FT Tech News 11: WhatsApp new feature, Bard AI cost $144 billion to Google, Google Lens big upgrade, Instagram walking in Twitter footsteps, Ford plan
Our aim with the tech news series is to cover multiple topics in one article so that you don’t have to go through other websites or articles for tech-related information. Please like the article because it keeps us motivated. Without any delay let’s start today’s tech news.
Topics We Have Covered
WhatsApp new feature
Literally, I can write a novel on WhatsApp features list. Every other day, there is something on WhatsApp new features. Recently WhatsApp launched five features related to WhatsApp status. For this info click here.
Now coming to the point, if you use WhatsApp you know that there is a limit to sending photos. You cannot send more than 25 or 30 odd photos at a time. That means if you have to send 50 photos then you can’t send all 50 images at once. You have to send it two times.
WhatsApp is going to not remove the limit but instead increase it. It is being said that WhatsApp will soon allow users to send 100 photos at once. Isn’t this great? I am eagerly waiting for this one because I tend to share photos in bulk and this feature is gonna be a relief.
This feature will be more helpful for those who travel a lot and keep sharing photos on WhatsApp.
Bard AI cost Google 144 Billion dollars
ChatGPT has been the talk of the town for the last few months. After all, ChatGPT is very capable and helpful. In competition to this, we were expecting something like this from Google. And believe it or not our expectations were a bit higher.
To our anticipation, Google launched its own AI called Bard. According to Google, Bard is an AI service that provides conversational results to our queries. This is powered by LaMDA. It uses Google’s huge collection of language models and collects information from the web. Bard is still in the experimental stage.
Google shared a short GIF video on Twitter showing Bard in action. To this point, the world was watching Google and this is when everything went upside down for Google. In the GIF video, Bard answered wrong.
What was the question Bard answered wrong?
In the short ad video, Bard was asked: “what new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?”
Bard responded with three points answer and the last point was where it went wrong. In the third point, it included: “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”
This answer is incorrect because as confirmed by NASA, European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is the first telescope to capture pictures of a planet outside of our solar system.
This news spread like fire in the forest and Google had to suffer a tremendous $144 billion loss. This is what a few seconds of video can do.
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Google Lens is getting an upgrade
We all know what Google lens can do. It can extract and read text from an object, or photo. It can also translate the texts for you. It can tell you information about objects. For example, you can find the name of a product, or a flower just by looking through Google's lens.
But now, Google is upgrading Lens. You can literally scan anything be it a building, hotel, animal, car, or whatever, it can tell. Even if you are in an app or watching a video on your phone or any website, without leaving what you are doing, you can use Google lens and find more information about it.
So this new Google lens feature of being able to work anywhere across apps and websites makes a huge improvement. It is very important for those who don’t want to type or are not well at typing so that they can just scan it and they will get all the details.
Instagram walking on Twitter footsteps
There was a time when the blue tick resembled authenticity but now it resembles status. Anyone can get this tick nowadays.
It was Twitter that started charging users for the blue tick. Now it is being said that Instagram will also do the same. This was spotted by the reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi. In the past, he has found several features of Instagram ahead of its official launch.
So this news is also likely to be official by Instagram in the future. He shared this information writing that Instagram is working on a subscription plan which will include the blue tick/badge as well.
He also wrote at the bottom stating that he has just found a few small references in the code about this new paid plan. So until he become certain and post with screenshots he asked people to consider this news a rumor.
Ford to cut jobs
2023 has not been a great year for the employees so far. Everyone has the dream to work in giant companies like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. But looking at the current scenario, we feel glad that we are not working there because these all companies are laying employees in large numbers.
It is being said that Ford is planning to cut 3800 jobs in Europe. Statistically, Ford plans to kick out 2300 people in Germany, 1300 in the U.K., and the remaining 200 elsewhere in Europe.?
But Ford also clarified that it is not going to remove these employees all at once and all of a sudden. It said that 3800 jobs will be just over the next three years. The reason they gave for this decision was that it wants to adopt a leaner structure as it is focusing on electric vehicle production for the future.
Ford has not just planned the layoff numbers but also has planned to retain 3400 engineering roles in Europe focusing on vehicle design and its development.