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How is the new Google AI search different from the Bard chatbot?

In an effort to dispel concerns that it is falling behind Microsoft Corp.’s OpenAI-powered Bing search, Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Wednesday showed off an improved core search product that incorporates more AI in its solutions.

Google also has a chatbot called Bard that rivals ChatGPT, the OpenAI chatbot that has sparked a lot of user interest with its human-like responses. According to the company, conventional searches on Google may still be used to find and seek out information, such as finding a product to buy.

Google
Image Source: reuters.com

Bard is a chatbot with a character that can have conversations that seem human-like and is intended to serve as a tool for creative collaboration, such as writing software code or captions for pictures.

Also Read: Google I/O 2023: How to watch and what to expect

The Search Generative Experience, the improved search feature, keeps the familiar search bar’s look and function on Google’s home page.

The difference is in the responses: if the new Google determines that generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to respond to a query, the AI-generated response will appear at the very top of the results page. The standard Web links are still available below.

For instance, a person searching for “weather New York” will typically be directed to an eight-day prediction, but if they search for “what to wear in the California city,” AI will give a long response, according to a test done for Reuters earlier this week.

The result included links to websites where it found such advice and said, “You should bring layers, including a short-sleeved shirt and a light jumper or jacket for the day.” Additionally, users will have access to a brand-new “conversational mode,” which works similarly to Bard and ChatGPT in that it keeps track of the user’s previous inquiries to make it simpler for users to ask follow-up questions.

However, the business emphasizes that the conversational mode is merely meant to improve search results and is not intended to be a chatbot with a personality. For instance, unlike Bard and ChatGPT, it will never use the “I” statement in its responses.

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The Bard chatbot is designed to engage in natural language conversations with users, typically in a specific domain such as customer service or personal assistance. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to understand the user’s questions and provide helpful responses While both systems use AI, they have different goals and capabilities.

Google AI search is focused on information retrieval and presenting relevant results to users, while the Bard chatbot is focused on conversational interactions and providing assistance to users in a specific domain. Bard is already accessible without a wait list in over 180 nations, according to the business, which also wants to provide support for 40 additional languages.

Google I/O

Google I/O 2023: How to watch and what to expect

Google I/O 2023 will take place on May 10th. Google I/O is an annual developer conference hosted by Google. The conference typically features keynote presentations, technical sessions, and product demonstrations focused on the company’s latest innovations in technology and software.

Google I/O
Image Source: techpp.com

In contrast to the multi-day I/Os of former years, this year’s event just lasts for that single day. Although Google is holding I/O as a live event at Shoreline Amphitheatre close to its campus in Mountain View, California, it is also being streamed on the Google I/O webpage. Google I/O can be live-streamed by any individual who registers for free on that website. The event can also be streamed on Youtube.

Also Read: Google Rolls Out Passkeys to (Eventually) Kill Passwords

These days, everyone seems to be thinking about AI-powered chat solutions, including Google. The organisation will have the chance to discuss Bard, its in-house chat client, and how it may benefit additional Google services like search, mapping, and productivity tools at Google I/O.

Google might take the opportunity to address worries regarding the hazards that certain individuals have identified with AI in addition to discussing how AI chatbots integrate into its own line of products, as one might anticipate.

The company released the Android 14 beta last month, and Google I/O 2023 will be its first chance to provide a public peek to a larger audience. This year is expected to be no different, given the significant role Android has played at previous I/O conferences.

Since a completed version of Android 14 is anticipated before the end of summer, we might even have more clarification on the development timeframe. Long rumoured to be in the works, Google’s first foldable device astonished everyone last week when it became public.

The maker shared a picture and a video of the Pixel Fold, a device that can be folded horizontally like a book. While Google declined to provide any information regarding its features, a prior claim from CNBC indicates the device may have a display that is 5.8 inches when it is closed and 7.6 inches when it is opened, making it comparable to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4.

Also Read: Google Authenticator finally syncs one-time codes in the cloud

The main announcement at Google I/O 2023 is expected to be a new piece of hardware for the company. There have been persistent rumours of a Pixel Fold that would disrupt the foldable phone market, which is now dominated by Samsung products. Google has now essentially acknowledged that this will take place.

It is anticipated that at least one new phone will be released by Google, especially in light of the rumours that claim the Pixel 7a will go on sale during that time.

Google

Google Rolls Out Passkeys to (Eventually) Kill Passwords

Google has rolled out a new feature called “Passkeys,” which is designed to eventually replace traditional passwords. Passkeys are a type of two-factor authentication (2FA) that allows users to sign in to their accounts using their mobile devices instead of a password.

The Passkeys feature uses a combination of biometrics, such as face or fingerprint recognition, and an on-device security key, which is a physical security token that can be used to authenticate the user’s identity. This means that even if a hacker were to obtain the user’s password, they would still need physical access to the user’s mobile device to gain access to the account.

Also Read: Google Authenticator finally syncs one-time codes in the cloud

Since the dawn of the internet (and computing in general), password-based authentication has become the norm. However, the system has severe security flaws, including the possibility that hackers may steal your password or deceive you into providing it through phishing attacks.

The passkey system relies on a separate paradigm that leverages cryptographic keys kept on devices used for account authentication in order to specifically combat phishing assaults.

Passkey standards were originally created by the FIDO Alliance, a security collaboration with several IT companies as members. Passkeys are now a reality thanks to efforts from Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Apple made its passkey option available with the launch of iOS 16, enabling users to use this feature across applications, including Apple Wallet.

In October 2022, support for Passkey was made available on Google Chrome and Android devices. Today, Gmail and Drive are also able to use the feature. Password selection is notoriously difficult for people. However, adding even a single special character or alphanumeric string won’t provide complete security against malicious users.

In contrast, passkeys are typically regarded as being more secure than alternative methods, with Google even describing them as “resistant to online attacks like phishing.”

Google will still offer two-factor authentication and passwords as additional account access methods. Through end-to-end encrypted services like iCloud Keychain and Google Password Manager, Passkeys can sync between your devices.

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Another option is to create a QR code on a device that is signed into your Google account, which will identify another device where you want to log in and then set up passkeys on numerous devices using that code.

Passkeys are part of Google’s broader effort to move away from passwords and toward more secure authentication methods. The company has also developed other 2FA options, such as the Google Authenticator app and Google Prompt, which sends a notification to the user’s mobile device asking them to approve the login attempt.

Google

Google wins appeal of $20 mln US patent verdict

Search Engine Giant, Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, successfully persuaded an appeals court in the United States on Tuesday to invalidate three anti-malware copyrights that were at the center of a Texas court’s twenty million-dollar infringing acts decision against the firm.

Google
Image Source: communicationstoday.co.in

Alfonso Cioffi & Allen Rozman’s copyrights, according to the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit, were found to be inapplicable because they covered ideas that were not covered by a prior version of the claim.

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Google welcomed the choice, according to spokesman José Castada. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the inventors’ attorneys.

In 2013, Cioffi along with the daughters of the late Rozman filed a lawsuit against Google in the Federal court in East Texas, claiming that Chrome’s malware protection features violated their patents for a system that stops malware from gaining access to sensitive information on a computer.

A jury found that Google violated the patents in 2017 and granted the complainants a total of 20 million USD in addition to continuing payments, which according to the plaintiff’s representative at that point in time were anticipated to reach approximately seven million dollars yearly for the following nine years.

However, the Federal Circuit declared all of the patents invalid on Tuesday. The three-judge bench reached a unanimous conclusion that the three claims had been reissued from a previous anti-malware claim and that federal law needed the newly issued patents to encompass the same idea as the first.

The new patents described web browser-specific technology that was absent from the original patent, according to the appeals court.

Contrary to popular belief, the defendants in Big Tech’s latest patent litigation argue that bigger firms utilize their clout to squeeze rivals.

The British competition regulator declared that Alphabet’s child firm Google’s measures to permit app developers to bypass Google Play’s invoicing mechanism appeared to be adequate to allay its reservations about in-app purchases.

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The entire monopoly Google has over in-app purchases has, according to the Competition and Markets Authorities (CMA) of Britain, unjustly constrained developers by requiring them to adopt Google Play’s charging system, decreasing competition and harming users.

According to the CMA, Google’s suggestions would let app creators provide another means of payment of their choice or give customers the option of choosing from that method and Google Play’s payment system.

South Korea

South Korea fines Google $32 million for squeezing out rival

The antitrust regulatory body in South Korea has penalized Google which is a subsidiary of Alphabet, about KRW 42.1 billion, 31.88 million USD which is around Rs. 262 Crore for hindering the launch of video games for smartphones on an opponent’s forum.

South Korea
Image Source: bworldonline.com

KFTC (The Korea Fair Trade Commission) stated that Google on Tuesday, by involving video game developers to entirely unveil their titles on Google Play in return for offering in-app publicity around June 2016 and April 2018, increased its dominant market position and harmed the localized app market One Store’s earnings and worth as a platform.

Also Read: Baidu sues Apple, app developers over fake Ernie bot apps

Google stated that it will analyze the Korea Fair Trade Commission’s final verdict before deciding what to do next.

“Google makes substantial investments in the success of developers, and we respectfully disagree with the KFTC’s conclusions”, a spokesperson said.

Source: gadgets360.com

According to the South Korea Fair Trade Commission, the government’s attempts to promote fair markets are a component of the lawsuit against the US tech behemoth.

The antitrust regulator stated that other local companies were also impacted by Google’s conduct, including Netmarble, Nexon, & NCSOFT.

For preventing customizable copies of its Android operating system, Google was heavily fined by the KFTC in 2021 with a huge fine of over 200 billion won.

Top Indian entrepreneurs urged the nation’s competition authority to investigate Google, a few weeks ago for allegedly breaching an antitrust regulation by demanding a hefty service charge for in-app purchases, according to a document.

The Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) lawsuit was the newest confrontation between Google & Indian businesses, who have long blasted the US corporation for enforcing unfair business terms and conditions that disadvantage smaller competitors.

Also Read: Amazon plans to trim employee stock awards amid tough economy

“Google’s policy change of charging service fee even on transactions processed by third-party payment processors … has detrimental consequences for users and app developers,” the 15-page confidential March complaint by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation said.

Source: gadgets360.com

Google, which did not respond to inquiries, previously explained that the service charges fund investments within the Google Play app store as well as the Android operating system for smartphones, in order to ensure that it is distributed for free, and includes developer tools as well as analytic services.

supercomputers

Are Google’s AI supercomputers faster than Nvidia’s?

As powerful models for machine learning continue to be the hottest topic in the tech business, Google released information about one of the company’s AI supercomputers on Wednesday, claiming it is quicker and more effective than rival Nvidia systems.

Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, are artificial intelligence (AI) chips that Google has been developing and utilizing since 2016. Nvidia currently holds a 90% share of the overall market for AI training models and deployment.

supercomputers
Image Source: techzine.eu

As a leading innovator in AI, Google has produced several of the most significant developments in the area during the past ten years. However, some people think the company has lagged behind in commercializing its ideas, and internally, the corporation has been rushing to develop items to show it hasn’t wasted its lead, creating a “code red” situation.

Also Read: What’s Next for Users as Google Now Launcher Shuts Down?

A large number of supercomputers and a lot of processors must work simultaneously to train models, with the computers operating nonstop for weeks or months, as is the case with AI models and products like Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which are powered by Nvidia’s A100 chips.

On Tuesday, Google announced that it has developed a system with more than 4,000 TPUs connected to specialized parts intended to operate and train AI models. It has been in operation since 2020 and has been used for 50 days to train Google’s PaLM model, which challenges OpenAI’s GPT model.

The Google researchers claimed that the TPU-based supercomputer, known as TPU v4, is “1.2x-1.7x faster and uses 1.3x-1.9x less power than the Nvidia A100.” The researchers said, “The performance, scalability, and availability make TPU v4 supercomputers the workhorses of large language models.”

The H100, the most recent Nvidia AI chip, was not compared to Google’s TPU results, however, because the H100 is more modern and was manufactured using more sophisticated manufacturing techniques, according to Google researchers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the findings for the company’s most current chip, the H100, were noticeably faster than those for the previous generation. findings and rankings from an industry-wide AI chip test called MLperf were published on Wednesday.

Given the high cost of the significant computing power required for AI, many in the sector are concentrating on creating new processors, hardware elements like optical links, or software innovations that will lower the required computing power.

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The computational demands of AI also benefit cloud service providers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, who may rent out computer processing on an hourly basis and give startup companies credits or computing time to foster business partnerships. For instance, Google claimed that their TPU chips were used to train the AI image generator Midjourney.