Month: July 2024

The reveal, along with a new regulatory framework by the country’s internet regulator, highlights desire to hold social media behemoths accountable for failures to protect their users.

Malaysia is legislating for an ‘internet kill switch’, according to Azalina Othman Said, the country’s Law and Institutional Reform minister.

Though the details Said gave in a written statement posted to Twitter (written in Malay and recounted via The Register) are thin on the ground, luddites and anarchists dreaming of destruction are set to be disappointed, with the minister strongly implying that it’s a move to apply pressure on social media companies to do more about online abuse committed and illegal material disseminated across their platforms.

The minister suggests in her statement that this, and the government’s desire to explicitly define cyberbullying (implying that it may be made a crime in the country) is nothing new, and “in line with legislative initiatives enforced in various other countries.”

Sweeping social media reform in Malaysia

Malaysia currently has a laser focus on the issue of the perceived unaccountability of social media platforms. 

Recently, Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) revealed a “new regulatory framework” that will require “all social media services and Internet messaging services with at least eight million users” to obtain a licence to operate in the country.

It added failure to comply with the move, designed to “create a safer online ecosystem and a better user experience, especially for children and families”, would result in “appropriate legal action”, which it failed to define but is almost certainly referring to the notion of a “kill switch”.

The framework will come into effect on August 1 2024, while enforcement will begin on January 1 2025. 

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Meta has released a new AI Studio tool in the US, which lets you create your own AI chatbots –including a clone of yourself.

If you’ve ever fantasized about having an AI clone of yourself that can answer questions and dish out advice on your behalf, Meta’s new AI Studio is promising to help you do just that – if you live in the US.

Meta describes its AI Studio, which is rolling out now on the web and in Instagram, as “a place for people to create, share and discover AIs to chat with – no tech skills required”. Meta hasn’t yet indicated if or when the feature will be launched outside of the US.

The free service lets you create customized AI chatbots that can tell jokes, create memes, and hand out advice. But the most intriguing use-case is for professional content creators, who can use the tool to “make an AI as an extension of themselves” to answer DMs and story replies, effectively creating an AI secretary for their social media admin.

You can access the AI Studio now in two ways, if you’re in the US. You can head to the official Meta AI Studio website, where you can make a ‘Creator AI’ (which is an extension of you, if you have a professional Instagram account) or an ‘AI Character’ (a chatbot that’s based on your chosen interests).

Alternatively, you can find the feature in Instagram by starting a new message and then tapping ‘Create an AI chat’. From this point, Meta says you can customize the AI character’s “name, personality, tone, avatar and tagline”. Meta has created an in-depth guide to creating AI characters, which shows that there’s already an impressive amount of customization.

For example, you can provide detailed instructions on how you want your AI characters to behave like “use vocabulary from the 1950s” or “a corny dad who uses lots of puns”. You can also tell the AI chatbot how to talk (like “you are concise and never repeat yourself”). 

But the AI chatbots available to professional Instagram creators will also go well beyond canned responses. Meta states that “long-term memory” will let the chatbot remember previous conversations with whoever’s interacting with the AI. Interestingly, a beta option called ‘Search’ will also let your AI twin “draw information from the internet to make its responses more robust” and also “share links to websites when relevant”.

Do we really want AI clones?

(Image credit: Meta)

Meta has been edging towards unleashing full-blown AI characters in its apps this year, with an image creation tool called ‘Imagine Me’ recently letting you create a digital avatar of yourself with uploaded photos.

But Meta’s new AI Studio is on another level, and gives us an (arguably disturbing) glimpse of where AI chatbots could be headed. Rather than ’15 minutes of fame’, the 21st century equivalent of Andy Warhol’s famous prediction might instead be that everyone will get a personalized AI clone.

Meta’s ‘Creator AI’ chatbots are currently only available to professional Instagram accounts (either Business or Creator) and are being sold as a way to “reach your audience and save time”. 

It remains to be seen how fans will react to accounts that message them using an AI clone of the personality they’re following. And there is something slightly creepy about Meta’s promise to creators that these AI bots can help them engage with their audience by “mimicking your tone and expressions”. Meta says that some subjects will be off-limits for its AI chatbots and that they’ll be clearly marked in its apps.

But this could also be a major step towards the normalization of this kind of chatbot experience and Meta’s ‘AI characters’ (which are open for everyone to try) are a little more fun and innocent. Meta says these are for “fun, utility or support” and that you can create chatbots that “uniquely express your personal interests and nerd out on topics that matter to you”. 

However you feel about Meta’s AI Studio, a new AI era for social media has started.

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Superb performances, big laughs and a starry cast weren’t enough to save Renegade Nell from her fate.

Renegade Nell was one of the shining stars of Disney Plus’ 2024 slate – the streamer clearly thought it would be a big hit. But despite gaining a respectable 88% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 87% from the critics and earning a place on our best Disney Plus shows list, the swashbuckling comedy drama, written by Sally Wainwright of Happy Valley and Gentlemen Jack fame and featuring a fantastic performance by Derry Girls‘ Louisa Harland, won’t be renewed for a second season. 

The reason for the cancelation comes down to the fact that it hasn’t hit “several metrics”. That’s according to Deadline, which quotes a Disney spokesman who says that while “we’re incredibly proud of the world created by Sally Wainwright and lead director Ben Taylor”, the show won’t be coming back to the best streaming service. 

What you won’t see from Renegade Nell

Back in April, director Ben Taylor told the Radio Times that he and Wainwright were already working on a possible second season: “There is some crazy, crazy stuff in store.” The second season would have picked up from the end of season 1 but jump forward in time a few years.

The show centered on Nell Jackson, a quick-witted and courageous young woman framed for murder and forced to become an outlaw. The reviews were largely enthusiastic: Empire said that “with a bold premise and an array of fantastic performances, Renegade Nell is an action-packed, fairy tale-tinged swashbuckler with something to say”, while the New York Times said that “the show is amusing, intelligent and very well executed”. 

However, while many reviewers found lots to like The Hollywood Reporter was disappointed and, given this week’s news of the show’s cancelation, prophetic: “Renegade Nell never does deliver on the early promise of its concept, and eventually settles into the disappointment of unfulfilled potential.” 

If you’re a fan of Sally Wainwright’s work, however, there is some good news: she’s currently working on a BBC show called Riot Women, which is about five menopausal women who form a punk rock band. 

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Businesses are worried that they don’t have the right data foundations and skills to benefit from AI.

New research has claimed while most (90%) enterprises are adopting artificial intelligence, outdated infrastructure and significant skills gaps are preventing them from reaping the rewards.

The Cloudera survey of 600 IT leaders from the US, EMEA and APAC highlighted the challenges and common use cases of AI in business, including the disconnect between productivity promises and the reality.

Cloudera’s report indicates many organizations are struggling to fully implement AI effectively, with many citing concerns over security and compliance risks (74%), insufficient training or talent (38%) and high costs (26%).

Companies are struggling to adopt AI effectively

The study is just one of a growing number to acknowledge the importance of a solid data foundation in the deployment of AI. An overwhelming majority (94%) of respondents trust their data, however more than half (55%) expressed extreme frustration with accessing it.

Issues such as contradictory datasets (49%), difficulty in governing data across platforms (36%) and data overload (35%) highlight the need for a more modern architecture to ensure that data is accessible.

Cloudera Chief Strategy Officer Abhas Ricky summarized: “For the majority of companies, the quality of their data is not great, it’s distributed across various infrastructures and not documented in an efficient manner, and we’re seeing the fallout from that presented in the challenges identified by the survey.”

With the right setup in place, AI is commonly used for enhancing customer experiences (60%), improving operational efficiency (57%) and speeding up analytics processes (51%).

The study also noted the wider use of artificial intelligence beyond core IT functions, alluding to its widespread acceptance and the hope that the technology could improve efficiency across teams, particularly customer service.

Looking ahead, Ricky suggests that companies reframe how they look at data in the context of AI: “Instead of bringing the data to the models, enterprises are starting to realize the advantages of bringing AI models to their data.”

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Canva announces partnership with Leonardo.ai as it seeks to bolster AI offerings and take on the might of Adobe.

Canva has done it again. Months after confirming the purchase of the Affinity graphic design suite, the Australian company has announced the acquisition of one of the best AI image generators we’ve reviewed, Leonardo.ai. 

“Much Like Affinity, Leonardo.ai will continue to develop its web platform for its millions of users – including its business customers”, with financial support from Canva, the company stated.

This latest buy-out is just the latest in a series of moves made by Canva as it attempts to corner the European market and compete with Adobe’s domination of the creative software field. 

Canva x Leonardo

Canva has already imbued its platform with a raft of AI tools, including AI writer Magic Write, and an existing AI art generator. So, what can users expect from the new partnership? 

In a press release, the company confirmed plans to help grow the Leonardo.ai platform, while integrating its technology and Phoenix foundational model into Canva’s existing suite of tools. Expect further investment in this technology and a bigger push into the enterprise space – an area Canva has been keenly courting for some time. And hardcore fans of the genAI service will be pleased to learn that, like Affinity, Canva stated that “Leonardo will continue to operate independently and focus on rapid innovation, model research, and product development.” 

In our recent Leonardo.ai review, we noted that while it wasn’t perfect, with some UI decisions feeling clunky, overall, it impressed us – it’s a feature-rich tool that delivered quality AI image generation fast. As such, we’re excited to see how both platforms advance – especially since Canva boasts one of the best user interfaces we’ve experienced. 

However, some are already pointing out that exactly what data Leonardo’s Phoenix foundational model is trained on remains elusive. We can only hope Canva took note of Adobe’s controversial Terms of Service update a few months ago, which led to a furious backlash from users fearful the creative software giant was using user-generated content to train its Firefly model. 

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Users of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 have seen abnormally high battery drain, but a solution could be coming soon.

Samsung has just launched its latest Galaxy Watch, and so far we’ve been pretty impressed with it in our hands-on Galaxy Watch 7 review. But not everyone has been blown away, and it all comes down to one thing: battery life.

Complaints have arisen from users on social media that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7’s battery is draining rather more quickly than people would like. On X (formerly Twitter), @Nole_fan_girl noted that after just over 10 hours of use, their smartwatch had just 10% battery life remaining, with them commenting that they “can’t get a full day use” out of it. Similarly, @JeffTechnically said that “Personally I’m lucky to get 16 hours on my 44mm Watch 7.”

They’re far from the only people to complain on forums, and it seems like Samsung has taken notice. Writing on Samsung’s South Korean forums, a company representative said that Samsung was aware of the issue. According to a machine translated version of the page, the rep explained that “we have identified the cause and prepared a solution,” adding that they hope to distribute the patch soon.

The representative claimed that the issue was software-related rather than being due to faulty hardware. That is encouraging, as a software glitch can usually be fixed with an update, and it would be much harder to address the problem if hardware was at its root.

A big step back

(Image credit: Future)

Despite the Samsung official’s assertion that software was to blame – and that Samsung has discovered the cause of the issue – we still don’t know exactly what is going on and what has caused the cases of excessive battery drain.

Still, poor battery performance such as this is well out of the ordinary. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6, for example, got around 25 hours from a full charge in our testing. For some users to only be getting 10 to 11 hours out of the Galaxy Watch 7, then, is a big step back.

We’ll have to see how Samsung addresses the problem, whether it reveals exactly what caused the issue, and how long it takes to get things fixed up. Hopefully we won’t be waiting too long, or there are going to be some very disappointed smartwatch users out there.

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