‘The Hindu’ News : Today’s Cache 28 June 2024

Today’s Cache

28 June 2024

Top tech news of the day, curated by The Hindu’s Tech writers.

Today’s Cache | Mobile phone bills to go up by 25%; Online dating getting Gen AI overhaul; OpenAI signs content deal with Time magazine

Dear readers,

I hope our daily newsletters are keeping you updated on the latest in tech. To provide you with more context and insights on technology and innovation, we have launched a new podcast, The Interface.

In our latest episode “Are companies adapting to AI well enough?” we analyse how large enterprises are approaching the current wave of artificial intelligence, with Dr. Gopichand Katragadda speaking with The Hindu’s John Xavier.

In the inaugural episode “Is AI beating human intelligence?” we dove into two decades of AI evolution with a leading AI scientist, Dr. Anima Anandkumar, exploring tensor algebra’s role, algorithmic bias, and AI’s potential futures.

Stay tuned to The Interface for more such conversations, on Spotify and YouTube.

Mobile phone bills to go up by 25%
Mobile phone bills for subscribers in India may go up by 15% to 25% on their existing plans as telcos eye a revenue raise through tariff revision. With the increase in revenue, mobile operators seek to expand 5G stations and enhance network load capacity to cater to the increase in consumption and creation of video content. Industry experts believe that it would help telcos increase their average revenue per user (ARPU) by about 10% to 15%.

Alarmingly, a hike in tariff plans could lead to an increase of 12% to 15% in household telecom expenditures every month. The last tariff revision happened in December 2021. Customers are now moving towards 5G instead of 4G. They are generating more video content and consuming it more than ever before. In order to scale, telcos are pushing for a tariff revision as it will help them generate more revenue for the new spectrum and technologies.

Online dating getting Gen AI overhaul
Dating apps actively use social networking sites to promote their platforms, but the surge in new, unregulated Gen AI tools means even small-scale businesses can use text and image generators to push their products and compete with larger companies. In the past, dating sites used AI to match profiles and send targeted feeds to their customers. Bumble, one of the top dating apps with over 50 million downloads on the Google Play Store, confirmed to The Hindu that it uses AI for tasks ranging from flagging scams to showing users better matches. It uses AI in its ‘For You’ algorithm to curate “the most compatible” profiles.

However, with the rise of Gen AI, malicious actors have a new range of cheap, easy-to-use tools at their disposal, while dating platforms are playing catch-up in order to weed out bad actors—before they ruin lives.

OpenAI signs content deal with Time magazine

Time magazine has signed a multi-year content deal with OpenAI that would give the ChatGPT maker access to its archive of news content, the companies said on Thursday. In response to user queries, the chatbot will cite and link back to the original source on Time.com, the companies added in a statement. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The artificial intelligence company has signed similar deals over the past few months with the Financial Times, Business Insider-owner Axel Springer, France’s Le Monde and Spain-based Prisa Media. While some media companies like the New York Times and The Intercept have previously sued OpenAI for the use of their journalism, these content partnerships are essential for training AI models. These deals can also provide lucrative opportunity for news publishers, who have historically been excluded from the profits that internet giants generate by distributing their content.

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