Four AI trends to watch in 2023
The launch of ChatGPT and GPT 3.5 (Generative Progressive Transformer-3.5) — which many claim will herald a new era in dialogue-based conversational AI — has ended the year on a high for conversational AI. People are using ChatGPT for tasks ranging from correcting code errors to rewriting the Bohemian Rhapsody and the number of ChatGPT users surpassed the million mark in less than a week last month. Some of the trends are Generative AI for businesses – Generative AI, which is artificial intelligence that can create text, images, videos etc. without supervision, set the tone for this year and the trend will spill on to 2023 as well. In 2023, the world will see more business use cases of this technology. On October 10, Gartner predicted that generative AI will improve digital product output quality and will account for 10% of all the data produced by 2025. Age of AIOps – AIOps is the application of AI and machine learning to optimize and enhance IT operations. A report released this month has predicted that the global AIOps Platform market will reach $20.4 billion by 2025. Accurate and relevant AI benchmarks – Standards for setting benchmarks for accuracy are changing fast. Benchmarks that were relevant just a few years back are now out of date. This is particularly true when we speak of emerging technologies like large language models and generative AI. For example, a team from Stanford University recently unveiled Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (HELM), a new benchmarking approach that would serve “as a map for the world of language models.” Organizations like DeepMind and NVIDIA have also developed a few use case-specific and relevant benchmarks and evaluation standards. This trend is expected to continue in 2023 as well. AI governance and regulation – Forrester’s report on predictions for 2023, released in October, stated that with the rising demand for trust in AI, one in four CIOs and CTOs would lead AI governance practices for their organizations. The report also said that AI governance’s scope will widen to include topics like cybersecurity and compliance.
Seven trends that will propel fintech firms in 2023
Embedded finance – It has been rapidly gaining momentum and is expected to increase as it offers cost-effective, convenient & innovative solutions. Big Tech in banking – Traditional players in banking have to make themselves more efficient in order to compete with technology in banking. It can also lead to a more effective collaboration between the two. The evolution of BaaS – Banking-as-a-service, will develop new features and overcome some of its previous limitations. Fintechs and legacy players have to start thinking of themselves as data companies in 2023. ESG and ethical impact finance – In 2023 banks’ digital transformation will facilitate more focus on sustainability, ESG and ethical impact. The rise of contactless spending – Super Apps will be on the rise around the world. An increasingly cashless world will facilitate companies to expand overseas and concentrate more on cross-border trading. Compliance and regulation in 2023 – With the rise of Web 3.0 these will be high on the agenda for 2023. Digital wallets are set to grow, as well as innovations in stablecoin.
LinkedIn launches new features to help brands advertise more effectively
LinkedIn launches new features to help organizations extend their reach and engage with their potential customers with targeted content. With new updates, brands on LinkedIn can now do more with Newsletters, thoughtfully promote products on the platform, and keep a close eye on competitor content trends. Newsletters have quickly become a powerful content tool for brands. Using LinkedIn Newsletters, organizations can publish recurring articles and instantly build a subscriber community via a one-time notification to their Page followers and ongoing notifications to their Newsletter subscribers. The newest updates will allow users to easily subscribe to the brand’s newsletters on search engines. Brands can now get more value via the product pages on LinkedIn. Buyers can directly search for brand products, based on specific categories using the in-platform search. Upgraded competitor analytics – One of the most valuable targets for marketers is to differentiate their brands from each other. The new update to the LinkedIn competitor analytics dashboard will allow brands to track follower growth and engagement rates while keeping a track of competitor performance.
Marketing 2023: What’s hot, what’s not
As 2022 comes to an end, we look back at all that made noise in the marketing sphere this year, as well as the trends that will define the coming year. Year 2022 was the year of normalcy coming back after two years of Covid-induced constraints. Brands which had completely shifted their ad and marketing spends to digital gradually returned to the traditional mediums of reaching people while still making noise on online platforms. The explosion of digital marketing was one of the biggest trends of the year. Advertisers are majorly depending on first-party data which will help them to personalize their services and this will continue in the coming year as well. A senior marketer from a prominent edtech platform said that another important trend in 2022 was data tracking. He shared that analytical tools have helped them greatly to touch their target group in the last year. 2022 saw AI impacting advertising in a big way. “We saw a number of MarTech & AdTech solutions using AI to help brands connect better with their audiences. We even saw the impact of AI on content, making it simpler for brands to develop and distribute digital video content,” said Sanjeev Jasani, COO, Cheil India. Speaking of content, “This was another successful trend that took off. We saw a lot of brands shifting to video content and focusing on their video marketing strategies. And finally I feel e-commerce took off. With a lot of brands focusing on building a D2C strategy and also trying to leverage social commerce, this place has started to heat up,” he added. Marketers further share that celebration of diversity and inclusivity is one of the big things in today’s time. Having a sense of community is what people look out for. Talking of 2023, marketing experts say technology will be the clear leader, helping brands to channel creativity to its full potential. Industry watchers also say that in-person experience will be appreciated more in the coming year. Apart from these social commerce, customer-entric approach, increasing tactics to create credibility, meme marketing are the other trends.
eSanjeevani: National free telemedicine platform clocks 8 crore teleconsultations
Government of India’s free telemedicine service eSanjeevani has clocked about 8 crore teleconsultations. This is a remarkable milestone. The last 1 crore were clocked in a time period of five weeks, signalling a wider adoption of telemedicine. It consists of two verticals for all states & UTs. The first vertical eSanjeevaniAB-HWC endeavors to bridge rural-urban divide by giving assisted teleconsultations, ensuring that the beneficiaries avail of Ayushman Bharat Scheme. The other vertical eSanjeevaliOPD leverages technology via smartphones, tablets, laptops enabling doctor consultations irrespective of patients’ location across rural-urban India. eSanjeevani is a cohesive part of Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission (ABDM), and more than 45,000 ABHA IDs have been issued till now. Andhra Pradesh leads among all states with 2,82,42,880 IDs.
India users’ data most common on cybercrime marketplaces
At least 12% of all unique user data found in cyber crime marketplaces belonged to Indians, a report by Panama-based virtual private network (VPN) service provider NordVPN said. It further added that personally identifiable information of users — which include passwords, financial information and even cookies stored on a device — can be purchased from these so-called ‘bot’ marketplaces for less than ₹500. The ‘bot’ market refers to cyber crime marketplaces that update user data regularly for as long as the malware remains active on a user’s device. While NordVPN tracked data belonging to 5 million unique users around the world, data of Indian users topped the chart — with over 6 lakh users found in popular bot market databases. The report covers databases that are actively updating user data, and not data dumps of old data. The latter, though more common, attracts lesser interest and price among cyber criminals since old data may often be ineffective or irrelevant for future breaches. For instance, on December 2, a report by homegrown cyber security firm Cloudsek disclosed personal and health data of 1.5 lakh users from a Tamil Nadu hospital being sold. The data, which was from a database up to 15 years old, was being sold for around ₹8,000 on a popular data marketplace. Among databases scanned by NordVPN, the types of information found in the databases include stolen login information of Google, Microsoft and Facebook accounts, cookies, digital footprints, and autofill addresses.
Only 10% viewers of India’s OTT universe live in metro cities
The top six metros in the country contribute only about 10 percent to the overall OTT audience base, but about 33 per cent to total paid subscriptions in India, as per a report by Ormax Media. With a large share of the 20 percent year-on-year growth coming from small towns and rural India, OTT players will have to rely on smaller towns and rural regions for the next phase of growth, it added. According to the Ormax OTT Audience Sizing Report 2022, the OTT audience base is pegged at 423.8 million users. “This translates into a penetration of 30 percent, which means that 3 out of 10 Indians watched online videos at least once in the last one month,” it added. There are currently 119 million active paid OTT subscriptions in India, with 49 million paying — subscription video on demand (SVOD) — audiences. This means an average of 2.4 subscriptions per paying audience member. Nearly 65 percent of these paid subscribers are male. Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru alone have more than 8.5 million active paid subscriptions each. The metro cities have reached saturation levels, with more than 79 percent OTT penetration. Platforms will have to rely on the smaller markets for the next phase of growth.” “From an SVOD perspective, the most significant finding has been that the average number of subscriptions has remained static at 2.4 per paying user.
Amazon relooking experiments, not shutting businesses
Amazon is simply reassessing some experiments typical of innovative companies, its consumer business country manager Manish Tiwarysaid in an interview, after the US-based e-tailer shut some of its verticals like edtech, distribution and food-delivery recently. Tiwary added that the technology giant would double down on its investments in its business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, pharmacy, grocery and social commerce in the coming year. Tiwary said Glowroad’s reseller base has grown by six times since the buyout. Amazon Pay and Amazon Pharmacy – where it is working with Apollo – will also be focus areas. He said, despite downsizing, the India business is performing in line with the US company’s expectations. India remains an exciting market for Amazon, he said, adding that he was coming fresh off drawing up the firm’s annual plan with the leadership team in Seattle.Tiwary said unlike the North American markets, Amazon India does not have a problem of excess warehousing and it won’t shut down capacity in large numbers.Tiwary, however, rebuffed the claim saying Amazon had the best Diwali sales period ever and that he was not concerned about competition. “What is important for us is three things – new sellers, new customers and Prime customers. As long as this moves, the flywheel will keep on moving,” he said. According to a report by brokerage firm Bernstein, Amazon India has about 5 million Prime customers in India. On the challenges new sellers were facing following the closure of the marketplace’s erstwhile biggest seller Cloudtail due to new regulations, Tiwary said new sellers, which took over from Cloudtail, will scale up in time.
Twitter Blue to relaunch next week; will cost USD 8 for web, USD 11 for iOS users
The Twitter Blue paid monthly subscription will be available starting next week, the social media platform has announced. In a Twitter thread, the company said a web subscription will cost USD 8 a month, while a subscription on iOS will cost USD 11 a month. The paid features will include the blue checkmark and the ability to edit tweets. “We’re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday – subscribe on web for USD 8/month or on iOS for USD 11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark. The paid features include the blue checkmark, the ability to edit tweets, higher-quality video uploads, and reader mode ,” the microblogging website tweeted. The company said it will begin replacing that ‘official’ label with a gold checkmark for businesses, and later in the week a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts. “Subscribers will be able to change their handle, display name or profile photo, but if they do they’ll temporarily lose the blue checkmark until their account is reviewed again,” Twitter said. “Thanks for your patience as we’ve worked to make Blue better – we’re excited and looking forward to sharing more with you soon!” the company added. In late October, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finalized the USD 44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Following the takeover, Musk changed the company’s day-to-day operations, including the termination of Twitter executives who were responsible for the platform’s privacy, cybersecurity and censorship, as well as about two-thirds of Twitter’s employees. Musk said that the company had been working on a software update to let users know if they were “shadowbanned” and why. “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal,” he tweeted.
AR/VR drives into classrooms: How tech is changing education landscape
Indian school education is swiftly moving towards a new medium of instruction: AR and VR. It promises to transform India’s K-12 education from a primarily theory-heavy approach to a more practice-oriented ecosystem. Standing in a perfect circle, a group of middle school children point their smartphones at the empty spot in the centre. Their teacher has asked them to google “skeletal system” and click on the “view in 3D” option. Soon, looking through their screens, a human skeleton seems to have appeared in their classroom. As they rotate and tilt their phones, the teacher guides them through the bones and joints of the human skeletal system. If you think this is a scene from a science fiction movie or a school in Europe or the United States, think again. This is a classroom in Chennai High School (CHS) in Chintadripet, Chennai. CHS isn’t the only school where such state-of-the art teaching methods are being used. During the pandemic, kindergarten students in Kerala’s AEM AUP school were surprised to find giant elephants walking into their classroom, or their teachers standing next to the Milky Way galaxy, as they logged in from their homes. Social science teacher Shyam Vengalloor introduced augmented reality (AR) in their online classes in an attempt at making the lessons more engaging. Students of DLF Public School (DLFPS), Ghaziabad, have been using a virtual reality (VR) model of their home kitchen to discuss issues of domestic safety. The only two Sainik Schools for girls in the country now have their own VR labs. Schools in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Gujarat, and Kerala have also invested in procuring AR/VR headsets for their students.
It’s mandatory for social media platforms to ensure all user accounts get verification
Requirements of Due Diligence and Account Verification on Social Media Users’ privacy is typically considered to be protected when the platform in question allows for anonymous usage. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (also referred to as “IT Rules”), on the other hand, place specific requirements on intermediaries to ensure accountability. These requirements include the need for significant social media intermediaries to exercise due diligence. They will no longer be exempt from their legal obligations for third-party information or data or communication links hosted by them if they fail to exercise the level of diligence that is required of them, which is due diligence. The policies enacted by the government are geared toward providing internet users with an online environment that is open, safe, trustworthy, and accountable. Because of the expansion of the internet and the growing number of people in India who are using it, users are putting themselves in a greater danger of suffering some kind of damage as a result of making inappropriate use of cyberspace. In addition, the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules”) were enacted by the Central Government in accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”) in order to contribute to the realization of the objective of ensuring an Internet that is Open, Safe, Trusted, and Accountable. Regarding the proper verification of social media accounts and the terms of any paid services they provide, the government has advised that the IT Rules’ due diligence requirements for a social media intermediary include prominently publishing on its website and/or mobile app and notifying users of its user agreement in English or any other language listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, in the language of use, in the interest of transparency. Additionally, such requirements include enabling its users to voluntarily verify their accounts and providing such accounts with visible marks of verification for a social media intermediary that has more than 50 lakh registered users in India. It is essential to be aware that violating section 66D of the Information Technology Act can result in a fine of up to one lakh rupees and a prison sentence of up to three years.
