Prediction; GPT4 to Be Released On.. 🤖

And also: Bing reached 100 million daily users // Depositors made whole in SVB bank fail..

March 13, 2023

📝 Cloudly comment: Our conclusion from the two news articles from Microsoft/OpenAI is that GPT4 will be released on March 16th at the Microsoft event. It will be exciting to follow this news as the difference in power between the 3.0/3.5 and 4 cannot be understated.

Update 2023-03-13

  • Bing Reaches 100 Million Daily Active Users Thanks to AI and Chatbot Preview Program.

  • Microsoft Germany Reveals GPT-4 and AI Disruption Strategies at AI in Focus Event

  • Microsoft and OpenAI Team Up to Bring Conversational AI to the Cloud

  • Meta to Launch Twitter Competitor "P92" as Twitter Collapse Looms

  • Apple Expands App Store Pricing Options with 900 New Price Points

  • Telehealth Startup Accidentally Shares Sensitive Data of 3.1 Million Patients with Third-Party Advertisers

  • Treasury, Fed, & FDIC Take Action to Contain SVB's Closures' Fallout

🐘

Big Tech

Bing Reaches 100 Million Daily Active Users Thanks to AI and Chatbot Preview Program.

Microsoft's Bing search engine has reached 100 million daily active users.

  • The growth of Bing's installed base is due to a new chatbot preview program, AI-based search results, and the success of Microsoft Edge browser.

  • Roughly one-third of participants in the chatbot preview program is new to Bing.

  • Users interact with the chatbot an average of three times per Bing session and have used it 45 million times since its launch.

  • The mobile version of the search engine has seen a six-fold increase in daily active users since the chatbot launch.

  • Microsoft attributes recent growth in the user engagement to its AI projects and efforts to make standard search results more relevant.

📝 Cloudly quick take: The 100 million sounds large, but what growth does it indicate? Based on data from Eartweb, over 1 billion people use Google every month. We assume that nearly everyone uses it daily, meaning about 1 billion daily users. If Bing has reached 100 million, that is 10% of Google. According to sources, Bing's market share is usually 3-5%. So to us, it looks like Bing is gaining traction.

Microsoft Germany Reveals GPT-4 and AI Disruption Strategies at AI in Focus Event

Microsoft Germany held an information event entitled "AI in Focus - Digital Kickoff," where Microsoft Germany CTO Andreas Braun announced the release of GPT-4 next week, featuring multimodality that can be used with videos.

  • Microsoft Germany CEO Marianne Janik spoke about disruption through AI in companies and forming internal "competence centers" to train employees on AI usage.

  • Senior AI Specialist Clemens Sieber and Chief Technologist Holger Kenn gave insights into practical AI uses and technical backgrounds like embeddings and GPT-3.5 models.

  • Use cases already possible today include speech-to-text recording for call centers, reading comprehension, and querying inventory data.

Microsoft and OpenAI Team Up to Bring Conversational AI to the Cloud

Microsoft has made OpenAI's ChatGPT model available in its own Azure OpenAI Service, allowing developers and businesses to integrate conversational AI into their cloud apps.

  • Developers can access a preview of ChatGPT today; pricing is set at $0.002 for 1,000 tokens.

  • Microsoft also features other AI models from OpenAI, such as GPT-3.5, Codex, and DALL-E.

  • Microsoft has built a deep relationship with OpenAI after purchasing exclusive licenses to the underlying technology behind GPT-3 and making a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI.

  • Microsoft plans to demonstrate how ChatGPT-like AI will work in Office apps at an event on March 16th.

Meta to Launch Twitter Competitor "P92" as Twitter Collapse Looms

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is developing a text-focused competitor to Twitter, internally referred to as "P92", which may incorporate Mastodon's ActivityPub protocol.

  • The project is still in its early stages, and no other details have been released yet.

  • This move is seen as an escalation of the saga surrounding Twitter's potential collapse due to money issues.

  • In response to this, alternatives such as T2 and Post News have emerged and gained some traction with users who are dissatisfied with Twitter's direction.

  • Jack Dorsey is also involved in his decentralized Twitter alternative, Bluesky, making user migration between servers easier.

Apple Expands App Store Pricing Options with 900 New Price Points

Apple has expanded its App Store pricing options, introducing 900 new price points for developers to select from.

  • The new price points range from $0.10 intervals up to $10 as well as whole-number values such as $1.

  • In addition to the new price points, developers can also manage global pricing and set regional base prices.

  • Apple will enable these new pricing options across 175 App Store storefronts by May 9, 2023.

📈

Startups

Telehealth Startup Accidentally Shares Sensitive Data of 3.1 Million Patients with Third-Party Advertisers

Cerebral, a telehealth startup specializing in mental health, says it inadvertently shared the sensitive information of over 3.1 million patients with Google, Meta, TikTok, and other third-party advertisers.

  • Exposed information includes patient names, phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, IP addresses, insurance information, appointment dates, treatment answers from mental health self-assessments, and more.

  • Information was obtained via tracking pixels embedded in websites/apps and used by Meta, TikTok, and Google to gain insight into their own users.

  • After identifying a security hole in January 2021 Cerebral has disabled tracking pixels and enhanced security processes.

  • Breach being investigated by U.S Office for Civil Rights & similar incidents involving pixel-tracking tools have sparked lawsuits against Meta & hospitals.

  • FTC fined other online medical companies & DOJ/DEA investigating Cerebral's prescription of controlled substances (Adderall/Xanax), which the company has since halted.

💰

Funding, Venture Capital and M&A

Treasury, Fed, & FDIC Take Action to Contain SVB's Closures' Fallout

Federal regulators unveiled a plan to contain the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank's closure, assuring taxpayers would not bear the costs.

  • Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve, and FDIC announced that depositors would have access to all their money starting Monday.

  • NY bank regulators also shut down Signature Bank in light of market events.

  • Fed set up an emergency lending program with approval from Treasury to provide funding to eligible banks.

  • FDIIC tapped Deposit Insurance Fund to make sure it can pay back depositors.

  • The government had attempted a private sale but needed help vetting the bank's books by Monday.

  • Officials and economists worried about outflows of deposits at other regional banks and a potential for a full-blown financial crisis.

  • The Fed's new lending program has $25B in cash from the Treasury.

📝 Cloudly quick take: The fall of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has been in the headlines since late last week. We find it encouraging that the FED and FDIC act quickly to ensure no harm to the depositors. Otherwise, the ripple effect could have been massive. One always has to think about the second/third/fourth order of effect. If these companies can't make payroll or pay their bills, they might go out of business. How many services/products do your company rely on from US-based startups? Most likely, a few. So SVB's debacle would significantly impact far away from the Valley.

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