Privacy-focused browser app Brave has released a new “Forgetful Browsing” feature, which helps to combat unwanted first-party re-identification, an intrusive tracking practice deployed by many websites.

Other than a reliable VPN, using a browser like DuckDuckGo or Brave when you’re on the internet is one of the easiest ways to significantly improve your online privacy.

For a browser like Brave, it’s a particularly tough time to be competing with Google and Bing. But if it continues to bring out unique privacy features — as well as useful AI tools like “Summarizer” — it’ll be well placed to keep pace.

Brave: Staying One Step Ahead

In a recent blog post explaining the new feature, Brave remarks on the fact that bigger browsers — which once allowed all sorts of third-party tracking — have started to make efforts to limit it.

Chrome, for instance, is set to phase out third-party cookies in 2024, recent reports suggest.

Brave says, however, that this general trend led to more sites relying on “first-party storage” to store information on users and re-identify them, which is what forgetful browsing fights back against.

With Forgetful Browsing activated, Brave will immediately clear all cookies stored in a site immediately after the site is closed down.

Not only will it enhance your privacy, but it’ll also improve your overall browsing experience by making it impossible to enforce rate limits, such as the number of times you can use a chatbot or read articles, as it won’t be able to recognize you’ve already visited the site.

Can You Really Trust Brave?

Emphatically, yes. In a world where the average browsing experiences are still extremely intrusive, on the whole, Brave’s commitment to privacy is all the more impressive.

Brave, as it states in its FAQs, “does not have access to identifiable user data” and all of its software is open source. Browsing history is not stored by default.

Overall, it has an extremely robust privacy policy and has a huge amount of information about how it secures customer data and blocks tracking applications available online.

Summarizer: Brave’s AI-Powered Answer to Bing Chat

It’ll be interesting to see how smaller browsers like Brave fare in this new era of information sourcing. Bigger browsers, like Chrome and Bing, are expending seemingly endless resources developing and improving AI tools and integrating them into their interface.

In March, Brave launched a tool called “Summarizer,” which effectively uses artificial intelligence to provide a short, succinct, and straightforward answer based on a collection of top web results, or a single, well-rated source.

It’s a little bit more basic than the likes of Bard and ChatGPT, but AI chatbots aren’t necessarily for everyone, especially ones that don’t cite their sources, as Brave’s Summarizer does every time it serves you an answer.

How to Enhance Your Privacy Online

In 2023, there are a lot of things to consider when you head onto the internet — not least how private your browsing experience is.

Brave is a great option if you’re looking for a privacy-focused browser that won’t deploy the same sort of invasive tracking or data-sharing procedures that Google will.

However, DuckDuckGo is another option worth considering, and in terms of blocking third-party trackers, performs a similar job effectively.

As we mentioned at the start of this article, pairing one of these browsers with a secure VPN  service such as Surfshark — which will encrypt all of your data, mask your IP address, and only costs a couple of dollars per month — is a good place to start.

If you live under an authoritarian regime and need more assurances when it comes to online privacy, you may want to consider using the Tor (“The Onion Router)” network, which is pretty much as close are you’re going to get to anonymity online.

NordVPN is one of the only major VPN providers to offer an Onion-Over-VPN feature that makes connecting to the TOR network even more secure — and Brave also has a built-in Tor integration. This will be a little excessive if you don’t live under draconian censorship laws, but it’s good to make sure you’re clued up on all the options, wherever in the world you live.

Amazon’s VP of Customer Fulfillment & Global Ops Services told CNBC that the company is particularly focused on leveraging AI to cut down on delivery times.

The ecommerce giant says it’s going to use artificial intelligence to aid with “regionalization” – ensuring inventory is being delivered locally, rather than shipped across the country. AI can analyze huge amounts of customer data, which can then be used to predict future product demand.

This is just one of many ways that Amazon is implementing AI throughout its business infrastructure and product range, from its customer support and service to its virtual home assistant, Alexa.

Amazon Focused on Cutting Down Delivery Times With AI

This week, Amazon’s customer fulfillment chief Stefano Preregro told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal that utilizing AI to work out precisely where to put all of Amazon’s inventory is a “key focus” for the company.

Simply put, the closer the distance between the product and the customer, the quicker it’ll be to deliver items from door to door, Prerego explained.

He revealed that almost three quarters of products being ordered by customers on Amazon are sent from warehouses within their region.

Within the delivery process, the company is also using AI to help with route planning, which is often impacted by changing weather conditions.

Robotics: The “Other Side” of Artificial Intelligence

Before ChatGPT was released, if you asked the average person which jobs would be replaced by artificial intelligence first, they would probably have mentioned manual labor roles, such as warehouse work. In other words, physical and repetitive jobs with little variation.

OpenAI’s chatbot emphatically changed the conversation after showing itself capable of completing various aspects of the average knowledge worker’s daily workload, barely leaving a single sector untouched.

The gradual robotization of Amazon’s order fulfillment infrastructure is a reminder that the AI revolution knows few bounds. Preregro told CNBC that 75% of the orders the company processes are now handled “in part by robotics.”

How Else Is Amazon Using Artificial Intelligence?

Order fulfillment isn’t the only part of the business harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. For instance, Alexa – the company’s virtual home assistant – has more than 100,000 available “skills” that can be used to adhere to a variety of user commands on the fly.

The ecommerce platform has also utilized artificial intelligence to deal with customer service queries for some years now.

In 2020, a post on Amazon’s Science blog described how the company had begun to use “automated agents that use neural networks rather than rules” for customer service.

“These agents can handle a broader range of interactions with better results, allowing our customer service representatives to focus on tasks that depend more on human judgment.”

Although most of the focus may be on Google and Microsoft’s AI chatbots, Amazon’s rich history of implementing AI within its infrastructure positions – for both physical and ‘mental’ work – could put the company in good stead.

This weekend, Elon Musk announced that ex-NBC Universal Global Advertising chief and former Trump appointee Linda Yaccarino has succeeded him as Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer.

Interestingly, however, Musk has retained his position as executive chair, and will continue to take the lead on product design and development at the social media site.

So what exactly are Linda Yaccarino’s core responsibilities as CEO, and will she really be able to exert her influence with Musk still so intimately involved?

Twitter’s New CEO: So Who’s Actually in Charge of What, Exactly?

Elon Musk initially revealed he’d found someone to take control of Twitter last week, and since then, advertising guru Linda Yaccarino has officially been named as Twitter’s new CEO. She will assume the responsibilities of the role in the next six weeks.

However, Musk is still the Executive Chair of Twitter – which leaves room for him to exert significant control over day-to-day operations – and is still the Chief Technical Officer.

He will continue to lead on product design, development, and delivery, reports suggest.

Yaccarino is widely-known and well-regarded in the world of advertising and will bring expertise and influence sorely needed to a platform that has witnessed a huge percentage of its advertisers jump ship since Musk acquired it for $44 billion last year.

The billionaire SpaceX owner initially wanted advertising to make up a smaller proportion of Twitter’s future revenue – which is why he’s aggressively pushed Twitter Blue subscriptions since his takeover – but Yaccarino’s appointment may suggest his desired change of tack is dead in the water.

At present, it’s unclear precisely how much freedom the new CEO will be given by Musk to implement her own initiatives, who will have final sign-off on the biggest decisions, and whether we’ve seen Musk make his last round of layoffs at the site.

Yaccarino’s Political Leanings Cause a Stir

Although her background in advertising made her a shoo-in for the role in Musk’s eyes, Linda Yaccarino’s perceived politics have already proven unpopular among conservatives and liberals alike.

As a former President’s Council appointee under Trump, whose following list reportedly includes election denier Sidney Powell, Libs of TikTok account owner Chaya Raichik and right-wing Twitter account “Catturd”, left-wingers have been far from enthused by the appointment – but she’s already faced criticism from the right either, too.

Yaccarino is a former employer of the World Economic Forum, a multi-national lobbying organization focusing on global corporate and social cooperation – which Elon Musk himself described as an “unelected world government” as recently as January 2023. This aspect of her job history has not gone down well with “Twitter conspiracists”, Gizmodo reports.

Her support for masks and vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic – which were both deeply unpopular among Trump’s base – have also been re-shared and discussed since the announcement.

Despite her pro-vaccine, pro-mask stance being at odds with what some Republicans believe, most would consider her to be right-leaning. But even so, this has little to say about just how closely Yaccarino will tack to Musk’s self-professed “free speech absolutism” during her time as CEO.

Winning back many of the advertisers that have left the platform recently, as well as forging new commercial partnerships, may hedge on whether Yaccarino can provide assurances about content moderation.

Can Linda Yaccarino Put Her Own Stamp on Twitter?

At present, it’s unclear just how much authority Yaccarino will hold over Twitter. If she departs on a personal level from Musk’s when it comes to questions of what Twitter should be for, and who it should accommodate – or simply considers his general stance to be commercially damaging – things could turn ugly very quickly.

Typically, new CEOs have the power and authority to drive cultural change within a company and have a raft of value-focused responsibilities to deal with upon appointment. It’s unclear, at present, whether that’s within Yaccarino’s job description.

Throw in the fact that Musk is, as Tech CEO’s go, particularly cultish, particularly attention-seeking, and particularly fanatical about productivity and results, and what her role as CEO will really entail in practice becomes even harder to predict.

Yaccarino’s Biggest Problem: No Clean Break from Musk

With Elon Musk only really taking a half-step back from Twitter, to say Yaccarino is likely to have her work cut out rebuilding relationships with former advertising partners is an understatement.

You’d think that assuming a more detached role would give Musk a better shot at creating the sort of healthy distance between himself and Twitter you’d think would be needed to rebuild relationships with advertisers, as well as restore users’ faith in the social media platform. This seems to be at odds with the new setup.

Regardless of whether the new Twitter CEO role is less about culture, values, and strategic direction and more about maximizing ad revenue, Yaccarino is walking head-on into a Musk-induced mess that is likely to take years to sort out. It looks like Elon really has found his fool:

I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022

Facebook owner Meta has announced a new generative AI tool for advertisers called AI Sandbox.

Launched at a press event in New York, company executives referred to AI Sandbox as a ‘testing playground’ with features focused on streamlining processes in three main areas: copywriting, visual asset generation, and image manipulation. It marks the latest AI tool from big tech.

Meta said that AI Sandbox is currently being made available to a ‘small group’ of advertisers, with a wider roll out planned for July this year as well as direct integration into its existing products.

A Closer Look at AI Sandbox’s Key Features

AI Sandbox comes with a crop of neat features, which Meta thinks will save advertisers time and money.

First up is Text Variation, which will have professional copywriters hitting the doubles this weekend. This feature allows advertisers to generate multiple versions of a piece of written copy, each one custom composed to target a different audience – all while promising to retain core brand messaging in each variation.

Next up is Background Generation, which will create background images from little more than text prompts. As well as being designed to help advertisers quickly furnish their campaigns with a diverse range of creative assets, we can see this being useful in A/B testing and other areas of UX product development.

Finally, Image Outcropping is potentially a huge timesaver and automatically adjusts visuals to the correct aspect ratio for different social media sharing mediums: Posts, Stories, Reels and so on. This one has Photoshop wizards and lazy interns alike thanking their lucky stars for the emergence of generative AI this year.

Meta Enters Big Tech AI Battle Royale

AI Sandbox is just the latest product on the generative AI scene, which includes other popular platforms like Microsoft’s ChatGPT tool.

In short, generative AI is a form of machine learning where something new is created from the sea of data, information and assets that already exist in the digital world. An obvious example is we could ask ChatGPT or Google Bard to write this article. Unless you’ve trained yourself to spot signs of artificial intelligence at play, you might not know.

In the case of Meta and its new AI Sandbox tool, the idea would seem to be that streamlining everyday tasks like image cropping helps advertisers save on certain overheads – and frees up money to be potentially reinvested directly in ad spend, one might argue.

Americans Unsure of AI’s Brave New World

Despite its recent surge in popularity, the jury is still out on whether or not AI should be fully embraced or not, especially in matters where trust is required.

A recently published joint study by KMPG and Australia’s University of Queensland found that just 40% of Americans currently trusted AI systems, while globally 60% of respondents were either unwilling or unsure about trusting artificial intelligence.

The study draws on responses from more than 17,000 people across 17 countries, so its findings can be deemed reliable. That doesn’t mean AI’s going anywhere, though. On the contrary, the steady stream of AI-related announcements – from Meta’s AI Sandbox to Google’s upcoming AI search update – suggest we’re still only on the precipice of this brave new world.

Dell has quietly reversed its remote working policy, with an internal company memo revealing that employees are being asked to return to the office ‘at least’ three days a week.

The news signals a return to the company’s pre-pandemic hybrid working model. Specifically, it stipulates that staff living within an hour’s one-way commute of a major Dell facility should plan to reacquaint themselves with physical working for three days of their choosing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dell’s workforce has been less than enthusiastic about the new mandate, with many employees feeling they were led to believe working for the tech giant post-pandemic would involve remote work flexibility.

Employees Take a Dim View of Office U-turn

As first reported by The Register, the announcement was delivered by Dell COO Jeff Clarke, who acknowledged that the process wouldn’t be a ‘light switch transition’ whilst still urging workers to adopt the new schedule ‘as soon as they can arrange it.’

While Dell never explicitly ruled out a return to hybrid working, disgruntled staff are pointing out it’s the same Clarke who said that work ‘was an outcome, not a place or a time’ when discussing his firm’s former remote-first strategy.

When hybrid working has been discussed, Clarke’s vision also seemed to be much less rigid than the mandate he has just handed down, with the exec saying he saw a future where staff ‘work from home mostly and come into the office one or two days a week.’

CEO Michael Dell was even spotted bragging on LinkedIn about his company’s flexible ethos, going so far as to say that companies with ‘forced hours in an office’ were ‘doing it wrong’.

The apparent U-turn has given rise to fears that the policy is effectively a ‘soft layoff’ measure designed to help Dell further reduce costs, following extensive formal layoffs earlier in the year.

The Tech Trend of Layoffs Followed by Office Return

Soft layoffs represent a worrying new trend in the technology industry whereby companies look to curb employee numbers by mandating a return to the office, with the expectation many staff will be unwilling to make the switch and opt to resign instead. Such a scenario absolves firms of their responsibility to pay redundancy costs to staff, making it a real kick in the teeth in the eyes of many.

Earlier in the year, Dell was at the fore of the first batch of tech company layoffs that rocked the sector in February. In opting to follow this up by mandating a return to the office, it joins a number of other major industry players.

These include Amazon, who announced it was culling a massive 18,000 jobs back in January, and followed it up with a physical working initiative a month later. Similarly, Google revealed it was cutting 12,000 at around the same time and pushed for a return to the office in April.

A final example is Salesforce, the outfit behind one of the best CRMs for sales teams. It began a series of rolling layoffs at the start of the year and has since mandated that employees return to the office at least three days a week – four if you’re in a customer-facing role.

Dell certainly didn’t start this trend, but it won’t be the one to end it, either. Expect to see even more tech companies call employees back to the office, and scrapping those web conferencing calls for face to face catch ups.

Elon Musk has announced in a tweet today that Twitter will be getting a new CEO and that “she will be starting in six weeks.”

Musk has served as CEO since acquiring the social media platform in October 2022, but he says he’ll be transitioning to a new role in the coming weeks. He’ll be the executive chair and CTO, in charge of overseeing product, software, and SysOps.

Further details have yet to be revealed.

Twitter’s New CEO Has Her Task Cut Out for Her

Twitter sold itself to Musk for $44 billion, but was recently valued at $20 billion — a valuation drop of more than fifty percent in less than a year. Musk has said that he sees a path towards a $200 billion value, but trends would have to reverse themselves pretty quickly for that to manifest any time soon.

Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!

My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023

That’s a tall order for anyone. But for the yet-unnamed new CEO, it could mean butting heads with Musk himself, who’ll remain in a position of power within the company, and who saw valuation plummet under his recent decisions.

A New Leader Is Just the Latest Big Change at Twitter

In the meantime, Twitter is still rolling out changes. Some of them don’t seem bad, such as the decision to launch encrypted DMs, but others seem like they might reduce interest in using the platform.

For example, any users inactive for the past 30 days might be deleted entirely, which will reduce the benefit of preserving historical data such as the accounts of deceased celebrities or the social platform’s role in historical moments.

One group is likely to love the new CEO, however: Tesla’s investors, who have been concerned about Tesla CEO Musk’s focus shifting too far towards Twitter. Tesla Inc shares spiked 2.4% in volume following the news of a new Twitter head.

Will Musk Step Down This Time?

This isn’t the first time Musk has floated the concept of stepping down from his CEO role amid more than a few controversial decisions. His previous statements on the issue have led to plenty of news cycles, with no results.

In December 2022, Musk posted a poll asking if he should step down as CEO, saying in it that he would “abide by the results.” He lost, with 57.5% of the total votes in favor of him stepping down, and 42.5% against.

Then in April, Musk addressed the question again, saying that he had appointed his dog as CEO.

Now, we just have a single tweet to judge if Twitter is getting a new CEO. It certainly looks possible this time. Still, only one thing’s for sure: The fact that you’re reading this article means that we’ve milked yet another news cycle out of the question.

Detailed AI answers, shopping solutions, and a sneak-preview app available now: Google just announced a raft of artificial intelligence updates for its popular search engine.

The Search Generative Experience, or SGE, could usher in a new era for Google. The new changes were all just announced at I/O 2023, an annual Google event aimed at software developers.

Here’s what it all means for the average user.

AI-Generated Search Answers

Calling Google a popular search engine is an understatement. These days, “Googling” is just the general term for looking something up online. But now the tech giant is planning to make one of the biggest updates in its history — shifting its focus from sending users to other websites and towards giving users their own custom-tailored AI-generated answer.

Users will get a paragraphs-long AI answer, similar to what you’d see from generative text bots like ChatGPT. Follow up questions will be suggested, and their answers will include the same context established from the initial query, Google says.

The idea is that AI can answer more complex questions than just a simple search engine.

Shopping With Generative AI

Google’s Shopping Graph has more than 35 billion product listings, and those can also be accessed through AI. Most people tend to search for big purchases online before they make a decision, so Google is giving them reviews, ratings, prices, and images for each product searched.

According to Google, at least, AI will ensure that everything is up to date and relevant.

They’ll have to stay on the ball to make that a reality, though: Plenty of critics have argued that Amazon lost the battle against counterfeit products several years ago.

No Waitlist for Bard

Google’s AI chatbot Bard is getting more features and it is also losing the waitlist, so you’ll be able to start trying it out sooner.

The news comes a week after Microsoft dropped its own waitlist for Bing’s ChatGPT, so this looks like another sign of a big tech rivalry.

Here are the details, from our own coverage of the announcement:

“Announced at Google’s I/O event, where AI was very much the running theme of the occasion, the company revealed that Bard was to be rolled out to 180 countries and regions, after initially launching two months ago in the US and UK. It will also support Japanese and Korean language, with 40 more expected soon.”

Try Out the Search Generative Experience

The actual AI answers and product recommendations won’t arrive on Google.com for a while. But if you want to try a preview experience, check out the Search Generative Experience for Chrome desktops and on mobile within the Google App (Android and iOS).

The preview is only available in the US and in English for now. If you want to get a head start on all the AI updates, check it out today.

At Google’s I/O event on Wednesday, the company announced that it was to scrap waitlists to use Bard, its AI-powered chatbot.

The move comes just a week after Microsoft announced that it was to remove waitlists for its Bing AI platform, and is a sure fire sign of the fierce competition between the two tech giants.

In addition to the removal of the waitlist, it was also announced that Bard would be available in more countries than the initial US and UK , and would be packed with new features.

Google Scraps Waitlist for Bard

If you’ve been desperately waiting to use Google’s Bard, then good news – the company has done away with the waitlist, and it’s now available for everyone to use right now (mostly, there are still a few small caveats). Microsoft made a similar announcement last week when it ditched waitlists for Bing AI.

Announced at Google’s I/O event, where AI was very much the running theme of the occasion, the company revealed that Bard was to be rolled out to 180 countries and regions, after initially launching two months ago in the US and UK. It will also support Japanese and Korean language, with 40 more expected soon.

To use Bard today, you’ll need to be in one of the applicable countries, and have a Google account.

It’s been a rocky start for Bard, with a couple of high profile stumbles going so far as wiping around $100 billion from the value of the company. Nobody is more aware of the potential for falure than Google, but in the current AI arms race, no company wants to get left behind, especially when the tech is expected to revolutionize the way we search the internet. Google has now moved the platform to PaLM 2, describing it as a ‘far more capable language model’, which it surely hopes will address those initial teething problems.

See what happened when we tested Bard and ChatGPT alongside each other

New Bard AI Features Announced by Google

As well as announcing that waitlists were being removed from Bard, Google also revealed a host of new features at the I/O event.

Bard is to integrate Google Lens into the platform, allowing users to use photos with AI. Use cases could be asking Bard to generate descriptions or captions for photos a user has taken. In Google’s own example, it shows some possible ways to tag a photo of some pets:

In addition, Bard’s responses should now be a lot more visual. Ask it what the must see sights are in New Orleans for example, and it will show photos of local landmarks and places of interest, as well as text descriptions.

Fact: The phrase AI was mentioned 110 times during Google’s two hour event.

Google also announced that it had taken feedback onboard from developers, and would be making some key changes to the platform. This include:

• Sourcing citations – As of next week, Bard will give clearer citations for sources, allowing users to click on the relevant passage to see the initial source.
• Dark theme – Self explanatory, but those that prefer a darker screen that’s easier on the eyes, are now being catered to.
• Export button – A much requested feature from developers, Bard will let users export and run code, starting with Python. It will also be possible to export to Gmail and Google Docs.

These weren’t the only AI announcements from the I/O event – in fact, if you were keeping track of the times ‘AI’ got mentioned, you probably would have lost count early on (spoiler, it was 244). However, with Google betting big on Bard, it’s hard to argue that improvements to the platform aren’t significant, especially considering the number of competitors snapping at Google heels in the AI space.

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter will launch encrypted direct messaging this week, which should make communicating privately on the social media platform more secure than it has ever been.

At the moment, anyone working for Twitter could, in theory, read direct messages sent by any user. After encrypted messaging is rolled out, however, this would no longer be possible.

Video chat is also coming to Twitter, according to Musk, which might be the first in a long line of upcoming features designed to make the platform more of a multi-purpose, social hub and provide users with fewer reasons to log off.

End-to-End Encryption for Twitter DMs Is Here

In a tweet published today, Musk said that the encryption would “grow in sophistication rapidly” and suggested a good acid test would be if he “could not see [users’] DMs even if there was a gun to my head.”

End-to-end encryption has become a unique selling point for some apps, most notably WhatsApp and privacy-focused messaging app Signal, which now has tens of millions of users.

Facebook Messenger, however, is not end-to-end encrypted at present, but direct communication over Instagram (also owned by Meta) is protected in this way.

Other changes to direct messaging on Twitter include the ability for users to reply to any direct message within a thread (currently, you can only reply to the latest one) as well as an expansion of the emojis you can use to respond to DMs on the platform.

Video Chat for Twitter

In the same tweet revealing the end-to-end encryption plans, Musk teased the imminent release of “voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.”

This would turn Twitter into a tool businesses could feasibly use to contact new clients or find new leads, although it won’t have many of the useful sales, collaboration, or contact management-based features that modern-day VoIP systems offer.

The pandemic also saw a meteoric rise of platforms offering web conferencing, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with all competing fiercely and adding features regularly. It would likely take a lot to tear loyal customers away from these products.

Twitter: What’s Next for Musk’s Social Media Experiment?

In reality, we may not have to wait long for more features – business-focused or otherwise – if Musk’s publicly-stated desires for Twitter to become an all-encompassing app are borne out.

Last year, the CEO – who also heads up Tesla and SpaceX – made no secret of his admiration for Chinese app WeChat, which is a lot more multi-purpose than Twitter or other social media apps.

But it seems Twitter becoming just one part of a larger, umbrella app that has a much wider set of functions and features is more likely.

Musk’s purchase of the domain “X.com” half a decade ago, as well as comments made in various shareholder meetings, suggests plans for something bigger.

At the moment, plans are vague – but Musk will have to get his house in order before trying to take on the likes of Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat, let alone WeChat.

Since Musk’s acquisition, Twitter has been plagued by internal scandals, layoffs, pay disputes, content moderation issues and advertisers jumping ship.

So tumultuous has Musk’s reign been that April – during which Twitter was merged into X Corp last month, and technically ceased to exist as an independent entity – was a relatively quiet month by recent standards.

What the future has in store for Twitter is unclear at best. Right now it feels as if there’s an equal chance of it turning into the biggest social media app on the market, or fading out of existence completely.

Microsoft’s Work Trends Index report has uncovered a rapidly developing “AI-Employee Alliance”, as employees identify artificial intelligence as a quick and easy way to quell job burnout.

Although a significant number of survey respondents admitted to harboring fears that their roles may be subsumed by artificial intelligence, a much larger proportion displayed an eagerness to delegate as much of their work as possible to AI.

As tools like AI assistants continue to be added to all sorts of workplace software, from project management tools to business communications platforms like Microsoft Teams, questions about AI’s capacity to replace jobs will persist – but opinions still vary greatly on its possible impact.

The AI-Employee Alliance Explained

Microsoft’s Work Trends Index, published this week – which draws responses from 31,000 full-time or self-employee workers across 31 markets – found that 70% would delegate “as much work as possible to AI”.

76% said they were comfortable using AI for admin-based tasks, and the vast majority said they saw no problem in using it for analytical tasks (79%) and creative work (73%).

We’re currently witnessing the creation of what Microsoft has dubbed the “AI-Employee Alliance”: AI, at least in the short term, is on the side of the overworked and the underpaid, tired of performing various aspects of their already-stressful jobs.

Luckily, almost twice as many business leaders see AI as a way to increase productivity (31%), rather than reducing the number of staff on their payroll (15%).

With huge fractions of the global workforce finding their mental health negatively impacted by their workplace, it’s understandable that workers are viewing AI tools like ChatGPT as a helping hand, not a hindrance.

But considering the ongoing public discourse and ominous predictions from think tanks, research groups, and consulting firms about AI subsuming hundreds of millions of jobs – as well as the fact that the survey found 49% of people are worried Ai will replace their jobs – the results are still somewhat surprising.

“It’s fascinating that people are more excited about AI rescuing them from burnout than they are worried about it eliminating their jobs,” author and organizational psychology professor Adam Grant said while commenting on the findings.

An Optimistic, Open-Minded Global Workforce

In the Microsoft survey, the company also revealed that the vast majority of workers believe AI “can enhance creativity”.

Along with the administrative and analytical tasks mentioned above, Formulating ideas for work (76%), as well as editing (75%) were also popular use cases identified by survey respondents as jobs for generative AI tools and/or other kinds of artificial intelligence.

According to the data, it seems like the more time you spend using AI, the more likely you are to appreciate its capabilities. 87% of workers in creative roles who consider themselves “extremely familiar” with AI, for instance, said they’d be happy utilizing AI for creative tasks.

Why Building AI Aptitude is Important for the AI-Employee Alliance

AI aptitude, as Microsoft puts it, is an umbrella term for a collection of workplace skills that all employees are going to need going forward, especially knowledge workers.

82% of leaders say their employees will need “new skills” to be prepared for the growth of AI.

“Skills like critical thinking and analytical judgment, complex problem solving, and creativity and originality are new core competencies – and not just for technical roles or AI experts,” Microsoft says.

The tech behemoth – which has bankrolled ChatGPT creators OpenAI – said that the business leaders they surveyed cited how important it was that employees understand when is best to “leverage” AI in productive ways, as well as more specific skills like prompt engineering and writing.

Employees that want to upskill themselves should take a two-pronged approach: firstly, building that AI aptitude that Microsoft suggests, while also investing time in developing skills like flexibility and emotional intelligence.

These are skills that AI tools will struggle – or take longer – to develop but also seem the most necessary in a working world that will be full of challenges, but also opportunities for reinvention.

Microsoft has announced that it’s widening access to its AI-powered Copilot tool, which will be built into popular Microsoft 365 apps like Word and Excel, as well as other products such as Microsoft Teams.

The company, which has launched a new project management platform Loop and made AI tools available in Microsoft Teams in recent months, is also adding new features and capabilities to the product.

Copilot has the potential to transform the way millions of people approach day-to-day work tasks and adds more fuel to the ongoing conversation surrounding AI job replacement.

Microsoft Expands Access to Copilot

Microsoft has launched the Copilot Early Access Program, which will let 600 enterprise customers use the tool for a period of time before it is released to the wider public.

The program is a paid access, invitation-only affair, so if your business isn’t one of the lucky 600 that have been asked to try out the new features, it looks like you’ll have to wait a little longer. The figures the businesses in question have paid to be part of the program have not been made public.

Microsoft is yet to say precisely when Copilot – which is powered by OpenAI’s most capable language model yet, GPT-4 – will be rolled out to the hundreds of millions of people using Microsoft 365 programs and Microsoft Teams.

New CoPilot AI Features Added

Along with announcing the CoPilot Early Access Program, Microsoft also revealed a number of new features that will be added to Copilot.

Copilot in Whiteboard, for example, is designed for more effective brainstorming and group ideation sessions.

“Using natural language, you can ask Copilot to generate ideas, organize ideas into themes, create designs that bring ideas to life, and summarize Whiteboard content,” Microsoft explains in a blog post published this week.

Microsoft 365 users will soon be able to ask DALL-E to create unique, custom images for their PowerPoint presentations.

There will be support for staff writing high volumes of emails too. Copilot “will offer coaching tips and suggestions on clarity, sentiment, and tone to help users write more effective emails and communicate more confidently” within Outlook, Microsoft says.

Microsoft has also developed what it calls a “semantic index” for Copilot, which lets the generative AI tool search more effectively through your company’s documents and data to find things that staff need.

The AI Revolution: Should Your Business Use Copilot and ChatGPT?

Once it’s released, using a tool like Copilot to do your day-to-day heavy lifting and administrative legwork – as well as tasks like summarizing reports – is a no-brainer. Employees that are already using ChatGPT – as well as Google’s chatbot, Bard – are clawing back hours upon hours of their workday. Built-in tools could be the next stage of this high-paced AI revolution.

There are, however, important things to consider when using AI in the workplace, for businesses of all shapes and sizes. For example, if you’re publishing content produced by AI, it’ll be a good idea to specify this in your editorial guidelines or declare it in such articles. This is just one of a myriad of complex considerations many businesses will have to confront in the coming months.

Understanding the limitations of products like ChatGPT is crucial too. If your business is using ChatGPT, you need oversight over what people in your business are using it for, and whether they know important facts that should sculpt their usage, like the fact it struggles with questions relating to events post-2021.

With genuinely useful AI tools in their relative infancy – but rapidly improving – creating a strategy, as well as company guidelines for its use, will put you in good stead going forward.

In Musk’s latest maneuver, the Twitter CEO and magnet for controversy announced his team will be “purging” accounts that have been inactive for several years, in an effort to “free up abandoned handles”.

While no official date has been announced for when this process will begin, the chief executive warns users that follower counts may be impacted as a result.

This revelation comes days after the multi-billionaire tried to reassign NPRs and the National Public Radio’s Twitter handles due to inactivity, and weeks after the app began removing blue checks for its legacy users.

Twitter Accounces a Purge on Inactive Accounts

If you’re an idle Twitter user, your account may be at risk — according to a Tweet recently fired off by the company’s CEO, Elon Musk.

The chief executive explained that if an account has been dormant for several years, it may be purged and archived, claiming that the action is vital in the app’s mission to “free up abandoned handles”.

We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023

Musk also pointed out that due to the scale of this project, it will likely affect lots of people’s follower counts as a result.

But this isn’t the first time the CEO has waged a war against inactive users. Last week Musk threatened to reassign the handles of a number of organizations that had suspended posting after incorrectly being labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’.

In a series of private emails, Musk told the organizations like NPR and National Public Radio that if they continued to remain inactive, their account handle would be given to “another company”.

The CEO also posted a Tweet last November which claimed the company would soon begin freeing up the usernames of 1.5 billion accounts by deleting accounts that haven’t been active.

Since the company is yet to make an official statement, it’s unclear when the social media site will begin purging dormant accounts and what exactly the company considers to be “inactive”.

How can Twitter users avoid being purged?

According to Twitter’s inactive account policy, users should log into their account at least once every 30 days to remain active.

Since inactivity is purely based on logging in, this is the only way to avoid your account being ousted in the app’s latest crackdown.

Is Twitter Still the Best Social Media Platform?

Whether you’re an irregular Twitter user frustrated about this proposed purge, or a legacy blue tick holder that’s recently been dethroned, there are a number of reasons why you might have grown disillusioned with Twitter over the past few months.

The truth is, due to the platform’s cultural capital and the size of its existing community, lots of Twitter alternatives simply don’t weigh up.

However, if you’re looking for a platform that looks and behaves similarly to Twitter, but is free from the megalomaniac impulses of Elon Musk, Bluesky will be your best bet. The app lets you share videos and posts and also offers “What’s Hot” and “Following” feeds to categorize content. Sadly, it’s invite-only at the moment, so you’ll need to hope someone you know is kind enough to throw you an invite.

Mastodon is another great contender that relies on open-source code and has similar microblogging features to Twitter. It also challenges Twitter’s top-down structure by feeding all of its profits back into the app itself.

If you’re interested in learning more about the German incumbent you can read our comprehensive guide to Mastodon here.

The professional network and career development tool, LinkedIn, is laying off 716 workers and terminating its Chinese app, ‘InCareers’, amid a ‘weakening global economic outlook’ and a ‘drop in demand.’

This makes the Microsoft-owned app the latest in a long line of tech companies to slash headcounts — with Amazon and Meta taking similar actions just last month.

Sales, operations, and support teams have been impacted the most. However, LinkedIn’s CEO, Ryan Roslansky, claims that affected workers will be able to apply for 250 new roles that will be created within the company.

LinkedIn Cuts 716 Workers As Demand Slumps

Despite reporting revenue growth for each quarter of 2022, LinkedIn has decided to dismiss 716 workers as demand for its services slumps and the economic climate grows increasingly hostile.

In an open letter to his employees, CEO Ryan Roslanksy explains the decision to trim down sales, operations, and support teams was part of a broader effort to streamline the company and expand the use of their “external partners”.

“With the market and customer demand fluctuating more, and to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively, we are expanding the use of vendors.” – LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky

But while around 3.5% of LinkedIn’s 20,000-strong workforce has already been handed the pink slip, Roslansky claims that these changes will result in the creation of 250 new toles, which impacted workers will be able to apply for from May 15.

This announcement took place just a week after LinkedIn celebrated its 20th birthday, and three weeks after the social media giant quietly laid off 91 staffers from its talent acquisition team.

LinkedIn Rolls Back Its Chinese App “InCareers”

Aside from dismissing employees, LinkedIn has also decided to discontinue InCareers, the company’s answer to LinkedIn in China.

While the company will retain some presence in the country, including helping China-based companies hire and train international employees, this wind-down marks a pretty major change of tact for the company, that’s been operating in the Chinese market since 2014.

LinkedIn’s presence in China has never been smooth sailing, with the company rebranding its app in 2021 and removing its social networking function to ensure it was in compliance with local laws.

However, CEO Roslansky cited “fierce competition” and a “challenging macroeconomic climate when explaining his decision to axe the app, with alternatives like Maimai taking up most of the market share.

LinkedIn is the only major Western social media app still to operate in China, with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Youtube being barred from the country for over a decade.

Big Tech’s Layoff Spree Isn’t Letting Up

As the industry reels from overhiring efforts that took place throughout the pandemic, while contending with ever-rising inflation rates and fluctuating consumer demands, workers have been bearing the brunt more than ever.

A number of major companies are scaling back company benefits, including Google which has recently waved goodbye to complimentary fitness classes, shuttle busses, and snacks.

What’s more, just like in 2022, a wave of layoffs has been taking place within the industry, with Meta confirming 10,000 new layoffs earlier in March and Intel cutting 500 staffers this month.

While many tech leaders remain optimistic about the future of the tech industry, its days of unstoppable growth seem long behind us. Unfortunately, this means it’s likely that many more jobs will be sacrificed before the situation shows any signs of improvement.

Will the layoffs ever end? Intel just announced that the chipmaker is planning another round of layoffs and cost cutting measures to combat the ongoing issues with the economy.

The first half of 2023 has been an absolute bloodbath for tech industry employees, with virtually every company in Silicon Valley and beyond cutting costs by laying off employees. Sure, some CEOs are taking pay cuts, but the majority are passing the unfortunate situation onto their teams.

Now, Intel looks to join the ranks again, announcing a second round of layoffs that will impact employees across the country.

More Layoffs Coming From Intel

Reports have found that Intel is likely going to embark on some massive layoffs soon, as the company struggles to keep its footing amongst low revenue numbers for the year.

The news was broken by Dylan Patel, an analyst for research firm SemiAnalysis, and confirmed by Intel in a statement.

“We are focused on identifying cost reductions and efficiency gains through multiple initiatives, including some business and function-specific workforce reductions in areas across the company. These are difficult decisions, and we are committed to treating impacted employees with dignity and respect.” – Intel spokesperson

The number of layoffs have not been confirmed by Intel, but Patel noted that with a 10% reduction to the data center and client computing groups, it could be as much as 20% of the workforce being cut.

Intel’s No Good, Very Bad Year

The tech industry has been laying off employees like it’s going out of style over the last few months, but Intel has been in a class of its own when it comes to poor performance. The company has seen revenue drop substantially over the last few years, with a record $2.8 billion loss in the first quarter of 2023.

As a result, the company has been in cost cutting mode long before this news broke. In January, the company laid off hundreds of employees. After that, the company started slashing salaries of upper-level employees in hopes of keeping costs down and avoiding future layoffs.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, as these huge layoffs have paved the way for even more layoffs to hit the chipmaker, and there’s a chance it could get worse before it gets better.

Tech Industry Layoffs Abound

In 2023, the tech industry has laid off a lot of employees. In fact, reports show that the industry has let go of more than 100,000 workers in just the last few months.

In addition to Intel, companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and dozens of others have cut as few as 100 and as many as 11,000 employees from their ranks in response to the downturn in the economy.

Suffice to say, Intel likely won’t be the last company to let go of a large percentage of its workforce.

The ire for remote work continues across the tech industry, as the CEO of OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT — lambasted the flexible schedule movement in a recent talk.

With dozens of tech companies demanding that employees return to the office, the remote work boom of the pandemic is clearly less popular than it was a few years ago.

Now, Sam Altman, the CEO of one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, has made his opinion clear: remote work is not the way.

OpenAI CEO Lambasts Remote Work

In a Stripe Sessions fireside chat in San Francisco, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed the merits and downfalls of remote work, although he admittedly focused mostly on why the flexible schedule movement was such a terrible idea.

“I think definitely one of the tech industry’s worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn’t need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity.” – Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

The CEO went on to say that “the experiment on that is over,” referring to the many tech companies that are attempting to get employees back in the office.

Is Technology Good Enough for Fully Remote Work?

In addition to calling fully remote work a “mistake” and “over,” Altman noted that there was one problem holding back the popular trend from realizing its full potential in regard to keeping creativity alive and well in the workplace.

“The technology is not yet good enough that people can be fully remote forever, particularly on startups.” – Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

Many would argue, though, that the technology did a pretty good job of holding up throughout the pandemic, and it has continued to facilitate flexible schedules across the business landscape. Video conferencing services like Zoom and Google Meet allowed for easy communication, with project management tools and CRM software allowing for employees to access important company information without risk of a security threat.

Now, if Altman was hoping to conduct meetings in the metaverse before the end of the year, then yes, technology just isn’t there yet. But with productivity on the rise, we’d say technology is more than suited for the task.

Creativity and Artificial Intelligence

Whether or not remote work has somehow hindered creativity in the business world remains to be seen. But let’s be honest, the CEO of OpenAI complaining about a “loss of creativity” is nothing if not a bit ironic. After all, his platform is one of the primary reasons that television writers in the US are striking across the industry.

“The problem here seems to be that we thought that creativity, per se, was the last bastion, the line in the sand, that would stop machines from replacing someone’s job. I would argue that that’s just some kind of arbitrary notion that people had that caught the popular imagination.” – Mike Seymour, co-founder of Motus Lab

Remote work has facilitated improved productivity, better work life balance, and even increased profits for a wide range of businesses around the world. If the CEO of OpenAI is worried about creativity, looking inward might be a better use of his time.

The negative impacts of generative AI could be rearing their ugly heads already, with Samsung banning AI use on platforms like ChatGPT and its many alternatives for employees.

Generative AI platforms have become the hot topic of discussion in the tech industry. For one, they represent a meaningful path to success as any tech company can see. Additionally, they’ve become a valuable tool for employees looking to improve productivity at their business.

However, the lack of regulation on these generative AI platforms has opened the door for misuse, and Samsung has restricted its use in response to an employee inputting sensitive company code.

New Policy Bans Samsung Employees from Using Generative AI

Announced in an internal memo to employees obtained by Bloomberg, Samsung has reportedly banned the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms due to misuse.

The memo came in response to a security leak that stemmed from the use of ChatGPT. A Samsung employee had reportedly input sensitive company code into the platform, which poses a potential security risk for the company.

The ban is not receiving much push back at the company either, with a company survey from last month noting that 65% of employees are concerned about security risks when using generative AI platforms like ChatGPT.

Other Companies Restricting AI Use

With Samsung restricting the use of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, the movement to get the tech established in the workplace has taken a significant hit. Still, Samsung certainly isn’t the only tech giant that has decided that this kind of technology is a bit too risky to let roam free throughout the business world.

In the tech industry, companies like Verizon and Accenture have told employees to not use the technology for everyday work. Additionally, financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Well Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup have banned the technology from use.

“We are imposing usage limits on ChatGPT, as we continue to evaluate safe and effective ways of using technologies like these.” – Wells Fargo spokesperson, to Bloomberg.

This technology is poised to become one of the most valuable productivity boosters in the modern world, but with few regulations, sensitive industries like finance are understandably wary about how employees are using it in the early stages.

Should Your Company Ban ChatGPT?

With all these big companies banning the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms from employees use, it’s safe to wonder: Should your business ban ChatGPT?

In earnest, you’re probably fine as long as you don’t work in a highly sensitive industry like finance. Yes, the lack of regulation can be unsettling, but businesses in industries like content and retail don’t have nearly as much to worry about when it comes to sensitive company data.

All in all, the technology is in its earliest stages right now, and a healthy dose of skepticism is more than necessary. But if you and your employees need to use ChatGPt for a productivity boost, just make sure your team is following best practices to keep your company safe.

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told a group of analysts that AI will be “huge”, but also warned that ‘a number of issues’ with the technology need to be addressed.

The statement came as Apple revealed its better-than-forecasted earnings report, an impressive feat for the only big tech company that managed to avoid making the mass layoffs that the likes of Google, Meta, and Microsoft have had to make.

Apple has been pretty quiet on AI, but is the company really playing catch up, or simply keeping its cards close to its chest? Or, does it just not need to fight this battle (yet, at least), as it didn’t when social media networks were springing up left, right, and centre in the late 2000s? We take a closer look.

Apple’s AI Efforts: Less Than Impressive

Some reports suggest that one of the reasons we’ve heard very little from Apple on the topic at hand, at least in comparison to other big tech companies, is internal organizational issues and dysfunctional AI development processes.

An article published in The Information last week claims that members of Apple’s AI and machine learning groups believe that Siri’s development has been a complete mess.

Staffers are reportedly frustrated at how little the virtual assistant tool has been improved since its launch over a decade ago, back in 2011.

Apple’s decision to end remote work in 2022, which led to the departure of key figures like Iain Goodfellow, Director of machine learning, can’t have helped either. To make matters worse, Ian joined Google shortly afterward, expressing disdain for the company’s mandated return-to-office policy.

Some other sources suggest the issue may be deeper than personnel, however. The control Apple generally wants to exert over its products and its unwavering commitment to privacy have both been cited as potentially hampering AI development efforts.

Apple Teams in Turmoil?

Some reports suggest that one of the reasons we’ve heard very little from Apple on the topic at hand, at least in comparison to other big tech companies, is internal organizational issues and dysfunctional AI development processes.

An article published in The Information last week claims that members of Apple’s AI and machine learning groups believe that Siri’s development has been a complete mess and that staffers are frustrated at how little the virtual assistant tool has been improved over time.

Apple’s decision to end remote work in 2022, which led to the departure of key figures like Iain Goodfellow, Director of machine learning, can’t have helped either. To make matters worse, Ian joined Google shortly afterward, expressing disdain for the company’s mandated return-to-office policy.

Some other sources suggest the issue may be deeper than personnel, however. The control Apple generally wants to exert over its products and its unwavering commitment to privacy have both been cited as potentially hampering AI development efforts.

Apple’s AI Efforts Going Under the Radar?

Speaking this week, Tim Cook said that Apple ‘will continue weaving [AI] into our products on a very thoughtful basis’, although declined to give any more specifics on the tech giant’s roadmap.

So, what AI projects is Apple currently working on? Recently, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that the company is creating an AI-powered health app, which will function as a health-coaching service that can analyze your emotions using machine learning.

It would be foolish to suggest that alleged organizational issues surrounding one product are, in and of themselves, evidence that a company the size of Apple – which has its own machine learning lab – is lagging behind other tech companies in this context.

Yes, Siri might have its faults – and it’s something many of us take for granted as a simple phone function – but it’s still an AI project.

Apple has been developing, and iterating on AI within its products for decades – there’s artificial intelligence embedded in Apple products that users may not even be aware of.

“Deep Fusion”, for instance, is a machine learning-aided camera function that can optimize and improve photos pixel-by-pixel in a matter of seconds – and it’s inside every iPhone 11. This is a good reminder that artificial intelligence and machine learning is a much wider field than the chatbots making the headlines at the moment, which is simply one example of it how it can be used.

Does Apple Need to Join the AI Arms Race Now?

Naturally, it’s doubtful that Apple will view the AI revolution as a fad – as Tim Cook says, it’s going to be huge. There’s no doubt that they’re taking it seriously. But their obvious lack of an exciting, publicized flagship AI project says a lot about the company’s approach to paradigm shifts in the tech industry.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be too surprising to find out that the company views AI as a public conversation it doesn’t necessarily need to be at the center of, at least for the time being. This can be best understood when you compare Apple to the likes of Meta and Twitter.

Apple is sitting on infinitely more cash reserves than Meta, manufactures and sells a suite of the world’s most popular consumer hardware products, and hasn’t had to make swathes of layoffs to keep itself afloat.

The company has comparatively little to prove to investors, traders, and the general public at this moment in time with regard to its value. It’s also not as reliant on users/customers returning to digital spaces it owns that could be immediately affected by AI, such as a social media network or a search engine.

The First to Market Doesn’t Always Win

Releasing a half-baked chatbot or some sort of proprietary, consumer-facing artificial intelligence would not necessarily do the company any good – just ask Google, who rushed the release of Bard in the wake of ChatGPT’s success to significant ridicule.

Similarly, Meta’s push for the metaverse last year, while not dead in the water, has hardly done the company many reputational favors thus far.

In fact, Apple is rarely the first to release new types of technology – it wasn’t the first company to bring out a Smartphone, while the first iPod was only released once portable music players were already widely used.

Apple isn’t insecure about its position in the tech industry when it comes to innovation, or artificial intelligence for that matter – and it’s not going to throw its weight around the latest conversation just for the sake of it.

Unless you work for Apple, you’re unlikely to get a heads-up on precisely how the trillion-dollar company is experimenting with and developing AI products. But considering everything we know about Apple, it’s unlikely that they’re lagging behind – rather, they’re probably just biding their time.

Microsoft has announced that it is eliminating the waitlist to use the new version of Bing that includes an AI chat function, which was previously only available to a few users.

Now, all you need is a Microsoft account to use Bing and its Chat function, which is powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced large language model (LLM).

Along with the elimination of the waitlist, Microsoft has announced a raft of new features and improvements, with users now able to directly export and share their conversations with Bing Chat on social media.

Bing Chat Now Open to All With Microsoft Accounts

Microsoft announced this week that they would be moving the new version of Bing from its Limited Preview phase to Open Preview. This means that users will no longer have to join a long waitlist to use the new search function, which has been the case for the last three months.

Microsoft also revealed that the search experience would transition from “single-use chat/search sessions” to “multi-session productivity experiences”.

Chat history you create within Bing will be saved rather than discarded, so it can be referenced later down the line to enrich and personalize conversations.

Additionally, the tech giant explained that the company would be “opening up platform capabilities so developers and third parties can build on top of Bing to help people take action on their queries and complete tasks”, re-enforcing the idea that Microsoft’s AI technology is there for businesses to innovate with.

Microsoft Bing’s Diversified Responses

Perhaps most excitingly, Microsoft also revealed that Bing would be changing from a text-only chat function to a more vibrant, visual search experience.

Now, Bing will answer you with video, charts, graphs, and other forms of media, rather than a plain text response. This has been aided greatly by the recent integration of Bing Image Creator – which is now available in over 100 languages – within Bing Chat.

On top of this, with “visual search in chat”, as Microsoft puts it, you’ll also be able to upload images and use Bing to crawl the internet for related content.

Can Bing Challenge Google?

In a statement released by Microsoft yesterday, the company revealed that users had initiated over half a billion chats with Bing during the last 90 days.

The company also said that “Bing has grown to exceed 100 million daily active users and daily installs of the Bing mobile app have increased fourfold since launch.”

It will take a lot to knock Google off its perch, considering it currently holds a 93% share of the search engine market. Even as Bing soars to new heights, in comparison to the world’s most popular search engine, it’s still a relatively small fry.

What’s more, Google is making its own foray into the world of AI with Bard, and is reports suggest the company is soon hoping to incorporate its own language model into Google Search in the same way Microsoft has with Bing Chat and GPT-4.

For Microsoft, however, any gains made in this area will be lucrative – the company estimates that every percentage point of search share they claw back generates around $2 billion in revenue.

A New Dawn for Search: Change Ahead

The release of ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and other similar tools already feels like it is fundamentally changing “Search” – which Microsoft dubs “the largest category of software in the world” – for good.

For millions of people, this technology is rapidly becoming a more efficient, “go-to” way to source information. This has led some digital marketers to claim that AI tools like Bing Chat and Co. could destroy SEO, paid search, digital advertising, and other stalwarts of the search experience as we know it.

 The AI chatbot explosion is simply the latest instance of a wider, gradual phenomenon: wholesale diversification of our collective information-sourcing processes, as well as the range of tools we have at our disposal.

In the world of search, seismic change is not uncommon. Before ChatGPT even came along, people were already starting to use social media sites like TikTok as de facto search engines, with Gen Z particularly keen on sourcing their information from image and video-led platforms. We expect these tools, be they chatbots or social media apps, to provide us with significantly richer, more vibrant, and more accurate answers than ever before.

Importantly, however, traditional “Search” isn’t going to be swallowed up by social media and chatbots. It still has a multiplicity of use cases that cannot, at present, be catered to by other options. Plus, Google will iterate further to compete in what will become a search-based arms race, as it vies for the attention of the world’s internet users, whose collective gaze is wandering more so than ever before.

We’re already seeing chatbots like Bard cite their sources on one side of the table, and search engines incorporate AI into their user journey on the other. There are also chatbots like YouChat, which serves search results and AI summaries for you to choose from. The point is, there’s a lot of space in between a chatbot and a search engine, and it’s waiting to be occupied by a diverse ecosystem of tools.

Tempting as it may be to postulate as such, traditional methods of sourcing information are certainly not dead – in fact, they’re not even dying. But we are definitely witnessing a new dawn in how we source information as a global civilization – and it’s about to get infinitely more eclectic.

While tech-savvy solutions like passkeys and two-factor authentication (2FA) continue to be favored by companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, the humble password isn’t dead yet.

Until they’re phased out completely, maintaining good password hygiene is the only way your company can stay safe from rapidly evolving threats like keylogger programs and AI password crackers.

Creating a strong password isn’t rocket science — but conflicting regulations have created a cloud of confusion around the topic making it hard for businesses to know which requirements to use across their systems.

So, we’ve brushed up on the latest National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines and created a list of password tips for companies and workers to follow. You can thank us later.

Simple Password Tips for Companies

If you’re responsible for setting password policies for your organization, read on for six practices to bear in mind.

1. Set a password minimum of eight characters

According to NIST, creating a longer password is more important than creating a complex one. This is clear from Hive Systems research, that found that passwords eight characters long are able to be compromised within eight hours by the average cyber criminals, while shorter codes can be compromised within a few minutes.

Therefore, to it harder for cybercriminals to crack your password, and easier for you and your business, we recommend setting a character limit that ranges from 8-64.

2. Allow the ‘Show Password’ option

When employees type in long and complex passwords blindly, it makes typos and errors extremely common. Not only does this make users more prone to being blocked out of their accounts, it also makes them less likely to create complex codes in the future.

To avoid this issue, NIST tells businesses to let workers see what passwords they’re typing. This way, guesswork can be eliminated, stress can be avoided, and your workforce will be more likely to use effective codes to safeguard their accounts.

3. Lower the limit of “Failed Password” attempts

NIST also recommends temporarily baring access to accounts for a certain period of time when users enter incorrect details — and locking them out altogether after 100 attempts. They suggest that companies should make workers complete a CAPTCHA before re-attempting, to ensure that computers aren’t trying to enter the account.

4. Use passwords alongside two-factor authentication

While this is less of a password tip, the government agency advises businesses to use two-factor authentication alongside traditional codes. This provides companies with an important extra layer of defense and makes it even harder for cyber criminals to enter your system.

There are a number of different 2FA options to choose from, but using a separate authenticator device or U2F security key is by far the best way to keep accounts safe.

5. Don’t reset passwords too frequently

No worker enjoys regularly updating their password. What’s more, requiring them to do so frequently results in the creation of unimaginative passwords.

Because of this, NIST warns businesses against making users reset passwords too frequently. This may sound counterintuitive, but according to the agency, it’s the best way to combat password fatigue by keeping the quality of codes strong throughout your organization.

6. Let users copy and paste passcodes

Password pasting has a bad rep. It’s commonly understood to be antithetical to password security. But as the UK’s National Cyber Security Center found, it rarely poses a direct threat to companies.

In fact, letting users paste codes across platforms has actually been shown to improve security by reducing errors and making it easier for users to follow correct password hygiene. This is consistent with NIST’s latest guidelines, which tell companies that users should be able “to use ‘paste’ functionality when entering a [password].”

Simple Password Tips for Workers

Unsure about what constitutes a strong password? Read on for some simple, fuss-free tips.

1. Consider using a passphrase

Generally speaking, the longer the password, the more secure. So, while NIST advises businesses to institute eight-character minimums, using passphrases, which range from eight to 16 characters, is a much more effective way to keep your account safe. What’s more, since passphrases break up characters with a spacebar, they’re generally easier to remember too, so it’s a win-win!

2. Avoid dictionary words

Simple words are easier to crack. Because of this, NIST warns users against using codes that contain dictionary words, or simple number sequences like 123456 or 111111.

As a general rule, it’s good to get creative. While users should stay clear of simple words like “password,” “monkey,” or “apple,” they’re welcome to use variants of the words like “P@s5worD,” “M0nK3Y,” or “@Ppl3,” as long as they’re still long enough to meet your character minimum.

3. Avoid names

While it might be tempting to create passwords modeled off the names of loved ones, pets, or celebrity figures, passwords including names are considerably easier to compromised. In fact, research from Cybernews revealed that the names Eva, Alex, and Anna consistently rank as some of the most commonly compromised codes.

To make your password less prone to attack, we advise avoiding the names with special characters and numbers as we outlined in the step above.

4. Don’t reuse passwords

Even though most of us are doing it, reusing the same password across multiple accounts makes you a great target for lurking threats. This is because once a cyber criminal cracks one of your passwords, they are then able to gain access to a variety of your online accounts.

Coming up with a distinct password that adheres to password requirements for each platform you use is no easy feat. But fortunately, you don’t have to store them and remember them yourself.

5. Use a password manager

Using a reliable password manager is by far the easiest way to look after your password and data hygiene.

Instead of keeping mental or physical tabs on all your codes, this solution stores all your passwords for you, making it easier for users to deploy long and complex codes that stand the best chance of protecting your accounts.

Password managers can be tasked with generating strong, impenetrable codes too, helping to significantly ease cases of password fatigue.

But with so many options to choose from, you want to make sure you move forwards with the right tool. NordPass is our favorite password manager, because of its user-friendly design and handy features, but we present some other great alternatives in our table below:

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai is coming under scrutiny in internal staff forums for taking home a total of $226 million last year, while the company makes massive cuts to employee services like laptops, travel, and food.

Aside from Pichari’s lucrative pay, workers have also taken to the forums to express discontent about the company’s proposed decision to buy back $70 billion in stock.

As Google still reels from 12,000 workers being laid off in January, and other tech leaders like Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan reduce their pay, this hypocrisy certainly isn’t a good look for Pichai. Here’s what we know so far.

Google Employees Are Complaining About Their CEO’s Double Standards

As big tech continues to feel the squeeze, for one of the leading figures in the industry, Sundar Pichai, it appears to be business as usual.

Recent SEC filings reveal that the Google CEO received $226 million in earnings last year, predominantly made up from a stock award worth $218 million which he receives once every three years. His pay packet also included $6 million for personal security, $2 million as a base salary, and $4.3 million in other forms of compensation.

In the weeks following this revelation, Google employees have taken to internal company forums to share memes and voice their contempt about the company’s inconsistencies.

According to CNBC, Google employees have been posting memes taking aim at Pichai’s take-home pay, while higher-ups reduce spending elsewhere throughout the company. Criticism on the company’s internal forums has reportedly been rife, with suggestions that those higher up in the company, such as Pichai and Vice Presidents, are immune to cuts.

Google staffers are also pressed about the company’s proposed decision to buy back $70 billion in stock, a type of reacquisition that has previously attracted criticism from President Joe Biden for prioritizing company profits over alternatives like employee pay rises.

Google Cuts Employee Services to Meet Targets

Despite a healthier-than-expected first quarter, throughout 2023 search behemoth Google has been rolling out its biggest cost-cutting measures it witnessed in almost two decades.

In April, the company announced its employee services would be taking a hit, with fitness classes, equipment replacement, and travel budgets being sacrificed to make it easier for them to reach their targets.

This follows seismic layoffs that saw 12,000 workers leave the company in January, and similar cuts that saw 200 workers lose their job in Zurich in March – prompting walkouts in the Swiss HQ as well as in the company’s London offices.

Reports reveal that Google has been refusing to cover maternity and medical leave for those that have been laid off too – certainly not a good look for somewhere that was voted the “best company to work for” seven years on the trot.

Tim Cook and Other Tech CEOs Are Sacrificing Their Salaries

While Sundar Pichai is taking home an exorbitant income while his company scrimps and saves, this appears to go against current trends taking place in the industry.

Other leading tech CEOs have recently been applauded for scaling down their salary for the good of the company. Apple CEO Tim Cook requested a pay cut of 40% this year, bringing his total annual salary down to $49 million, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan decided to reduce his salary by 98% this year and forego additional bonuses.

Pichai has recently told workers that he and Google execs would be refusing financial bonuses in 2023. But with no official reductions being made to his 2023 pay packet, and more layoffs being speculated, its likely discontent will continue to swirl until the CEO faces these concerns head-on.