Latest news with #Microsoft-backed
The Star
17 hours ago
- Business
- The Star
Microsoft wants to radically change the way you surf the web
Microsoft sees artificial intelligence transforming the Internet as fundamentally as mobile phones have over the past two decades. But the technology's limitations could curb Microsoft's grand vision. Generative AI – which creates content based on a user's request – burst into the zeitgeist in late 2022 when Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a conversational chatbot that could take a simple request and generate anything from a limerick to a college essay. Less than three years later, Microsoft has a plan to move beyond ChatGPT and its copycats by creating the foundation for a new version of the internet. Microsoft and its tech peers say the technology is moving fast. The industry is pouring billions into AI infrastructure and companies are restructuring corporate workforces to create agile teams for a shifting landscape. A week before Microsoft announced its ambitions for a new AI ecosystem, the company laid off more than 6,000 people in an effort to flatten management layers. Microsoft calls it the "open agentic web," with users sending AI-powered "agents" out into the void to do their bidding. Casual consumers primarily interact with AI now through a Google search – one that repeatedly drums up false answers – or a ChatGPT-esque chatbot that generates a conversation. In Microsoft's eyes, chatbots are old news. Microsoft's vision is a digital world in which autonomous agents interact with each other throughout the Internet. For example, a user who wants to schedule a vacation will delegate an agent to venture through the muck and find flights, hotels and an itinerary that fit their budget, work that users currently have to do themselves. At the company's developer-focused Build conference in Seattle last week, CEO Satya Nadella explained the framework Microsoft wants to provide as it tries to remake the web. He used more technical examples of the agents, demonstrating them fixing bugs in computer code, creating PowerPoint presentations and sorting expense reports. All of the demonstrations were done toward the top of what Microsoft calls the AI stack. Other companies, and Microsoft, are building agents and AI models to interact with the data below them. Toward the bottom of the stack is an infrastructure that Microsoft supports. One aspect of it is establishing a protocol, the set of rules computers follow to talk with one another. Microsoft favors one called Model Context Protocol. Kevin Scott, the company's chief technology officer, likens it to HTTP in the Internet, a standard that everyone can use to build out the web. The new protocol allows AI agents to go from website to website, collecting data and interacting with other agents. "It's filling an incredibly important niche," Scott said during a keynote address on May 19. Of course, Microsoft isn't alone in looking for the next big thing in AI. OpenAI spurred a wave of competing products from companies like Google, Meta and Elon Musk's xAI. The tech giants' looking beyond chatbots and angling to change the web from click-based to agent-based is creating a new competition. Chirag Shah, a professor of information science at the University of Washington, said this could be a problem. The World Wide Web Consortium, a neutral party, has maintained standards for the internet's development since 1994. Microsoft can dictate the standards it wants for an agentic web but nobody has to accept them, Shah said. "I don't see this as changing the web," he said. "I see this as one set of ideas that already has competition." Shah has worked for Microsoft in the past but does not currently. Since the idea behind the agentic web is an ecosystem of errand runners zooming around autonomously, its success is predicated on pulling accurate information and doing things correctly. Since ChatGPT launched in 2022, chatbots and other AI-infused tech have struggled with accuracy. Last month, social media users discovered a quirk with Google's AI Overview. If a user added the word "meaning" to a nonsensical idiom, Google's AI would confidentially spit out a fictitious origin for the phrase. In the week leading up to Build, xAI's Grok chatbot started promoting conspiracy theories about white genocide in South Africa on Musk's social media platform, X. The replies from Grok were under posts wholly unrelated to the conspiracy theories. XAI said it was due to an unauthorised modification. On May 20, a day after Nadella and Scott announced their agentic web ambitions to a crowd of hundreds, 404 Media reported that the Chicago Sun-Times had used AI to create a book recommendation article. The problem? The list featured nonexistent books from authors and completely made-up quotes. Humans make mistakes on the Internet as well. They're duped by misinformation, they fall for phishing scams and they read clickbait. But they understand the consequences of those mistakes, Shah said. Chatbots and agents don't. If an agent makes a mistake, will it know before it interacts with another and compounds it? "It's the equivalent to giving someone US$100 (RM425) and telling them to go shop for you," Shah said. "And that's low risk, but think about health care, legal issues and making financial decisions. "There are great consequences to making mistakes there." A new language AI adoption is another obstacle Microsoft faces. The company boasts that developers are pumping more agents into the ecosystem. It also said several websites like the live events platform Eventbrite and e-commerce company Shopify adopted a new software language project called NLWeb that allows a more fluid AI experience. NLWeb, like HTML was for the Internet, is Microsoft's plan to revamp the way the web works. It's exciting technology for those in the tech industry. Shah said it's what developers have been hoping for, creating a natural language for casual Internet users to search websites. But just like self-driving cars, while the technology is improving, there's a limit to widespread use. Autonomous vehicles are tested and deployed in limited markets. Microsoft hopes for the world to adopt the agentic web, but the future of it could be quite limited. "We're not ready, all of us, to give up our agency to these systems," Shah said. "It's not radically replacing the web as we know it." – The Seattle Times/Tribune News Service
CNET
2 days ago
- Business
- CNET
At Google I/O, the Company's AI Vision Finally Came Into Focus
Google's AI products don't feel like vaporware anymore. Instead, what Google showed at its I/O developers' conference last week was full AI maturation. Google took its AI tech beyond fancy text and image editors to a technological reimagination. The era of searching via keywords is over. The interaction between humans and tech is moving away from binary Boolean logic toward linguistic intuition. The internet that Google helped build is about to change rapidly. Back in 1998, Google's foundational mission statement was to "organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Under AI, the focus is changing from organization to automatic delivery. The 10-blue-links paradigm is getting the boot. Instead, technology can do the searching and informational synthesis for us, quite literally pushing those traditional blue links further down the page. At the same time, we've seen a rapid dropoff in website traffic across the internet, which some search engine experts are attributing to the increased prevalence of AI products across the web. Even Google executives see the drop in online search traffic to be an inevitability. With the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google was caught flailing, resting on its safe online search business while OpenAI leapfrogged ahead. The sudden release of ChatGPT reportedly caused a "code red" within Google, where the company internally restructured around AI. With the majority of Google's revenue coming from ads sold against online search, a new player that could change how people find information online posed, and still poses, a threat. What followed was an arms race between Microsoft-backed OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, and Google, with billions of dollars being spent, all in hopes of becoming people's default AI. The two companies have been trading blows ever since, competing to produce the better text-, image-, code- and video-generation tools. With the AI market seeing valuations of $826 billion by 2030, according to Statista, there's a massive incentive for Big Tech giants to win these battles early. Since their original launches, ChatGPT has grown rapidly, climbing to 400 million active weekly users. Google's AI chatbot, Gemini, has also grown to 400 million active users across 200 countries and territories. "Gemini is not just highly capable, it is becoming well-integrated across Google's hardware and software ecosystem," said Avi Greengart, president and lead analyst at Techsponential. "The keynote still managed to mix messages between AI that is ready today, coming soon or still science fiction for now. But Google is persistently improving not just the AI model sizes but also working to make AI more useful with tools like AI video editors, image generators that can handle text, and contextual awareness that can access your data in its responses." It's a significant change from the tone of past Google I/Os. At Google's 2023 conference, Google was showing off how AI could help write emails or adjust photos. The idea was to use AI as a "good starting point" to help assist in your daily life. The following year, Google had renamed its AI assistant Bard to Gemini and opened the valve a little more, showing off concepts of what an AI experience might look like with augmented reality glasses. Google also made publishers uncomfortable with the release of AI Overviews, a new box at the top of Google Search that would use AI to automatically answer questions for people, with a list of sources on the side, without needing to click on any of the traditional 10 blue links. This year, however, there was a notable evolution. Traditional modes of interacting with the internet were entirely thrown out for AI, all in the pursuit of saving time and energy. Whereas last year, Google melded AI at the top of Search, this year, Google showed off AI Mode, a new tab at the top of Google that mixes Gemini with Google Search. In this mode, the 10 blue links are gone. It's a pure AI chat in natural human language. Online shopping removed some of the guesswork with a new Try On mode that uses your picture to create a 3D render of your body to approximate how clothes you're searching for online will look on you. Video calling and AI-powered glasses can now live-translate language, eliminating the need to learn a new tongue. And with a simple set of instructions, it's possible to code complex ideas without needing a degree in computer science. "At I/O, Google just upped the game by systematically eliminating customer friction across search, shopping, communication and creative workflows to create seamless human experiences," said Eric Karofsky, founder of VectorHX, a customer experience strategy company. "However, AI adoption requires more than cool demos -- the real challenge for companies is how this will be implemented in practice, how processes will need to evolve, and how companies will measure the success of these fundamental shifts in human experience design." As someone who's been covering Google's AI ambitions from the start, I'll be the first to tell you that the company's early forays were rocky. Google's AI chatbot would routinely get things wrong, often to the detriment of the company's stock price. It always seemed that the folks at OpenAI had the special sauce to make AI work. The last few months, however, have shown that Google has finally found its footing. Google's AI products are no longer thin condensation to obscure how far behind the company was. Instead, they're a thunderous storm shaking the foundation of the world as we once knew it.
Mint
3 days ago
- Business
- Mint
EU aims to cut red tape, boost funding to lure tech startups
The European Union set out plans to slash regulation and set up a special fund to attract tech startups as the bloc plays catchup with the U.S. on financing and innovation. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said regulatory fragmentation across the EU's 27 countries and inadequate financing were holding back growth for startups. Officials now hope to lower the administrative burden and launch a new fund to make it easier for startups to set up shop in the EU. Under the plans, the commission will seek to simplify rules, including on labor and tax law, so that startups can launch rapidly in Europe, ideally within 48 hours. Officials also plan to work with private investors to launch a new fund. The so-called Scaleup Europe Fund, privately managed and co-financed, will be part of the existing European Innovation Council Fund. 'We cut red tape, we facilitate their access to financing, we improve their ability to do business across our Single Market," Stephane Sejourne, EU executive vice-president for prosperity and industrial strategy, said in a statement. 'In other words, we want to put Europe right in the middle of the global innovation map, for companies and investors." The plan underscores efforts from EU officials to make the bloc more welcoming for startups and narrow the financing and innovation gap with the U.S. The EU is home to startups like France's Mistral AI and Germany's Aleph Alpha, but companies in the bloc struggle to raise the billions of dollars in funding and venture capital that are available to U.S. rivals like Microsoft-backed OpenAI or Anthropic. A commission official acknowledged that access to finance is an area of weakness, saying that startups in the bloc have roughly seven times less capital available to grow than in the U.S. Speed is another factor holding back growth, the official said, noting the EU can be 'very slow" in granting approvals. Europe's fragmented regulatory landscape is a recurring frustration for startups, but fundraising remains the top concern for founders, according to a May report from Slush, part of the Finnish not-for-profit Startup Foundation. Out of 607 responses from early-stage European startups collected in the first quarter, just 18% of founders said it would be easy to raise financing right now, according to the report, while 57% actively disagree. Ekaterina Zaharieva, EU commissioner for startups, research and innovation, said the plans would remove those barriers that hold back entrepreneurs. 'Europe is ready to scale up." Write to Mauro Orru at
Time of India
22-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Baidu says domestic tech will shield AI push from US curbs
HighlightsBaidu reported a first-quarter revenue of 32.45 billion yuan ($4.50 billion), exceeding analysts' expectations, driven primarily by its growing AI cloud services. The company emphasized that domestic alternatives to advanced semiconductors would mitigate the impact of U.S. export controls on its artificial intelligence development. Baidu has intensified its focus on artificial intelligence, launching new models and eliminating fees for its premium chatbot services in response to competition from startups like DeepSeek. China's Baidu s ai d on Wednesday U.S. export controls on semiconductors would not significantly impact its AI development, citing access to domestic alternatives. The dominant search engine in China also reported first-quarter revenue that exceeded analysts' expectations, boosted by growing demand for its AI cloud services . "Domestically developed chips and increasingly efficient homegrown software will form a strong foundation for long-term innovation in China's AI ecosystem," Baidu Vice President Shen Dou told analysts on a conference call. The comments come as U.S. export restrictions on advanced semiconductors took effect last month, effectively blocking sales of Nvidia's H20 chips designed for the Chinese market. The stance echoes comments from rival Tencent Holdings, whose executives said existing stockpiles of AI chips would shield the company from U.S. export controls. Total revenue in the first quarter rose 3% to 32.45 billion yuan ($4.50 billion), beating analysts' average estimate of 30.9 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG. Revenue at Baidu's online marketing business, which contributes the majority to the company, fell 6% to 17.31 billion yuan. Analysts had estimated 17.39 billion yuan. However its non-online marketing revenue reached 9.4 billion yuan, up 40% year-over-year, mainly driven by its AI cloud business. The company reported profit of 21.59 yuan per American Depositary Share, compared with profit of 14.91 yuan per share a year earlier. Baidu has intensified its focus on AI in recent years to reduce its dependence on advertising revenue from its core search engine business. In early 2023, the company was among the first to launch a chatbot following Microsoft-backed OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Despite this early advantage, Baidu's Ernie large-language model faces fierce competition from Chinese firms such as startup DeepSeek, which shook up the AI landscape earlier this year. In response, Baidu eliminated fees for its premium chatbot services in April and introduced two new AI models in March - the reasoning-focused Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5. The company upgraded these offerings to "Turbo" versions the following month. Baidu's CEO Robin Li said last month that its cluster comprising 30,000 of its self-developed, third-generation P800 Kunlun chips can support the training of DeepSeek-like models.
Economic Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Google pushes AI upgrades, subscriptions at annual I/O developer event amid search challenges
ETtech Google CEO Sundar Pichai Alphabet's Google said on Tuesday it would put artificial intelligence into the hands of more Web surfers while teasing a $249.99-a-month subscription for its AI power users, its latest effort to fend off growing competition from startups like OpenAI. Google unveiled the plans amid a flurry of demos that included new smart glasses during its annual I/O conference in Mountain View, California, which has adopted a tone of increased urgency since the rise of generative AI challenged the tech company's longtime stronghold of organizing and retrieving information on the internet. In recent months, Google has become more aggressive in asserting it has caught up to competitors after appearing flat-footed upon the release of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022. On Tuesday, it further laid out a vision for Google Search that lets consumers ask virtually anything, from simple queries to complex research questions, from analyzing what a smartphone camera sees to fetching an event ticket to buy. Google likewise said it aims to build AI that is personal and proactive, whether phoning a store for users or sending students a practice test generated on the fly. CEO Sundar Pichai said at the conference that Alphabet would build such AI with the cost in mind as well. "Over and over, we've been able to deliver the best models at the most effective price point," he said. Google's AI assistant Gemini app now has more than 400 million monthly active users, Pichai said. In a major update, the company said consumers across the United States now can switch Google Search into "AI Mode." Showcased in March as an experiment open to test users, the feature dispenses with the Web's standard fare in favor of computer-generated answers for complicated queries. Google also announced an "AI Ultra Plan," which for $249.99 monthly provides users with higher limits on AI and early access to experimental tools like Project Mariner, an internet browser extension that can automate keystrokes and mouse clicks, and Deep Think, a version of its top-shelf Gemini model that is more capable of reasoning through complicated tasks. The price is comparable to $200 monthly plans from AI model developers OpenAI and Anthropic, underscoring how companies are exploring ways to pay for the exorbitant price tag of AI development. Google's new plan also includes 30 terabytes of cloud storage and an ad-free YouTube subscription. Google already offers other subscription options, including a $19.99-per-month service with access to some AI capabilities unavailable for most free users and cheaper plans with additional cloud storage. Last week, the company told Reuters it had signed up more than 150 million subscribers across those plans. Pichai told reporters that the rise of generative AI was not at the full expense of online search. This "feels very far from a zero-sum moment," said Pichai. "The kind of use cases we are serving in search is dramatically expanding" because of AI. Alphabet shares closed 1.5% lower at $165.32 on Tuesday. Return to glasses Google made a return to a bumpy effort years ago around smart glasses, demonstrating frames with its new Android XR software. Since its early efforts, rival Meta Platforms has brought its own glasses with AI to market. On stage, two Google officials had a conversation in different languages while the glasses typed up translations for them, viewed through the frames' lenses. Gemini, meanwhile, answered queries about one of the wearer's surroundings as she walked around Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheater. An XR headset being developed in partnership with Samsung will launch later this year, an official said. Google also announced new partnerships with glasses designers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to develop headsets with Android XR. Search pressures Earlier this month, Alphabet stock lost $150 billion in market value in one day after an Apple executive testified during one of Google's antitrust cases that AI offerings had caused a decline in searches on Apple's Safari Web browser for the first time. In turn, some analysts reassessed how to measure Google's dominant search market share, with one estimate stating it could fall to less than 50% from around 90% in five years. The analysts cited a behavioral shift drawing consumers toward AI chatbots where they once used traditional search engines. However, Robby Stein, an executive on the search team, in an interview said allowing users to answer more challenging questions through AI could enable "new opportunities to create hyper-relevant, useful advertising." Ads make up the majority of Google's revenue. Investment in AI accounts for most of Alphabet's $75 billion in forecasted capital expenditures this year, a dramatic uptick from the $52.5 billion in 2024 spending that the company reported. Tuesday's announcements included further updates to Google's work to deliver a "universal AI agent," which can perform tasks on someone's behalf without additional prompting. In a number of demos, Google drew on capabilities developed in a testing ground it has called Project Astra to show off what its latest AI could do. These included pointing a smartphone camera at a written invitation and having AI add the event to a user's calendar. Google also presented a new AI model called Veo 3 that generates video and audio to create more realistic film snippets for creators.
