Google Rolls out its Magic Compose Beta
Google has started rolling out Magic Compose beta, its new Messages feature that helps users write text messages using AI. Powered by Bard, Google’s version of the insanely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, Magic Compose can rephrase your text in seven styles: Remix, Excited, Chill, Shakespeare, Lyrical, Formal, and Short. For now, availability is limited to Android phones with RCS-enabled US SIM cards. But after it rolls out for you, you can enable it from the app’s Settings menu. Then you can access Magic Compose from the pencil icon in the text field and rephrase your typed-out text in different tones and styles. But there is one caveat. Magic Compose will send up to “20 previous messages” to Google’s servers to generate suggestions, even if you are using RCS with end-to-end encryption. Google outlines this in its Magic Compose support page, noting that it will send these messages, along with any included emoji, reactions, and URLs, to its servers but “only used to make suggestions relevant to your conversation.” The company adds that it doesn’t store messages or use them to train machine learning models.
Screen Sharing on WhatsApp
WhatsApp is set to introduce a new feature that will enable users to easily share their screen during video calls. The feature was designed to enhance the overall user experience during video calls. The messaging platform owned by Meta, recently introduced the feature of “editing sent messages”. The update is currently being rolled out globally and is expected to be available to all users in the coming weeks. How to ‘share screen’ on WhatsApp video call? After updating the app, users will notice a new icon in the call control view during a video call. Once the user chooses to share their screen, everything visible on their device’s display will be recorded and shared with the recipient. At any point, the user has the ability to halt the screen sharing process, despite the ongoing transmission of screen content during the video call. Moreover, this feature will only be activated with the user’s consent to share the content of their screen.
Kerala makes history, becomes India’s first fully e-governed state
Kerala made history after the Pinarayi Vijayan government declared it as India’s first ‘total e-governed state’, where the delivery of government services would be digitised, transparent, and fast. The achievement comes decades after Kerala became the first fully-literate state and began its quest to become a fully e-literate society. The declaration would be a major step in the southern state’s journey towards a knowledge-based society and economy, besides achieving cent per cent digital literacy. Making a ‘Total eGovernance Kerala’ declaration at a function in Thiruvananthapuram, Chief Minister (CM) Vijayan said ushering in complete eGovernance does not merely mean creating a network of government offices and citizens but leveraging technology for the state’s development and empowering people by bridging the digital divide. “By the term ‘governance’, what the present government means is a total commitment to fulfil the promises it made to the people. The government and governance are reaching out to the people more and more. Service delivery has been made people-oriented and corruption-free, and public utilities have become people-friendly. These transformative changes have been felt by people in seven years,” he said. The state will also roll out the Kerala Fibre Optic Network shortly, which will make access to the internet affordable/free. Listing out a number of pioneering initiatives made by the government to usher in eGovernance, the CM said a single-window portal called eSevanam has been created to deliver as many as 900 services. The e-office system has already been implemented in the government secretariat, district collectorates, commissionerates, and directorates. The e-district project is another pro-people initiative. This will soon be extended to taluk-level offices. In panchayats, delivery of as many as 250 services has been made online. Kerala also took a bold step by setting up the country’s first digital university, and India’s first digital science park is getting ready at an estimated cost of Rs 1,500 crore.
Flipkart, Amazon, Reliance to Corner Indian Etail
Reliance Retail is best positioned to lead in India’s $150 e-commerce market in the long-run, analysts at Bernstein said in a report. It will likely claim the lion’s share of the over $150 billion e-commerce marketplace. The report essentially gives Reliance an edge over incumbents such as Amazon and Flipkart in the long-run given the former’s extensive retail network, digital capabilities including its heft with Jio mobile services. Currently, India’s e-commerce market is led by the big two—Flipkart and Amazon—that corner an estimated 60% market share. It is expected to reach $150 billion by 2025, with online penetration doubling in the next five years. Flipkart with $23 billion gross merchandise value or GMV and Amazon’s $18-20 billion gross merchandise value lead on scale with 60% market share. Reliance is currently number three with an estimated $5.7 billion in e-commerce sales driven by attractive categories of fashion (Ajio) and JioMart (e-grocery). Reliance Industries is building the largest digital ecosystem in India. Jio has 430 million mobile subscribers. Its digital ecosystem is compelling. Its retail arm has 18,300 retail stores in India. Digital mix is scaling up 17-18%. It’s a disruptive playbook—integrate offline, online and prime makes it the strongest competitor to Amazon or Walmart.
Myntra integrates ChatGPT with search for better product discovery
Flipkart group-owned fashion commerce platform Myntra has rolled out ‘MyFashionGPT’, a search feature powered by ChatGPT. The move aims to help shoppers with better product discovery and drive engagement on the retailer’s app. Customers can essentially look up curated looks on the app, say by typing keywords such as “airport looks”, and the system is designed to showcase a host of products including apparel, footwear, bags and sunglasses that consumers can choose from. The feature is capable of discovering fashion ensembles at scale based on looks relevant to destinations, events, celebrity styling ideas or occasions, the retailer said. The move is designed to help drive consumer engagement, enable product discovery for shoppers and cross-sell products.
Four cloud computing trends CIOs should know
Cloud computing, the delivery of on-demand computing services over the internet, will continue to be critical for businesses in 2023, enabling remote work, data storage and access to advanced technologies. Gartner’s report noted that despite an ongoing economic crisis, cloud services have shown considerable resilience in recent months. Cloud optimisation becomes vital – Gartner noted that cloud usage is almost universal, but many deployments are ad hoc and poorly implemented. Tech leaders need to revisit these hasty and poorly architected cloud infrastructure to make it more efficient, resilient and cost-effective and hence learn from industry use cases For example, consumer goods group Henkel in April decided to replace its existing ERP applications with a new SAP S/4HANA software solution, as well as migrate all on-premise, in-memory data centers to the cloud. New infrastructures to meet new cloud demands. Gartner researchers believe that tech teams will be compelled to meet demand with new types of infrastructure, particularly edge infrastructure for data-intensive use cases, non-x86 architectures for specialized workloads, serverless edge architectures, and 5G mobile service. Gartner estimates that 15% of on-premises production workloads will run in containers by 2026 – jumping from less than 5% in 2022. Data centers will witness shrink and shift – Researchers say data centers will shrink and migrate to platform-based colocation providers. According to Gartner research, 35% of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027. Companies must focus on cloud skills growth – Gartner highlights that a lack of relevant skills is one of the biggest barriers to cloud initiatives, with many organizations stating they cannot hire outside talent to fill these skills gaps. IT organizations will not succeed unless they prioritize organic skills growth. Cloud skills shortages are inevitable as more businesses migrate to cloud-based infrastructure and services, resulting in a dearth of software engineers to help create and update products and services. by 2025, 63% of workers in India feel they will require training in cloud-related skills to progress in their careers.
India’s Jugalbandi AI Bot
This app, built by AI4Bharat, a government-backed initiative along with reasoning models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI caught Microsoft chief Satya Nadella’s attention on his recent visit to India. This app, built by AI4Bharat, a government-backed initiative along with reasoning models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI caught Microsoft chief Satya Nadella’s attention on his recent visit to India. Nadella highlighted the potential this service has during his keynote address at Microsoft Build, among the rare instances of work being done here being spoken about on this platform.
Infy’s AI-1st Offering Topaz is Live
IT major Infosys launched Infosys Topaz, a new offering that combines data analytics, artificial intelligence, and generative AI, signifying the growing importance of this fast-evolving technology. Infosys said it has used its own applied artificial intelligence (AI) framework to develop an AI-first core that potentially has over 12,000 use cases. Infosys Topaz democratizes data and intelligence to bring value to more participants in the connected ecosystem, enabling them to create business models, AI-led products, services and new revenue streams.
WhatsApp Allows Edit on Sent Texts
WhatsApp has granted users one of its most awaited features — the ability to edit messages. “For the moments when you make a mistake or simply change your mind, you can now edit your sent messages on WhatsApp,” the Meta Platforms Inc-owned messaging app said in a blog post. With the feature rolling out globally in the coming weeks, senders will be able to modify their messages within 15 minutes of hitting send. The function can be accessed by long-pressing the message and choosing “edit” in the drop-down menu. The modified message will carry the label “edited”, without showing edit history. Competing apps such as Telegram and Signal already allow users to edit messages, while microblogging site Twitter rolled out the ability to edit tweets to select users last year.
Instagram’s Twitter Clone may Debut in June
After Jack Dorsey rolled out Blue Sky and a host of other competitors launched their own Twitter clones including Post, Mastodon and T2, now Meta is preparing to launch its own version of the social media app.The app has been given the codename of PN92, Project 92, or Barcelona, as per Gizmodo. Its tagline is ‘Instagram for your thoughts.’ Though it will be standalone in nature, it will be at least partially integrated with Instagram. Instagram users will be allowed to retain their verification and handle and their followers will be alerted when they get on the new platform. The app will be decentralized and compatible with Mastodon, which is built on the ActivityPub protocol.