Digital news publishers restrict use of AI crawlers on websites
Digital news publishers globally and in India are jumping into action to safeguard their content against powerful web-crawlers like OpenAI’s GPTBot, which collects data from websites to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. According to a new report, nearly one-third of the world’s top 50 news sites, including several of leading Indian sites, have blocked AI crawlers from accessing their content. The data published by benchmarking agency AltIndex.com, has named leading news sites like CNN, New York Times, Daily Mail, Reuters, and Bloomberg – all blocking at least one AI crawler and their number continues rising. AI companies send crawlers to collect data to train their models and provide information for chatbots. However, as data is one of their core advantages, many of the world’s largest news websites have become extremely cautious, especially since there is generally no upside to handing over their data to AI crawlers. AltIndex.com researchers explained that after the ChatGPT launch in November last year, companies and consumers worldwide started using generative AI to automate tasks, write documents, do market research, or even basic coding. However, the rise of large language models and generative AI has also pushed into the spotlight the problem of news sites, publishers, and intellectual property holders who see their data being collected by AI crawlers. And while there are still no clear regulatory rules controlling AI’s use of copyrighted material, some of the world`s largest news websites have taken matters into their own hands. The entire situation escalated last month after Microsoft-backed OpenAI had launched its GPTBot crawler to collect data to enhance its language models. Although the AI research firm promised that paywalled content would be excluded from websites, several high-profile news sites blocked GPTBot. Their number continued growing in the following weeks. According to Dymic, a global marketing agency, 28% of the top 50 news sites worldwide have blocked at least one AI crawler by the end of last month. In regional comparison, the picture is a bit different. For example, 24%, or twelve out of fifty largest news sites in the United States, have blocked at least one AI crawler, far more than in the United Kingdom, where only three of 21 leading sites did the same. In India, the percentage of top new sites unwilling to hand over their data to AI companies is much higher, with one-third blocking at least one AI crawler, the report showed. In India, Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) members have already restricted access to OpenAI. DNPA represents leading news publishers in India such as India Today Group, HT Group, Times Group, DB Corp, Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, Zee Media, ABP Network, NDTV, New Indian Express, Mathrubhumi, Hindu, and Network18, to name a few. That said, not all news sites have taken action on blocking, the study showed, and GPTBot continues to be the number one choice among those who have. Statistics show the brainchild of OpenAI has been blocked 22% of the time across the top 50 news sites, with Bloomberg, Reuters, Business Insider, Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN as the top names on this list.
Google’s Bard Just Got More Powerful, but it’s Still Erratic
This week, Bard — Google’s competitor to ChatGPT — got an upgrade. One interesting new feature, called Bard Extensions, allows the artificial intelligence chatbot to connect to a user’s Gmail, Google Docs and Google Drive accounts. (Google also gave Bard the ability to search YouTube, Google Maps and a few other Google services, and it introduced a tool that would let users fact-check Bard’s responses). Bard Extensions is designed to address one of the most annoying problems with today’s AI chatbots, which is that while they’re great for writing poems or drafting business memos, they mostly exist in a vacuum. Chatbots can’t see your calendar, peer into your email inbox or rifle through your online shopping history — the kinds of information an AI assistant would need in order to give you the best possible help with your daily tasks. Google is well positioned to close that gap. It already has billions of people’s email inboxes, search histories, years’ worth of their photos and videos, and detailed information about their online activity. Bard succeeded at some simpler tasks, such as summarizing an email. Jack Krawczyk, the director of Bard at Google, says that Bard Extensions was mostly limited to retrieving and summarizing information, not analyzing it, and that harder prompts might still stump the system. “Trial and error is still definitely required at this point.”
WhatsApp Adds Info Tool for Creators
Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out a new feature designed to keep channel creators informed about the status of their channels on Android, especially when they are closed in specific countries. This move comes in response to local laws requiring the platform to restrict access to specific content within certain regions, reports WABetaInfo. This feature will allow WhatsApp to notify the channel creator if their channel’s visibility is restricted in certain countries due to legal requirements. According to the report, channel alerts work by notifying the channel creator when their channel is closed in a specific country, meaning users with phone numbers associated with that country will no longer be able to access or follow the channel. The channel alerts feature to notify creators about the status of their channels is available to some beta testers, the report said. Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out an ‘automatic security code verification’ feature for end-to-end encryption to a limited number of beta testers on Android. With this feature, the app will try to automatically verify if messages are end-to-end encryption without requiring any user intervention.
New law may bring OTT apps under ad, programme codes
The government is working on a draft broadcasting services regulation bill to bring all formats including linear television, radio and over-the-top (OTT) streaming services under one regulatory umbrella, a move which has raised concerns within the creative community. The draft indicates that streaming platforms may have to adhere to a programme code and advertisement code. This could prompt OTT services, so far allowed to self-regulate their content, to resist the government’s move. An executive at a broadcast network expressed apprehension that under the new law, private satellite channels may be asked to share digital streaming rights of sports properties with Prasar Bharti that is planning its own OTT. So far, Prasar Bharati, which runs national broadcaster Doordarshan, can air the feed it gets from private sports broadcasters only on its terrestrial network and its own DTH (direct-to-home) platform, Free Dish. “The public broadcaster will put sports content out for free on OTT, making any kind of monetization a challenge for other players,” the person added. Some believe the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will assert its authority to issue economic regulations for broadcasting services. “This will encourage Trai to get into introducing economic regulation on a Same-service-same-rule basis. Also, the most retrograde provision (in the draft Bill) is the programme code and advertising code. While the codes may have different codes for different platforms, it is still worrisome,” said a senior broadcaster, seeking anonymity.
Digital forensics: India’s opportunity
The Ministry of Defence, enforces a regulation allowing only feature phones within its premises, as smartphones pose a potential risk of sensitive information leakage. Security is a concern for many organizations. While the gates of such sensitive premises have scanning systems for bags and conduct body searches, they lack the ability to inspect the digital devices that people carry. What is lacking is a real-time forensic scan of the digital devices. However, significant developments are underway in the emerging domain of digital forensics, and one can expect that such machines will be available soon. Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science that deals with the recovery and investigation of materials found in digital devices and preserving the evidence in its original form so that it can be used in a court of law. The notion that digital forensics is only to solve cybercrime has long been transcended. In our digitally driven world, every human action leaves a trace, a digital footprint, which investigators seek. The capacity of new digital forensic tools to conduct scans across a constantly expanding array of digital devices, operating systems, novel application software, advanced encryption methods, and proprietary interfaces has spurred a growing need for digital forensic services. These tools can now efficiently handle vast volumes of data, possessing the ability to unearth critical information, much like finding a needle in a haystack. Advanced digital forensic tools use advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models to identify the proverbial “smoking gun” from thousands of WhatsApp messages or long email exchanges sitting in the “cloud” linked with the device. Modern digital forensics is about continually reducing analysis time, enabling the availability of evidence in near real-time, thwarting suspects’ attempts to destroy or conceal crucial evidence. With expanding capabilities, the digital forensics market is growing at a healthy pace of nearly 16.3 percent per annum, and is expected to reach $30.78 billion by 2030, up from $7.9 billion in 2021. Digital forensics is now being used beyond crime investigation. It has become integral to a company’s threat protection and evaluation strategy. For instance, banks use it to plug security gaps, while R&D labs, say in pharmaceutical companies, employ it to safeguard their designs and patents or contest patent disputes. Arbitrators are increasingly using digital forensics, especially in the context of digital end-to-end arbitration. In India, the demand for digital forensics is expected to see a quantum jump, with the notification of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, which imposes legal obligation on all data fiduciaries handling personal data. Non-compliance carries severe penalties, with fines up to Rs 250 crore. In essence, in the coming days, every business or organization will find some form of digital forensics indispensable.
WhatsApp Widens Payment Ops in ‘Priority Market’ India
India is among the ‘priority’ markets for WhatsApp Business Messaging and Meta wants to provide users with a choice when it comes to payments. The company has therefore opened up access to payments via WhatsApp Business messaging, allowing customers to pay businesses on the app with the UPI option of their liking in addition to debit and credit cards, Nikila Srinivasan, global vice-president, Business Messaging at Meta said. Earlier in the day, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was expanding the ways that people can pay for things within a chat thread. He said that the company had launched its own payment solution in Brazil and in Singapore, and said that it was going to be brought to India. “With payments in India, we’re going to support other payment methods as well, including all UPI apps. This is going to make it even easier for people to pay Indian businesses within a WhatsApp chat using whatever method they prefer,” he said. It was reported earlier that Whatsapp is launching features which will expand its ambitious bet WhatsApp Pay in India. It will also expand on enabling direct interface between merchants and customers where they will let users avail service delivery and make payments for it directly to merchants through WhatsApp. WhatsApp has more than 500 million users in India, though regulators have capped its in-app WhatsApp Pay service to only 100 million people. “The focus right now is to give people more choice,” Srinivasan explained. “The best way for us to do the right thing by people and businesses is to give them more choices to complete that transaction on WhatsApp end-to-end. WhatsApp Pay exists and we’re going to continue to invest but also be able to give people the choice to choose whatever payment method they want – any of the other UPI apps, debit cards or credit cards.”
Flipkart Lining Up $20 m for In-house Credit Marketplace
Flipkart is allocating about $15-20 million for a credit marketplace startup being set up internally. Praksh Sikaria — a senior vice president at the firm who was heading the firm’s social commerce offering Shopsy and steering its growth charter — is building a credit marketplace housed as a Flipkart entity where the new capital would be invested. This capital would be invested gradually as the team is working on several products and the platform is expected to be ready by the end of 2023 or early next year.. Sikaria is a shareholder in the firm along with Walmart-owned Flipkart. Eventually, the firm may be open to external funding at a later stage. For now, this is a significant amount of capital being committed for Sikaria’s venture by Flipkart even as there is a broader funding slowdown.