Technology News: Tech Updates: Vodafone, Anthropic, Android, Microsoft, Amazon, EU Charges

Vodafone Idea has increased tariffs of prepaid and postpaid plans in view of the competitive steps taken by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio regarding their tariff plans recently. The new prices—effective July 4—are the cheapest plan, earlier costing Rs 179, now priced at Rs 199. Besides, another popular package of Rs 479 with 56 days validity and 1.5GB data per day, now costs Rs 579. The annual plan will also go up by Rs 500. Benefits under these plans shall remain the same despite the price hikes.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft's AI division, told CNBC that content that's part of the open web could be used to train AI models. According to Suleyman, the social contract for all online content is understood to be fair use—anybody can copy it and reproduce it—beginning in the 1990s. In light of ongoing lawsuits against AI companies over content scraping, Suleyman believed that such firms work roughly in accord with a very long-standing sense of what an internet common denominator was; that is, freeware.

Moments after its launch on 21st June, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet started creating a sensation, as already it is showing outstanding performance—much ahead of other highly developed AI models such as OpenAI's GPT-4o, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro, or Meta's LlaMA-400b. Compared to Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 is twice faster and more economically friendly. Its enriched capabilities have turned it into a customer darling, handling the most complex tasks, such as context-sensitive customer support and multi-step workflow orchestration, impressing many users within the first week the product launched.

A new Android feature, called "Collections," is reportedly under development at Google. It will display content from relevant apps already installed on devices. This "Collections" feature will make a debut in the United States and subsequently in more countries. It was earlier known as "Cubes," and the development process started last January. It wants to help Android users get an update about their apps right from the home screen. A new feature dubbed "Collections" will make it easier to use this diverse range of apps by surfacing key information in one place, thus improving the user experience.

Now, Amazon has launched an investigation into AI start-up Perplexity AI following new claims that it was scrapping website content without permission. The probe was initiated following an investigation by Wired that showed Perplexity AI got access to restricted websites. Amazon spokesperson Samantha Mayowa confirmed AWS customers must adhere to the terms specifically prohibiting abusive activities. But Perplexity itself denied such violations and uses AWS. The startup, with big investors like Jeff Bezos in its corner, had been accused of serial plagiarism, including stealing stories from Forbes and influting circulation figures, as well as making up quotes. Their CEO, Aravind Srinivas, responded to such allegations.

Developers of AI are using Hollywood conceptions of artificial intelligence as a source of inspiration to give tools ever-more naturalistic voices. OpenAI, in an upgrade of its chatbot, ChatGPT, makes it perceive, converse, and sound more lifelike—very much like the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 movie "Her". The approach could represent one of those trends in which cinematic depictions drive real voices of AI development, blending futuristic fantasies with practical applications.

The European Commission has charged Microsoft with antitrust violations for unfairly tying its Teams chat and video app to its Office suite, following a 2020 complaint from Slack. If convicted, this would be the first EU fine against Microsoft in eleven years, and it may be massive. EU officials have said bundling Teams with Office gives Microsoft an unfair advantage, 'fundamentally blocking' effective competition in what is now a key area of remote communications tools. This has seen Microsoft come under pressure to unbundle these services and improve interoperability with competitors, while rivals like Salesforce-owned Slack, as well as Alfaview, a German company, continue to escalate calls for clearer terms and user incentives.

What started in 2022, courtesy of OpenAI's release of ChatGPT, was interest—and hype—around generative AI that soon went on to be largely referred to as "AI Washing." It can be attested to in the great rush of startups and tech firms stuffing AI into a number of products and exaggerating its functionality in a bid to capture consumers and investors alike. One study indicates that, whereas only 10% of startup pitches mentioned AI in 2022, more than 25% did in 2023. Meanwhile, more than half of the major firms in the S&P 500 index mentioned AI in their earnings calls. This could have ramifications for consumers and the broader tech industry from such inflated yet disproportionate promises around AI-driven innovation.