-20-stocks-to-cash-in-on-chatgpt-hype/?sh=5a8f4d9777ac">‘AI Is The New Electricity’: Bank Of America Picks 20 Stocks To Cash In On ChatGPT Hype</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/technology/google-search-engine-ai.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals</a> (New York Times)



By Derek Saul, Forbes Staff

Google Stock Loses $57 Billion Amid Microsoft’s AI ‘Lead’—And Reports It Could Be Replaced By Bing On Some Smartphones

The AI based tool can create &#8220;cutouts&#8221; or segments of different parts of an image. This comes handy while editing photos or while analyzing imagery for biological or security purposes. META AI



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-announcement-comes-as-the-social-media-giant-increasingly-diverts-its-attention-from-creating-a-virtual-reality-based-metaverse-to-embed-ai-features-across-its-platforms-like-instagram-facebook-messenger-and-whatsapp">The announcement comes as the social media giant increasingly diverts its attention from creating a virtual reality-based Metaverse to embed AI features across its platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp</h3>
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Editing photos, analyzing surveillance footage and understanding the parts of a cell. These tasks have one thing in common: you need to be able to identify and separate different objects within an image. Traditionally, researchers have had to start from scratch each time they want to analyze a new part of an image.



Meta aims to change this laborious process by being the one-stop-shop for researchers and web developers working on such problems. On Wednesday, the company released an AI model, called “Segment Anything Model” or “SAM” through which users can create “cutouts” or segments of any item in an image by clicking on a point or drawing a box around the object. The tool can be used in research purposes, for creative editing or even to make sense of objects while wearing a VR headset by making it faster and more efficient to carve up different parts of an image.



The tech company launched the browser-based tool to the public and also open sourced its computer vision model, which it claims is trained on “the largest segmentation dataset” of 1.1 billion segmentation masks (“masks” are different parts of an image) and 11 million images licensed from a large photo company. Meta did not disclose which company it licensed the images from. Meta AI, the artificial intelligence research arm of the social media giant, worked with 130 human annotators based in Kenya to create the dataset, which was made through a combination of manual and automatic labeling of a billion parts of millions of images.



Object recognition and computer vision technologies have been around for years and are already integrated in various devices such as&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/visualone-smartens-up-home-security-cameras-with-object-and-action-recognition/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">surveillance cameras</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs231a/prev_projects_2016/deep-drone-object__2_.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">drones</a>.&nbsp;<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/industries/make-convenience-stores-even-more-convenient-with-amazons-just-walk-out-technology-and-amazon-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon</a>&nbsp;stores for example use object recognition to detect the items you put into your basket and autonomous vehicles use it to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2023/02/28/luminar-plans-to-put-lidar-first-created-for-avs-into-millions-of-regular-cars/?sh=82bf66743820">perceive</a>&nbsp;their surroundings. Contemporary startups like Runway and incumbents like Adobe have commercialized their ability to use AI to detect and select different objects within an image for their creative users. As snazzy generative AI chatbots have emerged, the goal for AI researchers at Meta was to merge the advancement in AI foundational models with the dormant realm of computer vision technologies.



“I wouldn&#8217;t say that this is a new area of technology. Object segmentation already exists so I wouldn&#8217;t say this is a new capability. Fundamentally, I think their approach of using foundational models is new and the size of the dataset they&#8217;re training on could be novel,” says Paul Powers, CEO and founder of Physna, a search engine for 3D objects.



But what Meta hopes is that by releasing these tools more broadly, it’ll encourage users to build on top of their generalized model for more specific use cases in fields like biology and agriculture.



The announcement comes simultaneously as Meta&nbsp;<a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Meta-to-debut-ad-creating-generative-AI-this-year-CTO-says" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;plans to use generative AI for advertisements across Instagram and Facebook. Not wanting to miss out on the buzz around AI, in late February, CEO Mark Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0vvSykpAEXpHHaKKyWMZ423TCq3qQDKtLu7m4XiRfUEYRrxzwpdewh3yYepnc1Bsrl&amp;id=4&amp;mibextid=qC1gEa&amp;_rdr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;that he is creating a new product team solely focused on building generative AI tools like artificial personas, Instagram filters and chat-based features in WhatsApp and Instagram. Zuckerberg reportedly spends most of his time with the new AI team.



The SAM tool is built for those who don’t have the AI infrastructure or the data capacity to create their own models to “segment” or identify different components of an image, say Meta AI researchers Alexander Kirillov and Nikhila Ravi. “This is happening in real time in the browser and that makes this model much more accessible to so many more people because they don&#8217;t need to be able to run a lot of stuff on GPU…We can enable a lot more edge use cases that some other methods might not allow,” Ravi says.



But there are limitations of a computer vision model trained on a database of two-dimensional images, says Powers. For example, for the tool to detect and select a remote held upside down, it would need to be trained on different orientations of the same object. Models trained on 2D images won’t help detect images that are partly covered or partially exposed, he says. This means it wouldn’t accurately identify non-standardized objects through an AR/VR headset or it wouldn’t detect partially covered objects in public spaces if used by an autonomous vehicle manufacturer.



For the company, which rebranded itself from Facebook to Meta in late 2021 and inked its commitment to the Metaverse, the most obvious use for this object detection tool is in its virtual reality spaces such as its online VR game Horizon Worlds. Kirillov and Ravi say that their object detection tool can be used for “gaze-based” detection of objects through virtual reality and augmented reality headsets.



The model can detect unknown objects and work across domains with underwater, microscopic, aerial and agricultural images. Kirillov says he was inspired to create a generalized image segmenting model while talking to PhD researchers. “I was giving a presentation about segmentation to some natural scientists in Berkeley and people were like ‘Okay sure, this is all cool, but I need to like count and identify trees in the photos I’ve collected for my research about fires in California,’ and so this model can do that for them,” Kirillov tells Forbes.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/"></a>By Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration a Facebook logo seen displayed on

Meta’s New AI Tool Makes It Easier For Researchers To Analyze Photos

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Twitter introduced a new label for accounts with blue checkmarks Sunday that removes any distinction between those paid for by monthly subscribers and accounts verified by Twitter before CEO Elon Musk’s changes—as Twitter was expected to start removing ‘legacy’ checkmarks over the weekend.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



All accounts with a blue checkmark now display a notice that reads: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”



Twitter previously had separate labels for accounts with a checkmark that distinguished “legacy verified accounts” from accounts subscribed to Twitter Blue.



Twitter has not released a statement on the change, but Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1642643460883890178" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reacted</a>&nbsp;to a tweet about it with a relieved face emoji.



The change has elicited mixed reactions from users, with some users&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/eddyburback/status/1642641613687234561" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pointing out</a>&nbsp;that this could make potential impersonator accounts appear more convincing.



The change comes a day after Twitter was expected to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/verified/status/1639029459557679104" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">remove</a>&nbsp;the checkmarks of legacy verified accounts that do not subscribe to Twitter Blue.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Although Twitter&#8217;s latest change makes it a lot harder to distinguish between users whose identity was actually verified by Twitter and those who received the badge by paying $8 a month, many users have already posted about workarounds. Twitter’s search function&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelTobac/status/1642716930699317249" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">still allows</a>&nbsp;users to filter legacy verified and paid verified accounts, while there are some browser extensions that still allow users to distinguish between the two types of accounts.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The latest change comes a day after the company was expected to start stripping legacy verified accounts of their blue checkmarks. It’s not clear why Twitter has not yet done this, but the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-checkmark-ending/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;that the platform lacks an automated solution to strip all legacy verified accounts of their badges, as the original verification process used to be manual and relied on an Excel-like spreadsheet. Musk also&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MattBinder/status/1642401198731935747" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;and later deleted Sunday that the platform was offering a “grace” period to allow people to sign up for Twitter Blue. In the tweet, Musk warned that users who say they won’t pay for Twitter Blue will have their check marks removed immediately. The billionaire then followed through with his threat by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/04/02/musk-appears-to-revoke-ny-times-blue-checkmark-for-refusing-to-buy-paid-twitter-subscription/?sh=14986d32719f">revoking</a>&nbsp;the verification badge from the&nbsp;New York Times’ primary handle after a user pointed out that the newspaper previously stated it would not pay.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/04/02/musk-appears-to-revoke-ny-times-blue-checkmark-for-refusing-to-buy-paid-twitter-subscription/?sh=14986d32719f">Musk Appears To Revoke N.Y. Times’ Blue Checkmark For Refusing To Buy Paid Twitter Subscription</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-checkmark-ending/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter’s blue check mark was loved and loathed. Now it’s pay for play.</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/personaltech/twitter-blue-check-musk.html?referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter’s Blue Check Apocalypse Is Upon Us. Here’s What to Know.</a> (New York Times)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/"></a>By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Twitter And Elon Musk Photo Illustrations

Twitter’s New Blue Checkmark Label Removes Distinction Between Paying Subscribers And ‘Legacy Verified’ Users

Despite worries that the artificial intelligence program could make cheating easier, half of K-12 teachers report using it. Edtech companies are scrambling to release their own tools.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Diego Marin used to work late into the night at the end of each trimester submitting grades and comments for his 70 eighth grade math students at a Chicago public school. No more. Now he has a virtual assistant, ChatGPT, that cuts the time he spends on report card comments to an hour, by rapidly putting his individualized comments on each student into smooth, clean prose.



“As teachers, it feels like we’re short on time for everything,” Marin says. “I’ve had some nights where I’ve stayed up until midnight submitting comments.” He also uses the free artificial intelligence chatbot to help draft emails to parents, complete Individualized Education Programs for some students (such as those with learning disabilities) and even as a teaching tool.



Admittedly, Marin, 30, is into social media and the latest tech—he has 1.4 million followers on TikTok. But his embrace of AI isn’t unusual among teachers. Despite immediate fears after ChatGPT’s release to the public last November that the service would upend education by making cheating easier, more teachers seem to be using it to their advantage than worrying about that risk.



In a February survey of 1,000 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers nationwide, 51% said they had used ChatGPT, with 40% reporting they used it weekly and 10% using it daily. (ChatGPT is free, as long as users create an account with OpenAI. To access the latest version of the bot, built atop a more advanced version of AI—<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/03/14/gpt-4-can-ace-standardized-tests-do-your-taxes-and-more-says-openai/">GPT-4, instead of GPT-3.5</a>—users must pay $20 a month for a ChatGPT Plus subscription.)



About a third of teachers in the survey,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/learning/teachers-and-students-embrace-chatgpt-for-education" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation</a>, said they use ChatGPT for lesson planning and coming up with creative ideas for classes.



Middle school and high school teachers were more likely than those teaching lower grades to say they use the AI. Twenty-two percent said they use it to communicate with parents, students and colleagues. It’s easy to see the appeal of the tool, particularly for out-of-classroom tasks: a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-teachers-spend-their-time-a-breakdown/2022/04" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2022 EdWeek survey</a>&nbsp;found the typical teacher works 54 hours per week, with five hours spent on planning and prep, three hours on administrative work and two hours communicating with parents.



Of those teachers who have used ChapGPT, 88% said it’s having a positive impact on education. Even teachers who haven’t tried it themselves are more likely to say it has had no impact than a negative one—44% to 10%, respectively. But just 9% of nonusers ascribed a positive impact to the tool.



Moreover, only one in ten teachers reported catching a student using the chatbot without their permission. It’s unclear whether that’s because cheating is fairly rare or because teachers are missing the signs of students inclined to cheat (or more charitably, cut corners) using ChatGPT. But overall, students have actually been slower than teachers to adopt the tool, according to a February survey of 1,000 students aged 12 to 17 also commissioned by the foundation, funded by members of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1/?sh=5fa2b45c6f3f">billionaire Walton family</a>. Only a third of surveyed students said they had tried ChatGPT at all, with younger students in the sample actually reporting more use than older ones.



Not all school systems have embraced the AI tool. In January, the New York City education department, which oversees the nation’s largest school district with more than 1 million students, blocked the use of ChatGPT by both students and teachers, citing concerns about safety, accuracy and negative impacts to student learning. The Los Angeles Unified School District, Seattle Public Schools, the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, and Montgomery County schools in Alabama have also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/01/18/chatgpt-in-schools-heres-where-its-banned-and-how-it-could-potentially-help-students/?sh=3dffde086e2c">blocked access to the AI</a>.



In addition, another smaller survey shows more teacher skepticism—at least among those working at private schools. The National Association of Independent Schools (an association for private schools) recently surveyed about 200 teachers from its member schools and found 37% of them thought that AI in schools was a negative development, compared with only 33% who said it was positive. Another 30% of teachers said they thought it was neutral.



But some private school teachers, too, are in the vanguard of experimenting with the chatbot. Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, one of the nation’s fanciest college-prep schools, does not have any blanket policies about using ChatGPT. “Andover is a really big private school, and we have plenty of faculty members that are excited by this, and there are many other people that are very nervous about it,” says Nick Zufelt, a computer science and math teacher.



Zufelt is in the excited category. He first introduced ChatGPT to his students as subject material. “I was having conversations with my students about what it was doing and why it’s doing what it’s doing,” Zufelt says.



Now he’s beginning to use it as a tool in a new computer science seminar he’s teaching, that includes both students who have never written a line of code before and some with several years of coding experience. Zufelt is allowing students to have ChatGPT write a first draft of the code they’re working on. “I’m more interested that students end up with an understanding of the code than an ability to write it from first principles,” he explains. “Learning to think like a programmer is a lot harder than learning to program.”



Patrick Powers, an English teacher at Navo Middle School in Denton, Texas, has also proactively introduced ChatGPT to students; he’s encouraged them to use it to practice for debate assignments, develop business proposal templates for a “Shark Tank”-like pitching simulation and gather information about historical figures. “[Students] appreciate it being an interactive tool instead of just using Google or instead of using the lesson plan,” Powers says. “They’re just more engaged with the lesson and content itself.” He also touts ChatGPT’s clean writing as a “strong work example” that his eighth graders can learn from.



Like Marin, Powers finds ChatGPT’s writing strong enough to use when reaching out to families and says it enables him to increase the frequency of those communications, even while saving hours of email writing time a week. “Instead of being reactive and saying, ‘Hey, Johnny had a bad day in class,’’’ Powers says, he now uses the chatbot to draft regular emails to parents about what’s going on in class and how students are succeeding.



Cheating on essays has been one of the biggest concerns for educators, but Powers isn’t too worried about it. “I had a good feel for the voice of my students, so I knew the type of work to expect from them,” Powers says. “And before I introduced it, I sent out a letter to parents letting them know about the expectations in the classroom and how this tool could help us learn greater content in an innovative way.” (For those wondering, he drafted the letter in his own voice, without ChatGPT.) That said, Powers does believe a program that detects AI-written work would be useful. (GPTZero is so far the most well-known service that can identify ChatGPT-generated text).



As teachers experiment on their own, edtech providers (like those in other industries) are racing to build services on top of GPT-4. Online learning nonprofit Khan Academy debuted a closed beta version of its new AI tutor, Khanmigo, earlier this month. While students can use the older version of ChatGPT to write essays or solve problems for them, Khanmigo will act only as a coach, says Sal Khan, founder and CEO of the operation that carries his name.



“If you could go to two different tutors, and one tutor says ‘Gimme your homework, I&#8217;ll just do it for you. Here—turn this in,’ and the other tutor says, ‘Okay, let’s think about this together. How would you approach that?’ The second tutor is going to be far better for the student,” Khan says. Notably, Khanmigo&nbsp;won’t&nbsp;just give students the answer, even if they ask.



Khanmigo is also better at math than the free version of ChatGPT. One of the well-known limitations of that free version built on GPT-3.5 is that it very often gives incorrect answers to basic math problems, even if it accurately explains the concepts behind the solution. Because Khanmigo is built using GPT-4, its math skills are much improved.



Marin has occasionally witnessed GPT-3.5’s math fails during class and now uses them as a learning opportunity. “When I introduced ChatGPT to my students … we had ChatGPT open on the projector and it was going through a sequence of how to solve a system and it actually came up with the wrong answer,” Marin says. “For a second I thought my kids were just pulling my leg to be honest—because that’s what they like to do—but they said ‘No, Mr. Marin, it’s telling us that this is the answer, but it’s not.’ So that’s where we went back and found a mistake.” Now, he routinely asks ChatGPT to solve problems incorrectly and asks students to point out where the bot went wrong and why.



Teachers interested in piloting Khanmigo can sign up for a waitlist, and once selected, are asked to donate $20 monthly to use the service. Running Khanmigo is expensive—it costs Khan Academy about $0.05 for every 600-700 words that Khanmigo generates, and Khan anticipates that the AI will cost about $10 to $15 per student per month to run. The nonprofit has spent millions to build Khanmigo and hopes to secure extra philanthropic support for the project.



“Right now, it’s not cheap to be running this stuff,” Khan says. “The reason why we’re moving so aggressively on this, but in a safe way, is we think those costs are going to come down dramatically. And so we’re going to make it a lot more accessible in the coming months.”



Journalists, bloggers and other users have revealed how easy it can be to get around GPT’s guardrails. A&nbsp;NewYork Times&nbsp;tech columnist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-microsoft-chatgpt.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published a disturbing conversation</a>&nbsp;with Microsoft’s Bing chatbot—also built using GPT-4—that showed the AI, which called itself Sydney, fantasizing about hacking computers, spreading misinformation, and harming humans, despite guardrails that are supposed to prevent Bing from talking about such topics. (Additional guardrails&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/18/microsoft-puts-new-limits-on-bings-ai-chatbot-after-it-expressed-desire-to-steal-nuclear-secrets/?sh=3bf6fc90685c">have since been added</a>.)



Khan is well aware of this, and has built additional safety measures into Khanmigo to keep students from straying into questionable, non-educational conversations with the chatbot. All Khanmigo chats are logged, and if a student runs up against one of Khanmigo’s guardrails, teachers are notified.



ChatGPT also has a tendency to make things up—called hallucinations in AI-speak. Joe Welch, a history teacher at North Hills Middle School in Pittsburgh, saw this first hand, when he was seeking specific information on a niche topic.



A student working on a report shared that he had found conflicting information from different data sources about the extent of damage and casualties caused by a series of tornadoes that hit Western Pennsylvania in 1985. “I asked ChatGPT for a table of casualties, towns, time of the tornado, and monetary value of damage and the table came back with extremely inaccurate numbers,” says Welch. In other words, while a middle-schooler recognized the numbers he was finding were in conflict, the chatbot admitted to no such uncertainty, producing a definitive (but wrong) table.



Despite this, ChatGPT has saved Welch tons of time. He uses the chatbot, among other things, to create tables for student study guides, which would have previously used up at least an hour of prep time.



“It’s just cleaning up a lot of tasks that would’ve been arduous for me to complete,” he says.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/"></a>By Emma Whitford, Forbes Staff

Microsoft Built GPT-4 Into Office

How ChatGPT Is Fast Becoming The Teacher’s Pet

As Google plays catchup to OpenAI and Microsoft, CEO Sundar Pichai finds himself in the hot seat for fumbling the company&#8217;s lead in AI. It has some people questioning his leadership.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



When co-founders&nbsp;Larry Page and Sergey Brin&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/alphabet/letter-from-larry-and-sergey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;that they were leaving their day-to-day roles at Google parent Alphabet in 2019, handing Sundar Pichai the keys to the kingdom, they mused about Google’s age.



“If the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost,” they wrote. “We believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents—offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!”



Four years later, as Google faces incursions from AI rivals dead set on dethroning the company’s iconic search business, the absent parents have returned home. Microsoft, a once-dormant rival, has sprung to life with a new version of Bing, aided by OpenAI, the upstart maker of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/02/02/inside-chatggpts-breakout-moment-and-the-race-for-the-future-of-ai/?sh=50755de3240b">the generative AI bot ChatGPT</a>. As the chatbot began to make waves, Page and Brin, who became advisors for the company after leaving their official positions, started to take a more active role: They attended AI strategy meetings. Brin got&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/01/31/sergey-brin-code-request-lamda/">hands-on with code</a>.



The re-emergence of the founders, as well as the fumbling of Google’s consumer AI efforts, has shaken the confidence of some in the guy in charge: the mild-mannered Pichai, who once graced the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-sundar-pichai-king-of-android-master-of-mobile-profile" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cover</a>&nbsp;of Bloomberg Businessweek hugging a stuffed Android as “Google’s Soft Power.” Rivals, investors, and industry observers are wondering whether Pichai is the CEO that can navigate the company through what seems to be developing into an existential crisis.



With the company&#8217;s army of engineers and researchers, AI was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/02/08/google-openai-chatgpt-microsoft-bing-ai/?sh=1934a0a34de4">Google&#8217;s game to lose</a>. It&#8217;s still early, but now Google finds itself in the unlikely position of playing from behind in a field it helped pioneer—a deficit that some have blamed on leadership.



“Sundar is a very strong operator, but not as much of a strategic thinker and visionary,” Nimrit Kang, co-chief investment officer of Northstar Asset Management, which holds about $20 million in Alphabet stock, told&nbsp;Forbes. Kang said the company needs to “disrupt” itself, even if it means short-term pain, to set itself up for the long-term future. “We feel, from everything we&#8217;re seeing at least, Sundar is not that person.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“We feel, from everything we&#8217;re seeing at least, Sundar is not that person.”
</blockquote>



“Google’s board, including the founders, must ask: Is Pichai the right guy to run the company, or is it time for Sundar to go?” the veteran Silicon Valley writer Om Malik&nbsp;<a href="https://om.co/2023/02/08/does-google-need-a-new-ceo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>&nbsp;last month. “Does the company need a more offense-minded CEO? Someone who is not satisfied with [the] status quo, and willing to break some eggs?” After Malik’s post, respected tech analyst Ben Thompson also&nbsp;<a href="https://stratechery.com/2023/the-google-ceo-question-steve-ballmer-and-peacetime-ceos-about-that-bard-mistake/?" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gave credence</a>&nbsp;to the question, broaching it in his widely-read blog Stratechery. Googlers have anonymously mused about it on the platform Blind, under the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.teamblind.com/post/Will-Sundar-Pichai-be-ousted-Xqx8NM1H" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post</a>&nbsp;“Will Sundar Pichai be ousted?”



“I think Sundar and the team got complacent,” said Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities. He said it&#8217;s too early in the AI competition to think about an executive change, but they need to alter their approach. “They&#8217;re going to need an army formed with leadership that goes after this market, because this is a game of high-stakes poker and so far they&#8217;re losing.”



Google declined to comment or make Pichai available for an interview.



Pichai has weathered this type of criticism before. Executives at Google have long grumbled about his apparent aversion for risk and slow decision-making, according to a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/technology/sundar-pichai-google.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">profile</a>&nbsp;of the CEO in 2021. At the time, Google defended Pichai by noting that internal surveys about his leadership were positive. But while Googlers have whispered their annoyances in the past, the chattering has become louder in recent weeks. The stakes are nearing a crescendo as rivals gun for Google’s sparkling search operation, one of the most efficient money-making machines in modern business. The questions also come as Google faces the morale blow of mass layoffs; Pichai laid off 12,000 workers, or 6% of the company, in January.



Still, Pichai is supremely respected around Google, and anyone who questions his leadership is quick to preface the criticism with remarks about how intelligent and impressive he is. Many of Pichai’s critics point to the dichotomy of the peacetime CEO and wartime CEO, a trope&nbsp;<a href="https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceo-wartime-ceo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">coined</a>&nbsp;by the venture capitalist Ben Horowtiz in 2011. A peacetime CEO, he wrote, enjoys a “large advantage vs. the competition in its core market,” while a CEO at war is like a general “fending off an imminent existential threat.”



“He is the epitome, the quintessential, the pinnacle of peacetime CEO,” a former Google executive told&nbsp;Forbes. A former Google director put it even more bluntly: “We’re taking bets on how long it&#8217;s going to last,” the person said. “I think everybody agrees he will be gone. The question is just how long from now?”



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“He is the epitome, the quintessential, the pinnacle of peacetime CEO.”
</blockquote>



Pichai’s defenders value his even-keeled approach, especially with something as powerful as AI. With its trillion dollar market cap and billions of users, Google was always going to be in a more precarious spot than any startup with less to lose and fewer people to anger. Supporters say the company is still well-positioned to win the AI war, with years of machine learning research and development, decades of user data and a track record of scaling products. “Who’s to say he’s not a good wartime CEO?” one current Google employee said. “He hasn&#8217;t gone to war yet.”



The caution could prove to be prudent. Google has avoided some of the backlash directed toward Microsoft&#8217;s Bing after the chatbot began responding with violent and obsessive answers, as journalists and early testers sought to push the software&#8217;s boundaries. But even as Google has moved slower, it&#8217;s still been burned: After its chatbot Bard generated an incorrect answer during a promo video last month, further inflaming concerns about Google falling behind, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lost $100 billion</a>&nbsp;in market value.



Pichai’s rise has been a feel-good Silicon Valley story. Born in Chennai, India, he attended the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He moved to the U.S. in 1993 and earned master&#8217;s degrees from Stanford and Wharton. After graduating, he worked as a consultant for McKinsey before interviewing at Google on April 1, 2004, the same day the company launched Gmail.



At Google, he quickly ascended the ranks. He first served as a product manager in charge of the browser search bar, before pushing for Google to create its own browser, Chrome. In 2013, he took over Android from its now-disgraced creator Andy Rubin. Two years later, he was tapped to oversee Google’s entire portfolio of web products, including search, ads and maps. When the company restructured under Alphabet in 2015, Pichai took over Google. Four years later, he became CEO of the whole conglomerate.



Whereas Page and Brin were seen as visionaries—Page claims the idea for Google&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/qFb2rvmrahc?t=355" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">came to him in a dream</a>—employees say Pichai is the practical leader who keeps the trains on schedule: talented and competent, but not necessarily inspiring. Instead of acting decisively, he often takes a more passive approach, people who worked with him say. One former executive calls him a “babysitter CEO.”



Once early in his tenure, Pichai convened a meeting between the leadership and senior staff of some of Google’s platforms, including Android head Hiroshi Lockheimer and Nest cofounder Tony Fadell, according to two people who attended the meeting. The various units had been jostling over which team would work on what project. “Sundar was literally brought in to broker the peace negotiations between the warring factions,” one attendee told&nbsp;Forbes.



The group met for three or four hours. Pichai listened to everyone’s point of view and asked some questions, but was mostly quiet. In the end, he told the platform leaders to work it out among themselves and report back, two attendees said, instead of giving clear direction. One of the attendees likened the situation to&nbsp;Game of Thrones. “He wanted to unite the kingdoms, and everyone respects Sundar so would bend the knee to him,” the person said. “But when the dragons come, he’s not going to know what to do.”



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“When the dragons come, he’s not going to know what to do.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>



Google declined to comment on the meeting. Fadell, who left the company in 2016, also declined to comment.



The episode is emblematic of the leadership style Pichai has imparted at the company. In 2018, a group of more than a dozen vice presidents&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/technology/sundar-pichai-google.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;sent Pichai an email that said the company took too long with big decisions, and that it was difficult to coordinate technical feedback. Some of the company’s sluggishness stems from Pichai’s demeanor, a former Google executive who worked with him told&nbsp;Forbes. “He doesn&#8217;t like conflict. He doesn&#8217;t like making unpopular decisions,&#8221; that person said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just a slow, lethargic place.”



Pichai is in a difficult position. Google is far from the scrappy startup Page and Brin founded in a Menlo Park garage in 1998. The company has more than tripled in size since he took over in 2015, ballooning to more than 190,000 full-time employees in December before layoffs.



That explosive growth comes with cultural shifts that can cause stagnation. Without naming Pichai specifically, Praveen Seshadri, a former Google engineer, called out company management last month for a bureaucratic atmosphere where people aren’t incentivized to go above and beyond. “Overall, it is a soft peacetime culture where nothing is worth fighting for,” Seshadri&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-is-in-the-mouse-980c57cfd61a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>&nbsp;in a 3,600-word essay.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Google isn’t Googley anymore.”
</blockquote>



In other words: “Google isn’t Googley anymore,” one laid off rank-and-file employee told&nbsp;Forbes. “I hesitate to put the blame or responsibility on Sundar, because he doesn&#8217;t project a strong voice of leadership one way or another,” they continued. But that viewpoint still doesn’t bode well for the CEO. “I&#8217;m not even sure I could say what his particular vision for the company is, apart from holding the market share we already have.”



Now that outlook has stung Pichai as rivals make a meaningful run at that market share for the first time in decades. Even after laying the groundwork for dominance in AI—Google researchers pioneered a breakthrough six years ago that undergirds chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing—Google was beaten to market during what is turning out to be a seminal moment for the future of AI. “His whole thing was a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/02/08/google-openai-chatgpt-microsoft-bing-ai/">bet on AI-first</a>. That was clearly his drumbeat,” said the former Google director. “And he hasn’t really done much.”



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/"></a>By Richard Nieva, Forbes Staff

gettyimages-1147600063-594×594

Google’s ‘Peacetime’ CEO Sundar Pichai Faces Criticism As The AI War Heats Up

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The roaring success of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot created by U.S. non-profit OpenAI, has sparked a frantic rush to get new AI products to market, a frenzy that is consuming tech’s biggest behemoths and countless startups as they fight for space in the emerging sector.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Microsoft, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/business/microsoft-chatgpt-artificial-intelligence.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">invested</a>&nbsp;billions in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, swiftly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/microsoft-ai-chatgpt-bing.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tapped</a>&nbsp;the chatbot to enhance its Bing search engine and Edge web browser and is betting big that AI will define the next generation of big tech.



The decision <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/10/google-employees-slam-ceo-sundar-pichai-for-rushed-bard-announcement.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">goaded</a> Google into <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/02/06/google-to-release-chatbot-following-chatgpt-frenzy/?sh=3009b4873961">launching</a> its own AI chatbot, Bard, which gave an incorrect answer in a promotional video, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">failed</a> to impress investors and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2023/02/08/alphabet-google-stock-plunge-erases-100-billion-after-new-ai-chatbot-gives-wrong-answer-in-ad/?sh=d855ee355ce8">erased</a> $100 billion in value from parent company Alphabet.



Chinese tech giant Baidu <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/baidus-chatgpt-like-app-will-revolutionise-its-search-engine-says-ceo-2023-02-22/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> <a href="https://apnews.com/article/technology-science-baidu-inc-china-artificial-intelligence-427838070f962108cabed1e553fc3d12" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plans</a> to integrate its AI chatbot Ernie into its search engine services from March, though little is known about its capabilities.



Other Chinese&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/business/dealbook/china-ai-chatgpt.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">behemoths</a>&nbsp;including Alibaba, JD.com and WeChat parent Tencent have stated they are working on ChatGPT-like products of their own, though details are sparse and they have not outlined specific timetables for when they will implement them.



Among U.S. giants, Apple has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-ai-chatgpt-strategy-competition-2023-2?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">conspicuously absent&nbsp;</a>from the AI race but is<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/apple-launching-ai-chatbot-rival-siri-chatgpt-b1060568.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;reportedly making moves</a>&nbsp;signaling a launch is on the horizon and on Tuesday Amazon, which has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-ceo-andy-jassy-on-chat-cpt-ai-2023-2?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">working</a>&nbsp;on similar tech for a long time,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-02-21/amazons-aws-hugging-face-ai-deals-chatgpt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;a partnership with Hugging Face, an AI startup developing a ChatGPT rival.



WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, long a leader in the AI space, is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/meta-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Article&amp;state=default&amp;module=styln-artificial-intelligence&amp;variant=show&amp;region=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&amp;block=storyline_flex_guide_recirc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a> more than capable of holding its own against rivals like ChatGPT but has held back over fears its AI tool would help spread false, biased or misleading information, already major problems on its platforms.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The launch of OpenAi’s ChatGPT has triggered a gold rush in Silicon Valley and other global tech hubs around the world, and companies are now rushing to keep pace or get behind. The tech is grouped under the heading generative artificial intelligence, an umbrella term for systems that can produce new text, images, video and other outputs like code and music on their own. It takes vast amounts of data to train such systems and the output, which depends on the data used to train it, can reflect any biases, errors or falsities inherent in the original dataset. The ability for products like ChatGPT to generate novel content has been heralded as the dawn of a new age and in the few short months ChatGPT has been available to the public it has already threatened to disrupt numerous fields and raised new questions for businesses. Teachers are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/technology/chatgpt-schools-teachers.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">struggling</a>&nbsp;with how to handle, or detect, students using the chatbot to cheat,&nbsp;<a href="https://qz.com/clarkesword-neil-clarke-chatgpt-ai-q-and-a-1850144881" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">publishers</a>&nbsp;have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-launches-boom-ai-written-e-books-amazon-2023-02-21/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">inundated</a>&nbsp;with a flood of AI-generated content of questionable quality and media outlets are looking at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4fae2380-d7a7-410c-9eed-91fd1411f977" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">using the tool</a>&nbsp;to write news stories. JPMorgan Chase has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/02/22/jpmorgan-chase-restricts-staffers-use-of-chatgpt/?sh=249d5cdf6bc7">restricted</a>&nbsp;the use of ChatGPT by staff, reportedly due to regulatory concerns over sharing data. Amazon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-chatgpt-openai-warns-employees-not-share-confidential-information-microsoft-2023-1?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;has similar fears. ChatGPT has been banned in its entirety in China. The restrictive state, no stranger to limiting content its citizens can access online,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/23/china-chatgpt-clamp-down-propaganda" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">clamped down</a>&nbsp;on the tool and called it an instrument of Western propaganda.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/02/16/bing-chatbots-unhinged-responses-going-viral/?sh=74a3f08110c6">Bing Chatbot’s ‘Unhinged’ Responses Going Viral</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/02/02/inside-chatggpts-breakout-moment-and-the-race-for-the-future-of-ai/?sh=7c094084240b">Inside ChatGPT’s Breakout Moment And The Race To Put AI To Work</a>(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/16/microsoft-bing-ai-chat-interview/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The new Bing told our reporter it ‘can feel or think things’</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/meta-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Article&amp;state=default&amp;module=styln-artificial-intelligence&amp;variant=show&amp;region=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&amp;block=storyline_flex_guide_recirc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Meta, Long an A.I. Leader, Tries Not to Be Left Out of the Boom</a> (NYT)



By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, the ChatGPT (OpenAI) logo is

ChatGPT’s Biggest Competition: Here Are The Companies Working On Rival AI Chatbots

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Supreme Court considers how responsible major social media platforms—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, especially—are for their most dangerous posts, challenging broad protections that tech companies claim are necessary to keep the Internet from turning into a bleak wasteland, but that critics claim go too far.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The Supreme Court&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/10/03/supreme-court-to-consider-whether-tech-companies-like-google-facebook-can-be-held-liable-for-content-recommendations/?sh=7afbc97f3c5c">will hear</a>&nbsp;oral arguments Monday in the case (Gonzalez v. Google) where family members of a victim in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks sued Google, alleging YouTube (a Google company) should be held liable after its algorithm recommended ISIS recruitment videos to potential supporters, and hear arguments Wednesday in Twitter v. Taamneh, which takes similar aim against social media companies over their role in a 2017 terrorist attack in Turkey.



The first case challenges whether YouTube can be held liable for the recommendations it makes under <a href="https://www.theverge.com/21273768/section-230-explained-internet-speech-law-definition-guide-free-moderation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Section 230</a> of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields social media platforms and other Internet companies from legal liability by saying they’re not legally responsible for third-party content posted on their platform.



Tech platforms including Google, Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, Yelp, Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia and others have argued in filings that a court ruling saying YouTube can be held liable would have disastrous consequences, resulting in online platforms broadly restricting any content that could possibly be considered legally objectionable—or taking the opposite approach and leaving everything up with no filtering of obviously problematic content.



First Amendment advocacy groups including the ACLU and Knight Foundation have warned such restrictions could chill free speech, and if tech platforms are forced to get rid of recommendation algorithms, Google argued the Internet could turn into a “disorganized mess and a litigation minefield.”



The Twitter case, which also involves Facebook and Google, doesn’t concern Section 230, but instead asks if social media companies can be held responsible under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows lawsuits against anyone who “aids and abets” an act of international terrorism.



After a lower court found that merely knowing terrorists were among the company’s users would be enough grounds for a lawsuit, Twitter argued a ruling against it would also result in “particularly broad liability” for social media companies, and Facebook and Google suggested that could extend to other organizations who may have to work, even indirectly, with terrorists, including humanitarian groups that work on the ground in countries like Syria.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



The plaintiffs who sued Google rejected the dire predictions made by tech companies in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1333/254251/20230207191257813_GonzalezRepyMeritsPrinted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brief</a>&nbsp;to the court, arguing they’re overbroad and “largely unrelated to the specific issues” in the case. “Predictions that a particular decision of this Court will have dire consequences are easy to make, but often difficult to evaluate,” the petitioners argued, noting that while social media companies still have other legal safeguards in place to protect them like the First Amendment, there’s “no denying that the materials being promoted on social media sites have in fact caused serious harm.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CONTRA</h2>



The Biden Administration has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1333/249441/20221207203557042_21-1333tsacUnitedStates.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">argued</a>&nbsp;the Supreme Court should narrow the scope of Section 230 to make it more possible to sue social media platforms, warning against an “overly broad reading” of the statute that could “undermine the importance of other federal statutes.” The White House argued Section 230 does not protect YouTube from lawsuits against harmful recommendations its algorithm makes, given that its recommendations are created by the company and not content from third parties. Supporters of the plaintiffs have also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-case-heads-to-supreme-court-with-powerful-internet-shield-law-at-stake-e548e241?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suggested</a>&nbsp;a ruling against Google could help social media platforms clean up algorithms that have resulted in harmful recommendations for minors, with the Electronic Privacy Information Center&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1333/249376/20221207151042885_21-1333%20Electronic%20Privacy%20Information%20Center%20Amicus%20Brief%20in%20Support%20of%20Neither%20Party.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">arguing</a>&nbsp;social media companies take advantage of Section 230’s broad nature and “use Section 230 as a shield instead of making their products safer.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“Denying Section 230(c)(1)’s protection to YouTube’s recommendation display could have devastating spillover effects,” Google argued to the court in a brief, arguing that gutting Section 230 “would upend the internet and perversely encourage both wide ranging suppression of speech and the proliferation of more offensive speech.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



Rulings in the two cases will come by the time the Supreme Court’s term wraps up in late June or early July. It’s also possible the court won’t issue a sweeping ruling on when social media companies can be held liable under Section 230: Google argued if the court throws out the Twitter case by saying the victim’s family didn’t have grounds to sue, it could also dismiss the Google case on the same grounds without getting into Section 230 at all.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The Google case comes to the Supreme Court after lower district and appeals courts have both sided with the social media platform, ruling it’s protected by Section 230 and can’t be sued. The case was heard together with the Twitter case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the appeals court ruled against the social media platforms in the Twitter case, holding that Twitter, Facebook and Google could all be held liable under anti-terrorism laws even as it separately upheld Section 230’s protections. The social media cases come to the Supreme Court as the increasing power of Big Tech and platforms’ failure to successfully moderate harmful content have come under fire from both sides of the political aisle, and the Supreme Court took up the cases after conservative-leaning Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the court should&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-thomas-takes-aims-at-tech-and-its-power-to-cut-off-speech" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">consider</a>&nbsp;the issue of Section 230.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



Republican lawmakers have particularly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/house-republicans-outline-principles-for-reforming-section-230.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taken aim</a>&nbsp;at Section 230 and sought to hold social media companies more legally accountable, as they’ve accused social media companies of chilling conservatives’ speech. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) led 11 GOP lawmakers in filing a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-1333/249351/20221207133438524_Gonzalez%20Amicus%2020221207%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brief</a>arguing for the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of Section 230, arguing social media companies have used the broad interpretation of the statute to “[not be] shy about restricting access and removing content based on the politics of the speaker.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/10/03/supreme-court-to-consider-whether-tech-companies-like-google-facebook-can-be-held-liable-for-content-recommendations/?sh=7afbc97f3c5c">Supreme Court To Consider Whether Tech Companies—Like Google, Twitter—Can Be Held Liable For Content Recommendations</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.theverge.com/21273768/section-230-explained-internet-speech-law-definition-guide-free-moderation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Everything you need to know about Section 230</a>&nbsp;(The Verge)



<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/18/tech/section-230-explainer/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">These 26 words ‘created the internet.’ Now the Supreme Court may be coming for them</a> (CNN)



By Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff

Should YouTube, Twitter Be More Responsible For Dangerous Content? Supreme Court Considers Tech Critics

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Apple has pushed back the targeted launch date for a new mixed-reality headset from April to June, according to<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-15/apple-pushes-back-mixed-reality-headset-debut-two-months-to-june?sref=9hGJlFio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Bloomberg</a>, in the latest setback for the tech giant, which has not launched a major new product line since the Apple Watch in 2015.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Apple developers are now reportedly hoping to unveil the headset at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, after calling off a spring launch due to persistent issues in testing.



The most pressing problems still being worked on are sensor issues involving the eye and hand control mechanism, along with battery life, according to Bloomberg.



The headset is expected to offer a mix of full virtual reality and augmented reality—which overlays digital information onto a users’ real-world experience—and will reportedly utilize a new operating system similar to an iPhone interface.



Numerous concerns have also been raised about the headset’s<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2022/05/22/is-apple-about-to-debut-its-ar-headset-everything-we-know-so-far/?sh=605f1b943283">&nbsp;rumored $3,000 price tag</a>, which Bloomberg reports is a byproduct of using expensive materials like numerous cameras and 4K displays.



Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Some within the company are reportedly concerned about the market Apple is entering, given the tens of billions Meta has invested in the metaverse and virtual reality<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/08/17/does-mark-zuckerberg-not-understand-how-bad-his-metaverse-looks/?sh=1b6924d237d4">&nbsp;with little commercial success</a>. Apple CEO<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/tim-cook/">&nbsp;Tim Cook</a>&nbsp;has publicly criticized the headset<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/03/apple-ceo-tim-cook-doesnt-like-metaverse-prefers-augmented-reality.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;approach</a>&nbsp;of Meta and other big tech companies, saying last year, “I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.” Cook has instead predicted augmented reality will be the true game changer, calling it “a profound technology that will affect everything.” Apple executives are betting on the headset being the company’s biggest new revenue source since its smartwatch launched, though it’s hoping tweaks to some of its longtime staple products could also boost sales.<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-11/apple-working-on-adding-touch-screens-to-macs-in-major-turnabout" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported last month the company is working to launch a touch-screen MacBook, despite company co-founder and longtime CEO Steve Jobs being adamantly opposed to the idea prior to his death in 2011.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



The major difference between the augmented reality Cook is pushing and the virtual reality experience&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=4bfc38c13e06">Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;has promoted is that users are still fully aware of their real-life environment in augmented reality, where they interact with virtual components a headset places over their real space. Virtual reality is completely separate from the real environment, immersing a headset user in a digital world. Meta’s headsets offer both virtual and augmented reality experiences, but Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he sees a largely virtual metaverse–envisioned as essentially a broad collection of virtual worlds–as a revolutionary technical innovation that the company will be a pioneer in developing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Apple has also repeatedly pushed back the launch date<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/12/06/apple-scraps-plans-for-car-without-steering-wheel-or-pedals-report-says/?sh=47084c7da6db">&nbsp;for an autonomous vehicle</a>&nbsp;it has spent years developing in a secretive project, with 2026 the latest rumored target for release. The company<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-06/apple-scales-back-self-driving-car-and-delays-launch-until-2026" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;reportedly</a>&nbsp;scrapped plans last year for its car to run without a steering wheel or pedals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-15/apple-pushes-back-mixed-reality-headset-debut-two-months-to-june?sref=9hGJlFio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple Pushes Back Mixed-Reality Headset Debut Two Months to June</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2022/05/22/is-apple-about-to-debut-its-ar-headset-everything-we-know-so-far/?sh=605f1b943283">Is Apple About To Debut Its AR Headset? Everything We Know So Far</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/08/17/does-mark-zuckerberg-not-understand-how-bad-his-metaverse-looks/?sh=1b6924d237d4">Does Mark Zuckerberg Not Understand How Bad His Metaverse Looks?</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/12/06/apple-scraps-plans-for-car-without-steering-wheel-or-pedals-report-says/?sh=47084c7da6db">Apple Scraps Plans For Car Without Steering Wheel Or Pedals, Report Says</a> (Forbes)<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/"></a>



By Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff

American multinational technology company Apple store seen

Apple Delays Launch Of Mixed-Reality Headset By 2 Months, Report Says

Precision healthcare is growing exponentially due to the application of AI in oncolo- gy. MedTech entrepreneur Dr Kingsley Ndoh is leading in this regard from Rwanda, helping oncologists and their patients in sub-Saharan Africa.



By Tiana Cline



Dr Kingsley Ndoh lost his aunt over a decade ago to colorectal cancer. She was only 51 years old and prior to her diagnosis, she was having high-risk abdominal symptoms. But in Nigeria, where Ndoh was both born and studied medicine, the screening guidelines for colorectal cancer begin at the age of 50.



“She didn’t even get the chance to have a screening,” he says. “What I realized is that a lot of the guidelines and treatments don’t work for all populations. It has to be specific to genetics, to the epidemiology and to the clinical context of those regions.” This was one of the reasons Ndoh decided that he wanted to get more training in oncology and that meant moving to the United States (US) to study global health. “I wanted to work at a population level,” explains Ndoh, who ended up at the University of Washington which was followed by a short-term fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center – “my foray into the world of global oncology,” he says.



But it was sitting on a plane, flying back home to Nigeria that sparked Ndoh’s interest in technology – and more specifically, artificial intelligence (AI). 



“I read a book by Jerry Kaplan called Humans Need Not Apply and became fascinated by the possibilities of AI that were mentioned in healthcare. But when I started digging into it, I realized that a lot of the AI products that are being rolled out and tested in the different aspects of healthcare deal mainly with Caucasian data and not in the context of places like sub-Saharan Africa.”



Precision healthcare is a field that is growing exponentially due to the application of AI in oncology. But AI and machine learning models require a massive about of data and Ndoh came to the realization that while the technology is there, it cannot simply be imported into Africa “because our data is different, and because the clinical context is different”, he says. After many years of planning, Ndoh launched a medical tech startup called Hurone AI focused on democratizing high-quality cancer care. “The specific area that we wanted to tackle as an early-stage startup was side effects,” he says. And then he came across research that took him by surprise: “In the last 20 years, the oncology medications (the cancer medicines) that have been approved by the FDA; less than 3% of the trial participants were black. That means the full range of side effects are not really known.”



Ndoh brings up recent research which shows that some breast cancer medications which are commonly given to African-American women lead to poor outcomes – and worse side-effects. “Tying this all together heightened my sense of urgency that we need to start understanding the data of diverse populations better,” he says. “I saw Africa as a place where things could be leapfrogged and the specific problem we’re looking at is the deficit between the number of oncologists and patients.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-specialist-shortage">A SPECIALIST SHORTAGE</h3>



Currently, there is around one oncologist to 187 patients in the US but in sub-Saharan Africa, the number sits at one to 3,000. African oncologists are overworked and lack critical support services but Ndoh believes that AI can help make things easier. “When patients get a diagnosis, they are bound to have side-effects from chemotherapy and radiotherapy but they don’t have access to an oncologist because they are few and far between. This means patients will begin to look at other sources of information such as Dr Google, herbalists or native doctors (as they’re called in some parts of Africa),” he elaborates, “and this could lead to worsened outcomes, unexpected symptoms or even hospitalization.”



After a couple of research trips to Rwanda, Ndoh heard how patients, nurses and doctors felt separated from each other.



Not only did the patients feel disconnected from follow-up care, the doctors said that they didn’t have a grasp of managing their patients.



“This is why Hurone AI is a two-way system. It’s a web platform for doctors and nurses to enter demographic and clinical data – including any treatment regimens given – and track their patients better. On the other side, there is a USSD text-based app for patients to receive cancer care remotely so that even those without smartphones can still access valuable information,” says Ndoh. 



Once a patient has been registered, they will receive questions related to their well-being and the answers are graded into mild, moderate and severe categories. “On the other end, the data is organized so that the doctors and nurses can easily see how a patient is doing and 70% of the complaints can be addressed by text messaging,” he says. “It also means patients can take action in emergency situations.”



As Hurone AI helps those suffering from the side-effects of cancer treatment, Ndoh is building a database of much-needed clinical and demographic information. His hope is that when the company scales, he will not only be able to automate more medical processes but build models that could use AI to predict side-effects prior to treatment. “And it could eventually help doctors to choose more wisely on what drugs they could give with the same efficacy.”



While Hurone AI is currently doing beta trials in Rwanda, Ndoh has plans to expand throughout sub-Saharan Africa as well as into other low-to-middle income countries. The patient app, which is called Gukiza, means healing in Kinyarwanda “and we make it clear that the app cannot heal you, but it brings that positivity patients need after a cancer diagnosis when they feel like their whole world is falling apart”.

Screenshot 2023-02-09 at 16.31.50

The Good Doctor With An Eye For AI in Africa

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Twitter massively<a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1623411536243965954?s=20&amp;t=wHgK-etn97RQrNcUtNXo9g" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;expanded</a>&nbsp;its tweet length limit for U.S.-based Twitter Blue subscribers Wednesday, marking just the second time in the company’s 16-year history it has tweaked its character count as it reportedly struggles to attract a paying user base.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The character limit for subscribers in the U.S. is now 4,000—more than 14 times the existing 280-character limit, which remains in place for all non-subscribers and Twitter Blue users outside of the United States.



Users scrolling through their timelines will see 280-character snippets of lengthy tweets, with an option to expand—similar to formats on other social media platforms, like Facebook.



The move comes just two days after technology news outlet the<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Information</a>&nbsp;reported Twitter Blue only had about 180,000 subscribers as of mid-January, accounting for less than 0.2% of monthly active users, who pay $8 a month for the service.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Twitter’s only other character length expansion came in 2017, when it doubled its initial 140-character limit to 280.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Nascent company owner and CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly suggested a significant increase in Twitter Blue users is the only way for Twitter to remain financially solvent in the long-term, warning staff shortly after he took over the company: “Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/10/musk-reportedly-bans-remote-work-at-twitter-and-warns-of-difficult-times-in-internal-email/?sh=2370b81a6031">&nbsp;Twitter will not survive</a>&nbsp;the upcoming economic downturn.” But Musk’s top selling points for Twitter Blue—limited ads, priority replies and a blue verification check mark—do not seem to be connecting for many users. Musk has also largely backed down from an early vow of forcing all users verified prior to his takeover to pay for a subscription to keep their blue check marks. Older verified accounts are now instead tagged as “legacy verified,” and include a disclaimer stating they “may or may not be notable.” Twitter’s financial problems have been compounded by a sizable drop in advertising revenue due to many<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/28/musk-says-apple-cutting-twitter-ads-here-are-the-other-companies-rethinking-their-ties/?sh=1a4550237032">&nbsp;prominent advertisers pulling funding</a>&nbsp;after Musk loosened some moderation guidelines and reinstated several banned accounts, including<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/20/elon-musk-reinstates-donald-trumps-twitter-account-after-users-vote-to-bring-him-back/?sh=359596357b60">&nbsp;former President Donald Trump’s</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Musk appeared to spontaneously come up with the<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/01/twitter-will-sell-coveted-blue-checkmark-for-8-a-month-musk-says-but-benefits-still-unclear/?sh=677ddf4f5ac2">&nbsp;$8-a-month price</a>&nbsp;for Twitter Blue subscriptions during a bizarre exchange with horror fiction author Stephen King last year, after King complained about reports that Twitter was considering a $20-per-month subscription. “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied.https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;schema=twitter&amp;url=https%3A//twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144%3Fs%3D20%26t%3DQX7r2kWdRuxghDWqQJQZQA&amp;image=https%3A//i.embed.ly/1/image%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fabs.twimg.com%252Ferrors%252Flogo46x38.png%26key%3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Musk’s Twitter Has Just 180,000 U.S. Subscribers, Two Months After Launch</a>&nbsp;(The Information)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/10/musk-reportedly-bans-remote-work-at-twitter-and-warns-of-difficult-times-in-internal-email/?sh=2370b81a6031">Musk Reportedly Bans Remote Work At Twitter And Warns Of ‘Difficult Times’ In Internal Email</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/20/elon-musk-reinstates-donald-trumps-twitter-account-after-users-vote-to-bring-him-back/?sh=359596357b60">Elon Musk Reinstates Donald Trump’s Twitter Account After Asking Users To Vote</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/01/twitter-will-sell-coveted-blue-checkmark-for-8-a-month-musk-says-but-benefits-still-unclear/?sh=677ddf4f5ac2">Twitter Will Sell Coveted Blue Checkmark For $8 A Month, Musk Says—But Benefits Still Unclear</a> (Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/"></a>By Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff

Photo Illustrations

Twitter Boosts Character Limit To 4,000 For Twitter Blue Subscribers

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The highly anticipated Harry Potter video game debuts this week, but it’s been plagued by controversy and boycotts as players grapple with whether to support J.K. Rowling’s franchise in light of her history of comments widely seen as transphobic.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Hogwarts Legacy, a role-playing game set in the Harry Potter universe developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games, will be&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/hogwarts-legacy-transgender-character-jk-rowling-harry-potter-wizarding-world-1235514416/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">released</a>&nbsp;February 10 on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.



The game has garnered largely&nbsp;<a href="https://www.metacritic.com/search/all/hogwarts%20legacy/results" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">positive reviews</a>&nbsp;on aggregator Metacritic, and has climbed the bestseller list of online vendors like Amazon and the Epic Store thanks to pre-orders.



However, some fans and gamers are boycotting the game in protest of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novel series who has a history of making comments offensive to the transgender community and stands to earn&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/01/12/the-hogwarts-legacy-debate-explained/?sh=af6fa126a32b">royalties</a>&nbsp;from game sales (though she was not involved in the game’s creation).



Some popular game review sites like Kotaku, Polygon and Eurogamer have not yet reviewed Hogwarts Legacy despite the review embargo lifting Monday, while others have denounced J.K. Rowling’s comments and voiced support for transgender people in their reviews.



Jessie Earl, a trans YouTuber and writer,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jessiegender/status/1603942028555210752" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;in December that unlike consuming previously owned Harry Potter books or films, purchasing Hogwarts Legacy while Rowling is “using her ongoing platform to target and also justify her continued targeting of trans people is harmful to trans people” (Rowling responded, accusing her of “purethink”).



Some streamers on Amazon-owned Twitch video platform—including&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/Will_Overgard/status/1614874335839420416" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Will Overgard</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/NikatinePrime/status/1622312576897138688?s=20&amp;t=rb02d41dK_8NpoRZc_sefA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nikatine</a>—have publicly voiced opposition to the game.



Nikatine, whose name is Veronica Ripley, posted a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/NikatinePrime/status/1622312576897138688?s=20&amp;t=rb02d41dK_8NpoRZc_sefA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;to Twitter announcing a boycott of Twitch—which is known for its video game-related content—for hosting ads for Hogwarts Legacy, urging streamers to join in halting use of the platform until the ad campaign is suspended.



Hogwarts Legacy is set to feature the first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/entertainment/harry-potter-legacy-trans-character-cec/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">transgender woman character</a>&nbsp;in the Harry Potter universe, though her name, Sirona Ryan, has attracted some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legacy-sirona-ryan-trans-character-name/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">criticism</a>&nbsp;for allegedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/hogwarts-legacy-trans-character-name-sirona-ryan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sounding masculine</a>(beginning with the prefix “Sir” and ending with common male name “Ryan”)—but others&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/entertainment/harry-potter-legacy-trans-character-cec/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">noted</a>&nbsp;the name&nbsp;<a href="https://www.names.org/n/sirona/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sirona</a>&nbsp;refers to a Celtic goddess of healing and rebirth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



J.K. Rowling has regularly come under fire in recent years for her views on biological sex and the transgender community, which many have criticized as transphobic. In June 2020, she ridiculed an article headline for using the phrase “people who menstruate” (“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?s=20&amp;t=g0g80nrjW_NbQJgWZOhDbQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>), inspiring backlash from critics who said her tweet excludes transgender people. In response to backlash, she&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952?s=20&amp;t=HvsofpXgAxn_rNRjnApwxQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>“if sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” adding that she knows and loves transgender people but criticized the alleged erasing of the concept of sex. She also published an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">essay</a>&nbsp;on her website, calling it unsafe to allow “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” into changing rooms and bathrooms, and she’s since stirred controversy for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1120299781/jk-rowling-new-book-the-ink-black-heart" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">authoring</a>&nbsp;a book about a character who is killed after facing accusations of transphobia and for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-63162533" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">calling</a>&nbsp;Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who supported a bill making it easier for transgender people to be legally recognized as their preferred gender, a “destroyer of women’s rights.” Her comments have been criticized as transphobic by LGBTQ rights organizations including the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hrc.org/news/hrc-president-alphonso-david-responds-to-j-k-rowlings-latest-transphobic-b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Human Rights Campaign</a>, and actors from the Harry Potter films have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/01/18/harry-potter-stars-comments-author-j-k-rowling/6565240001/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voiced support</a>&nbsp;for transgender people in response.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">HOGWARTS LEGACY REVIEWS</h2>



Early reviews for the Harry Potter game have been almost uniformly positive, though some publications have declined to review the game or have included statements critical of Rowling or in support of the transgender community in their reviews. Gamespot, a popular gaming website which has not yet reviewed Hogwarts Legacy, has instead published an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-to-help-trans-people-by-donating-to-charity/1100-6511097/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">article</a>&nbsp;listing charities in support of trans people, along with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/jk-rowlings-anti-transgender-stance-and-hogwarts-legacy/1100-6501632/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a>&nbsp;of Rowling’s comments and rising anti-LGBTQ legislation and protests worldwide, the latter authored by Earl. In a positive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/hogwarts-legacy-review-harry-potter-ps5-xbox-pc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a>, IGN included a statement titled “Concerning J.K. Rowling,” affirming the publication’s support for human rights and stating the publication’s purpose is to “answer the question of whether or not we find Hogwarts Legacy to be fun to play and why; whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question.” Canadian outlet TheGamer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/02/06/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-launch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;it&nbsp;will not review Hogwarts Legacy or create any online guides for the game.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CONTRA</h2>



Though the game’s release has inspired vocal critics, it’s still on track to sell well and has plenty of supporters who believe Rowling’s controversy can be separated from the game. Popular streamer xQc, who has more than 11 million Twitch&nbsp;<a href="https://www.twitch.tv/xqc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">followers</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dexerto.com/hogwarts-legacy/xqc-slams-hogwarts-legacy-boycotters-after-making-streamer-cry-on-twitch-2054609/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">criticized</a>&nbsp;people for making others feel bad for purchasing a video game, claiming “people fund all sorts of evil with their purchases across the board in way worse ways.” It’s already a hit on Twitch, where users who have early access are streaming the game; Hogwarts Legacy has more than one million viewers and 120,000 followers on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Hogwarts%20Legacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">platform</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“If you are not willing to give up a piece of entertainment in solidarity against the harm J.K. Rowling continues to enact; then how can trans people feel assured you’ll be willing to fight for us in more important areas, such as anti-trans violence, be it physical, mental, personal, systemic or legislative, especially as the discrimination continues to rise?” Jessie Earl wrote in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/jk-rowlings-anti-transgender-stance-and-hogwarts-legacy/1100-6501632/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gamespot</a>&nbsp;essay.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/01/23/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-trans/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Why the new game ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ is roiling the LGBTQ community</a>(The Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.gamespot.com/articles/jk-rowlings-anti-transgender-stance-and-hogwarts-legacy/1100-6501632/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">JK Rowling&#8217;s Anti-Transgender Stance And Hogwarts Legacy</a>(Gamespot)



<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/entertainment/harry-potter-legacy-trans-character-cec/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">‘Hogwarts Legacy’ game appears to introduce ‘Harry Potter’s’ first trans character</a>&nbsp;(CNN)



By Conor Murray, Forbes Staff

“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” World Premiere – Arrivals

‘Hogwarts Legacy’ Video Game Controversy: Boycotts And J.K. Rowling’s Comments On Transgender Community, Explained

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October, the social media platform has made many tweaks to the user experience, including an overhaul to the verification process and an emphasis on “freedom of speech.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Since Elon Musk’s highly publicized — and controversial — acquisition of Twitter in October, he’s made a series of updates to the platform, often live-tweeting them along the way.



Among the most notable changes is the overhaul to the verification process: Previously, blue checkmarks denoted public figures that the platform had independently verified, but now users can purchase a verified checkmark by subscribing to <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter Blue</a> for $8 per month.



After&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673339826212864?s=20&amp;t=6ANX0DjzIxKuKaV6BWa_Mw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">declaring</a>&nbsp;Twitter’s new policy to be “freedom of speech” in which negative or hate tweets will be “deboosted,” but not banned, Musk reinstated a number of accounts that were notably suspended, including Donald Trump,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=20&amp;t=6ANX0DjzIxKuKaV6BWa_Mw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jordan Peterson and Kathy Griffin</a>&nbsp;(Musk reinstated Trump’s account after conducting a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593767953706921985" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poll</a>&nbsp;on Twitter — 51.8% of the 15 million respondents voted “yes” to return the former president’s account).



Each tweet now publicly displays how many views it has garnered, an update Musk made in an effort to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601112753271209985?s=20&amp;t=wkeaG5Nb24XxhUcRRNZ4aQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">show</a>&nbsp;how “Twitter is much more alive than people think.”



Twitter now splits a user’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/10/23549368/twitter-for-you-page-tiktok-following-tab" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">timeline</a>&nbsp;between a TikTok-esque “for you” page, an algorithm-curated feed with tweets it thinks the user will like, and a “following” page, which consists solely of tweets that user follows.



Twitter <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/19/tech/twitter-elon-musk-deletes-policy/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">backtracked</a> from a short-lived policy banning users from sharing links to other social media platforms — after less than a day of backlash, the platform deleted the policy from its website.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">NEW VERIFICATION PROCESS</h2>



One of the biggest — and most widely ridiculed — Musk-era Twitter updates is his drastic change to the verification process. Previously, blue verification badges confirmed that profiles of public figures, like celebrities, journalists or government officials, were legitimate. Those blue checks (which Twitter now refers to as “legacy” verified accounts) are still visible, but the platform has made blue checks available to anyone so long as they subscribe to&nbsp;<a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter Blue</a>, a service that permits users to preview new features. There’s no visual difference between the old and new blue checkmarks, which has raised concerns that people may impersonate public figures (though hovering over or tapping on the blue check reveals whether the account is subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account). Within hours of the new blue checks launching, users purchased checkmarks to impersonate people including Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Kobe Bryant,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/tech/twitter-impersonators-paid-verification/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNN reported</a>. A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/11/twitter-blue-checkmark/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Washington Post</a>&nbsp;columnist got accounts impersonating comedian Blaire Erskine and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) verified within minutes. Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/11/twitter-fake-verified-accounts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">temporarily suspended</a>&nbsp;the ability to purchase a blue check the following day, pledging to address impersonation issues. Musk has said he plans to get rid of legacy verified checkmarks,&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/12/elon-says-twitter-will-remove-all-legacy-verifications-in-a-few-months/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claiming</a>&nbsp;that the old process of verification was “corrupt and nonsensical.” In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-verification-relaunch/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">another shakeup</a>&nbsp;to the verification system, accounts owned by companies are denoted by gold checks while government entities and politicians are marked with gray checks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CRITICISM OVER UPDATES</h2>



Musk’s changes to the platform have been criticized for a number of reasons, ranging from being unnecessary and annoying to opening the door for hate speech. The ability of anyone to purchase verification has been condemned for making it easy to impersonate public figures and spread misinformation. In January, members of the Taliban&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/twitter-blue-verified-taliban" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">purchased</a>blue checks, though these were later removed following backlash. Musk also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/17/1143796992/twitter-lifts-suspensions-on-several-journalists-amid-rift-between-the-site-and-" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">came under fire</a>&nbsp;in December after Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who were critical of his ownership of the company (Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603600001057185792" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;these accounts “doxxed my exact location in real time”), though these accounts were later reinstated. Criticisms of the verification process as well as Musk’s massive layoffs have prompted more than 500 advertisers to pause spending on Twitter,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/twitter-manager-daily-revenue-has-dropped-40-500-top-advertisers-have-left" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Information reported</a>, causing a 40% drop in daily revenue. Some popular Twitter influencers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/musk-making-twitter-worse-say-top-influencers-platform-rcna63606" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told NBC News</a>&nbsp;that daily use of the platform has gotten worse under Musk’s leadership, including an influx of hate speech in light of its new emphasis on freedom of speech, as well as an uptick in technical glitches as the company’s staff has been halved. These influencers — including Matt Nelson, who runs “<a href="https://twitter.com/dog_rates?s=20&amp;t=4h2872WW1RY106CSjpj1XA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">We Rate Dogs</a>,” an account with 9.3 million followers — told NBC News the verified notifications feature, which displays notifications received by verified accounts, is no longer useful as anyone can pay for a blue checkmark. The default “for you” feed has also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/13/twitter-faces-wave-complaints-tiktok-style-reboot/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">angered</a>&nbsp;some users who find the update unnecessary and now see tweets they are uninterested in. LGBTQ advocacy groups have also alleged that the platform’s “freedom of speech” approach is worsening anti-transgender speech on the platform. Among the accounts reinstated under Musk’s tenure are the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire news site, and author Jordan Peterson, who has previously made transphobic tweets,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-22/twitter-restores-anti-trans-accounts-and-fuels-hate-groups-say" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg reported.</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



Musk has discussed future updates that have yet to debut on the platform. He will increase the current 280 character limit to 4,000 in February — a massive increase for the platform long known for its brevity — and users will soon be able to use formatting features like bold, underline, and font sizes, a move Musk hopes will keep people on Twitter instead of using other websites to publish work. The company is also considering selling usernames that have been dormant for years to free up the handles and generate revenue.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



After months of back-and-forth and the threat of going to trial, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">purchased</a>&nbsp;Twitter in October in a highly publicized $44 million dollar deal. He quickly slashed the company’s workforce,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/elon-musk-twitter-fired-criticism.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claiming</a>&nbsp;that it could go bankrupt and needed to become “hard core” in order to survive, and began implementing his “free speech” vision for the platform. Musk had previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/27/musk-twitter-attacks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">criticized</a>&nbsp;Twitter’s prior leadership, alleging they operated the platform with a “left-wing bias.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



Will Musk actually step down as CEO of Twitter? He&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1605372724800393216" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;in December he will step down when he finds someone “foolish enough” to succeed him and will then run the company’s software and servers teams. He asked via Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=20&amp;t=fo6JvyaSKDLpmPKgPuAPCQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poll</a>&nbsp;if he should step down, stating he would “abide by the results of this poll” — and “yes” won a clear victory, securing 57.5% of the poll’s 17.5 million votes. Musk has not provided updates or a timeline on the search for a successor since creating the poll.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



$149.4 billion. That’s Musk’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=6c332b5d7999">net worth</a>&nbsp;as of Wednesday according to the Forbes real-time net worth tracker, making him the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#776435d23d78">second-richest person</a>&nbsp;in the world behind French fashion tycoon Bernard Arnault and his family. Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/12/08/elon-musk-no-longer-worlds-richest-again-as-stock-hit-by-report-of-personal-margin-loan/?sh=ca7000927733">fell</a>&nbsp;from his prior position as the world’s richest person in December.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/4/23438917/twitter-verifications-blue-check-elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter: Five ways Elon Musk has changed the platform for users</a>&nbsp;(BBC)



<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/twitter-blue-verified-taliban" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter ‘verified’ check marks bought by Taliban appear to have been removed</a> (The Guardian)



By Conor Murray, Forbes Staff

Twitter Losing Its Most Active Users

Verification To View Counts: Here’s Every Twitter Change Under Elon Musk

The misuse of artificial intelligence and the cost of deepfakes in a post-truth era. 



By Tiana Cline



In the beginning, it was a lot of fun. Anyone could create a deepfake video to merge their face with that of a celebrity. At first, these videos were shared across social media as a parody and everyone laughed. What could be better than becoming the star of your favorite streaming series? But now the technology has evolved. It has become more sophisticated to the point where it’s not as easy to tell what is real or not. From misinformation to identity theft, deepfake porn and copyright infringements, the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) is far from entertaining – it’s an epidemic.  



“As technology&#8217;s power increases, so the ability to cause harm increases exponentially,” says Professor Johan Steyn, a Research Fellow at the School of Data Science and Computational Thinking at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Adjunct Professor at the School of Business at Woxsen University in India.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“From both a legal and a government ethics point of view, it’s a massive problem and I don’t know how it is going to be regulated. How do you present evidence to a court of law when you cannot confirm if a video or voice is authentic? There’s almost no way of proving deepfakes are authentic.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



There are currently over 80 different deepfake software apps, many of which are free and allow anyone to take advantage of the advancement of AI. Deepfakes use artificial neural networks – data pattern-recognition systems that are trained to identify (and reconstruct) patterns. The technology is mind-blowing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



It gained Miles Fisher – a Tom Cruise lookalike and AI entrepreneur – nearly four million followers on social media. His TikTok account, ‘deeptomcruise’, has unofficially made him the poster child of the deepfake movement. The person behind the videos, Chris Ume, is a Belgian visual effects artist and the co-founder of an AI-generated content company called Metaphysic.ai.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There’s a big philosophical, ethical and societal lens to deepfakes,” adds Steyn. “We&#8217;re living in a world where we cannot trust almost anything. There are limited ways in verifying the authenticity of something and the technology that should have brought us together and empowered us with knowledge is doing the exact opposite.”&nbsp;



One of the most interesting deepfake use cases is happening in the advertising sector. Where actors were once paid undisclosed sums for appearing in TV advertisements, some agencies are resorting to using deepfakes instead – with or without their consent. An advert for a Russian telecoms company starring Bruce Willis went viral and it was reported that the actor sold his image rights. It turned out that Willis was a deepfake and the agency that made the advert (called Deepcake) simply mapped a digital version of his appearance onto another actor. If images and videos of Willis are readily available to do this, it questions how anyone can protect their own identity.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“In the future of AI, people will not be quantum physicists or machine learning engineers but philosophers and ethicists. We’re now in a post-truth era and thanks to the power of technology. You can no longer trust anything or anyone,” warns Steyn. “If you’re a critical thinker, fake news should be relatively easy to pick up. Deepfakes are more serious. What happens when a bank, for example, accepts voice as a proof of identity?”&nbsp;



The link between deepfakes and cybercrime is inevitable. Throughout Africa, phishing remains one of the continent’s biggest threats and by using deepfake technology, cybercriminals will be able to increase the effectiveness of their attacks exponentially. “Any new technology, development or technology will inevitably be exploited by criminals to target the vulnerable or unwary,” says Carl Wearn, Mimecast’s Head of Threat Intelligence Analysis and Future Ops. “The quicker they can utilize a new technology, before it is properly understood or awareness of it is raised, the more likely they are able to monetize some form of it.”&nbsp;



With deepfakes, cybercrime can be socially engineered because threat actors (posing as friends, family, or colleagues) exploit the inherent trust that comes with interpersonal relationships. “Deepfakes are at their core seeking to exploit key relationships to compel action,” adds Wearn. “As the technology matures – aided by machine learning and AI – this will almost certainly become indistinguishable to the real thing for ordinary humans when undertaking virtual or telephony-communication medium reliant interactions.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Deepfakes scams are increasing. They’re not only being used in cyberbullying and smear campaigns to harass and silence individuals; synthetic identity fraud can cost businesses and government millions. “People are, for example, edited into a humiliating video that is then spread on social media highlights the risk for public figures and activists,” says Vladislav Tushkanov, a Lead Data Scientist at Kaspersky. Scammers recently used a deepfake interview with Elon Musk to promote a cryptocurrency scam called BitVex. The CEO of a British energy firm was tricked out of $243,000 by a voice deepfake from the head of his parent company requesting an emergency transfer of funds. And in the United Arab Emirates, bank robbers deepfaked the voice of a company executive to an unsuspecting bank manager – it was reported that he recognized the voice and then authorized a transfer of $35 million.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Deepfakes can significantly undermine trust in audio and video content,” adds Tushkanov. “Deepfakes, and mis- and disinformation, is a rising concern around the globe. It is particularly worrying that deepfakes can be used to incite violence and stoke civil unrest. This places high importance on public education and raising awareness about this technology, as well as furthering digital literacy.”  



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-spot-a-deepfake">How to spot a deepfake?&nbsp;</h2>



“It all starts by having good cybersecurity procedures and practices in place – not only in the form of antivirus software, but also in the form of developed IT skills and cybersecurity awareness of the employees,” says Tushkanov. “The following are key characteristics of deepfake videos to be aware of and look out for, to avoid becoming a victim: jerky movement; shifts in lighting from one frame to the next; shifts in skin tone; strange blinking or no blinking at all; lips poorly synched with speech; digital artifacts in the image; and video is intentionally encoded down in quality with poor lighting.”

3D virtual reality space and people

When Seeing Is No Longer Believing: An African Take On The Cost Of Deepfakes

When award-winning artwork can be generated by algorithms, where does that leave artists?



By Tiana Cline 



What is an artist? In the age of artificial intelligence, machine learning and text-to-image tools, it’s questionable. Anyone with a computer can generate stunning images in seconds thanks to tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion and Craiyon. These algorithmic programs, which work with text prompts and data sets, are already starting to shift the creative economy. In August 2022, an American game designer named Jason Allen won first place at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. His award-winning work – which has been described as ‘Renaissance meets steampunk’ – was created using Midjourney. And even though the category in which Allen came first was ‘digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography’, it left a lot of people in the creative world angry, questioning whether this kind of AI-generated art could replace human artists.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There&#8217;s no doubt that the whole visual world is totally oversaturated with imagery. I know a lot of people who do AI art. I see it on Instagram or Facebook and some of the images have stuck in my head,” says Roger Ballen, an American artist who lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. “So, I think they’re successful from the point of view of conveying an aesthetic message from one person to another. And how they were able to achieve this, is this important or not important?”&nbsp;&nbsp;



For some industries, AI-generated art is simply a natural progression of where we’re heading – it’s a key part of Web3, the metaverse and how AI algorithms can be integrated into different industries. According to Midjourney founder David Holz, business owners, game designers and people in the movie industry use the tool for storyboarding, strategy and content development. But that’s not where AI-art ends. The Economist used Midjourney to produce one of its 2022 covers and The Atlantic chose AI-generated art for an editorial in lieu of hiring an illustrator – going so far as to credit Midjourney as the artist.&nbsp;&nbsp;



For Ballen, AI-generated art is similar to a computer beating a world chess champion – it’s inevitable. “You look at the work that&#8217;s been done and some of it is amazing. This is where we&#8217;re going – going into a world where our lives and viewpoints and experiences are more virtual rather than physical and it’s happening at an accelerating pace, he says. “I’ve been doing photography for 54 years now. When I started, you needed to go to university and there was a lot of training that took place to get there. Now anyone can do photography. For one photograph that was produced 30 years ago, there may be 50,000 now.”&nbsp;



Plagiarism by machine&nbsp;



There are many ethical considerations around creating (and selling) AI-generated art. AI often reflects human bias which means that the images contained in online datasets are subjective to what is available online.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Ballen questions being able to put a price on an artwork when the material comes from endless sources. He also asks if there is a difference between using an image of a tree (as one example) or from a well-known artist. “Some of these people are trying to produce works of art but actually, the work itself isn&#8217;t necessarily theirs – it&#8217;s an amalgamation of other people&#8217;s work compiled by a computer. So, the issue then is can that person sell it as their own when it&#8217;s ultimately other people&#8217;s work?”&nbsp;



Joh Del, a Cape Town-based artist and illustrator’s understanding that that all artists learn from other pieces of art – both human and AI. “Every time you put something out into the world, someone else can see it, and learn from it. I think almost all species of animals on earth learn from each other,” says Del.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Mikhael Subotzky, an award-winning artist based in South Africa, doesn’t see AI-generated art as something fundamentally new or different. “I think that the power and relevance of art is that its boundaries are always expanding – there should be space for every kind of art,” he says. For Subotzky, the trickiest issue is copyright. “There really should be a way for artists to opt in or out of the algorithms learning from their work. Or even a royalty system where they get a cent or whatever for every time their work is used in this way. Of course, this would require a fundamental change in how images circulate. I wish that the blockchain crowd would focus on this type of thing rather than the latest NFT prices.”&nbsp;



For now, the law is yet to catch up with the advances in AI technology. Under copyright law, copyright depends on human input and AI-generated art is made by machine. In order to avoid future legal issues, Getty Images has banned the sale of AI generative artwork created using image synthesis models. “In one way, it’s an image that somebody initiated to put on a wall and show other people and on the other hand, it’s a mixture of other people’s property. In the commercial world you have copyrights, you have patents, you have rights of property and with this, it’s not as clear because it’s a mishmash of thousands of things that are put together into an artwork,” says Ballen. “You have to look at the image itself. You have to deal with the aesthetics in the image, the message in the image, the type of artwork, where the information came from, how it was put together – there&#8217;s all sorts of things that make it almost impossible to come up with a clear answer… where this ends and where it begins, I don’t know.” 



But Is It Art?&nbsp;



“I’m the type of person who believes in the autonomy of the work, that you don’t necessarily need to know anything about the artist, the place, the time – anything,” says Roger Ballen. “It doesn&#8217;t matter whether you know anything about anything. Art should be like coming into contact with a flower. All of a sudden, you smell it, you feel it, the color leaves an imprint on you and you don’t necessarily need to be a botanist, all that matters is the experience of the art itself.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 19.07.53

The Rise Of AI Art: An African Perspective

While researchers applaud Amazon’s safeguards to ensure the tech is safe for kids, some experts are concerned that generative AI could lead children to believe these algorithms are more intelligent than they actually are.



Generative AI, which is known for churning out fantastical art based on text prompts, is now sneaking into one of the most sacred bonding experiences for parents and children: bedtime storytelling.



Amazon is hopping into the generative AI craze with a new Alexa feature that creates short, five-scene stories for kids based on a few prompts. Called ‘Create With Alexa,’ the feature lets children and parents select from given themes like underwater, enchanted forest and space exploration and pick a character, a descriptive word and a color. Then, they sit back and wait as the AI comes up with different stories, visuals, audio dialogues and background music.



With Amazon hopping aboard the generative AI craze, some experts say that the company has created safeguards to ensure that the technology isn’t spouting anything inappropriate for young ears, and Create With Alexa could help foster more shared experiences for children and parents. But AI researchers also warn that stories made with generative AI could mystify children’s understanding of AI’s capabilities and intelligence.



The feature, which is available on Echo Show devices, relies on generative AI, algorithms that use existing content to create new content. Specifically, it implements language models, which ingest large amounts of text to learn how to create sentences similar to how people talk. The algorithm that powers Create With Alexa is trained on a database of commercially available visuals as well as Amazon’s own proprietary content.



Eshan Bhatnagar, head of product for Alexa AI at Amazon, says that Create With Alexa was designed with safety in mind. The technology has three safeguards in place, including content filtering, training the AI on a curated dataset that is free of toxic content, and most importantly, setting up a structured and restricted experience. “We wanted to avoid the garbage in garbage out kind of tendency of AI,” says Bhatnagar, referencing the likelihood of AI to render improper content based on the type of inputs fed into it. “We are being cautious, and conservative in our approach to how we want to expose some of the generative capabilities to our customers.”



Stefania Druga, a researcher on creative AI at the University of Washington, says Amazon’s decision to build Alexa’s new storytelling feature by structuring it around a few input prompts that ask users to select from a given set of templates can help make generative AI safer for kids. “I think this approach of providing curated templates, and really trying to curate the experience and control the types of generations that can be entered into the system is very promising,” Druga told Forbes.



But these safeguards can’t fully protect kids from the influence of intelligent computer systems like Alexa. Druga found in her research paper &#8220;<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3078072.3084330" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hey Google is it OK if I eat you?&#8221; Initial Explorations in Child-Agent Interaction</a>” that interacting with voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home can influence how children understand the intelligence of computers. She says Create With Alexa could mystify the abilities of AI for children, influencing their judgments about how intelligent the computer actually is and whether it’s a trustworthy source.



“What I’ve seen in my research is that the kids don&#8217;t even know how to read and write when they start interacting with a voice assistant. And if that&#8217;s their first introduction into searching anything on the web, that really colors their experience on how they process information,” Druga says. “Because if it&#8217;s spoken to them with a nice voice as a human would talk, they don&#8217;t really see that this is just like the first result from a search on the web, then it&#8217;s harder to develop this critical sense of whether they should trust this or not.”



Rather than showcasing generative AI as a magical and all-knowing technology, it should be seen as a technology that can be tinkered with and used to further a craft, Druga says. In order to do so, it’s also important to make sure children understand the technology and know what is happening under the hood. “I think it&#8217;s important to not give them these applications and content already pre-chewed but also to give them tools of creation with this technology,” she says.



Sandra Cortesi, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet &amp; Society at Harvard University, says that parents should steer clear of technologies that would make their children passively consume media. In the case of Create With Alexa, Cortesi questions whether parents want to expose their children to more screen time in the form of video storytelling. “I prefer technologies that have some kind of active character to it than just another thing where you watch and consume,” says Cortesi.



This isn’t the first time Amazon has ventured into storytelling technology. In 2017, the company launched Magic Door, an interactive adventure game that lets users decide each step of a story. The nonlinear experience doesn’t use any kind of AI but has 200 different scenes. Similar to ‘Create With Alexa,’ it gives users the agency to choose prompts such as settings like forests, seas, and enchanted lands and decide which scene will appear next. Earlier this year, Amazon also launched CodeWhisperer, a machine learning-powered coding assistant.



Over the last year, high-profile startups have launched buzzy text-to-image generative AI models like Dall-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, which have captured the imaginations of millions on social media. Startups behind these types of algorithms such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2022/09/07/stability-ai-funding-round-1-billion-valuation-stable-diffusion-text-to-image/?sh=1486bf0d24d6">Stability AI</a>and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2022/12/05/runway-ml-series-c-funding-500-million-valuation/?sh=330de10a2e64">Runway ML</a>&nbsp;have raised tens of millions of dollars in venture funding and garnered high valuations. OpenAI, the company that released Dall-E 2, unveiled ChatGPT last week, a chatbot that is able to write essays, code and provide detailed (but sometimes inaccurate) answers to questions.



These companies use machine learning to generate new text and image content rather than combining the two in a video format as Amazon Alexa has done. But other generative AI tools focus on storytelling, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.storywizard.ai/?ref=producthunt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Storywizard AI</a>, which uses generative AI to create stories with images based on plots that illustrate moral concepts like friendship and overcoming fear, and Novel AI, which touts itself as “a GPT-powered sandbox for your imagination.”



Storytelling that uses generative AI can be a means of inspiration and creativity among children. Cortesi says that the stories produced by generative AI could inspire users to build fanfiction communities online and create additional stories that build on what the AI produces.



Amazon Alexa’s Bhatnagar says the tablet will never replace the storybook; instead, it will augment the experience. Cortesi adds that traditional storytelling is far from being thrown out for a digital version.



“For parents and children, stories are something we can be nostalgic about,” says Cortesi. “I still remember when my parents told me stories.”



“I hope that for parents, who already have a ton of tasks and responsibilities, they will not just give this tool to their children and say, ‘You go ahead, do the story. Good night.’&#8221;



By Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes Staff

Mother holding ill son’s hand sleeping on bed

Amazon Alexa Wants To Put Your Child To Bed With Generative AI Storytelling

Daniel Marfo is managing operations in Africa for Zipline, ensuring that life-saving medical products are sent almost instantly to inaccessible areas using drones. The company has operated 300,000 flights in Ghana and Rwanda over the last five years. Up next: Kenya and Côte d&#8217;Ivoire, also alleviating food insecurity on the continent.



When logistics system Zipline began operations in Africa, it piqued the interest of Daniel Marfo, a Ghanaian pharmacist, because he wanted to use technology to solve healthcare issues in the developing world.



He saw a chance to solve a logistical challenge; with all the roads that need constructing and maintenance in Africa, he knew infrastructure development would take too long, and so he joined Zipline in October 2018.


<div class="wp-block-image">
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It was a long road from the world of pharmaceuticals, but with the same purpose: helping save lives.



As Senior Vice President of Zipline’s operations in Africa, at 35 years old, he is leading the market efforts across the continent, expanding the company’s reach geographically and expanding the use cases for drones.



When Marfo began, he made a point to visit as many rural areas of Ghana before deploying the technology – once having to take a ferry, followed by canoes and a long hike.



“The people, they&#8217;re dependent on whatever means of transportation that exist to be able to access their medications. When we started service, and they received their first supply of medications by drone, it was remarkable, you had just changed their lives,” he says.



He refers to a small village called Gbintri in the north eastern region of Ghana. Anytime it rains, access to roads gets cut off, and the health facility shuts down.



In 2019, it was the first time the health facility didn’t shut down.



A challenge they faced was integrating a new system into an old way of operating; so Zipline created a department called systems integration, which looked at ways to merge drone technology with existing health systems and existing aviation systems.



It’s one of the hardest parts, he says, as they’re asking airspace regulators to allow hundreds of drones to fly every day.



Another challenging aspect has been community integration, as a lot of people in the rural areas have never seen a drone until now. He says the first impression of drones from people was that they were military or spy vehicles.



Marfo now takes dummy drones into the communities and uses community champions to explain the functions of the service.



When they launched the fifth center in Ghana, they were connecting to a health facility. Two elderly gentlemen happened to be sitting under a tree, enjoying the day. A drone swooped in, dropped the package, catching them by surprise, as they together exclaimed that “God had just delivered something from heaven”.



Health staff had to explain that this is the new way they receive medication – and they were still blown away.



When speaking about the potential of drone use in Africa, Marfo mentions that the airspace in Africa isn’t as busy as Europe or America – positing that in the future, Africa could have the most advanced drone network and regulatory systems.



Zipline has operated 300,000 flights in Ghana and Rwanda combined over the last five years. Usually, the flights are round trips of 100 or more kilometers.



They started using it to deliver blood in Rwanda, and realized they could use it for medical products.



When Covid hit, they delivered over a million doses of vaccines in Ghana.



In Ghana, 70,000 malaria test kits and nearly 1.3 million courses of malaria treatment were delivered partnering with Ghana’s Health Service. In five months, 5,000 malaria vaccines were transported to piloted districts by May 2022.



“In Africa, the other use case that resonated deeply with me was food security. If I can make sure that people have access to food and [their] livelihood, I&#8217;m actually fulfilling 50% of our healthcare mission.”



In January 2022, they piloted their agriculture use case, focusing on animal health, delivering semen for artificial insemination in pigs. They extended the use case to delivering animal vaccines.



He adds that they have scaled to sending nutrients for kids two years old and younger in rural areas.



“It&#8217;s just become an amazing way of how drones have morphed from being seen as a spy or a military tech to a recreational tech, and now, it&#8217;s really a life-transforming tech.”



Soon, they will open operations in Kenya, beginning with Kisumu, a port city on Lake Victoria. From there, they can reach 13 counties from one location. They are also moving to Côte d&#8217;Ivoire.



“We are very excited about our planned expansion into the Ivory Coast. It&#8217;s the first French-speaking country that we are entering…It also brings about its own set of challenges, cultural understanding and cultural integration.”



Marfo says if they want to be a truly global company, this is part of the evolution.



In June 2022, they commissioned the first distribution center in Nigeria in Kaduna State. He says the uptake of the service has been good, with medical products, vaccines and blood being distributed.



There’s been a lot of interest in agricultural use cases in Nigeria too, and they are planning to open another facility in Bayelsa State by the first quarter of 2023, as well as Cross River State. There was flooding affecting 33 out of 36 states in Nigeria by October 2022.



“No one prays for natural disasters, but in case it ever comes again, we are in a position to bring at least some relief to people during such a difficult time.”



In Rwanda, from February to November, the company introduced animal health deliveries, which now make up 17%-18% of deliveries.



“Sixty percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa are farmers, and so, we are making sure that farmers are able to get the vaccines for the animals so that they don&#8217;t lose any of these animals, to be able to get them better semen so that they can get a better breed of animals, which generates more meat, means that we are actually changing the economy of these people&#8217;s lives.”



If the farmers are earning $10 a month from agriculture, he posits they may be earning double with the addition of drone technology. These are the use cases that excite him; technology that is not just saving lives with much-needed blood for transfusions or vaccines, but improving food security and putting more money in the hands of the people who matter, and who are the bulk of the population of the continent.



In Ghana, they also began focusing on poultry vaccines for farmers, specifically for Newcastle disease, in partnership with CowTribe – a Ghana-based for-profit organization focused on supporting livestock farmers via a mobile platform.



“Newcastle&#8217;s disease ravages about 70% of the chicken population, and it&#8217;s really terrible. But over the last few months, we&#8217;ve been able to make sure that farmers within our catchment areas have been able to get all their vaccines and they haven&#8217;t lost animals.”



For some, this is going to be the first time in years that the disease didn&#8217;t affect most of their flock. Marfo says around Christmas, farmers sell a lot of chicken and beef, and this will put more money in their pockets.



By September, Zipline and a leading e-commerce platform Jumia partnered up in Ghana to deliver retail products, with the goal of expanding into the other countries Jumia operates in.



“In increasing access for consumers, we’re also helping the small and medium businesses that use Jumia grow.”



The partnership makes Jumia’s existing logistics system more efficient and sustainable as the electric fleet reduces carbon emissions by 98% compared to delivery by car, according to Marfo.



“I think we are at that point where we did healthcare for five years, we&#8217;ve added on agriculture and even with agriculture we are just scraping the surface.”



When he began at Zipline four years ago, they were delivering a product to a health facility every four minutes. Now, they deliver every two minutes.



He wants to continue working on improving in terms of use cases, volume and scale – and make it so every minute, someone is getting a necessary or life-saving product.

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