Tech Roundup: Amazon Badge Pay, OpenAI GPT Store & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Automobile manufacturer Volkswagen plans to integrate ChatGPT into its cars to control basic functions and answer "general knowledge questions," starting in Europe in Q2 2024.
• Intel announces new Core 14th Gen chips for mobile phones, desktops and laptops.
• PC maker Lenovo debuts ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid, a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with a 14" 2.8K OLED display that can function as an Android tablet.
• Asus announces the ROG Phone 8 series with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, 5,500mAh battery, 6.78" 165Hz OLED display, and 32MP front camera.
• MSI unveils a Windows-based gaming handheld called Claw that's powered by Intel's Meteor Lake Core Ultra processor and comes with a 7" 1080p 120Hz IPS display.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to acquire Juniper Networks in a deal worth US$14 billion to boost its networking business.
• Google's YouTube updates its cyber bullying policy to ban AI-generated content that "realistically simulates deceased minors or victims of deadly or well-documented major violent events describing their death or violence experienced"; also makes it easier to find accurate life-saving information about basic first aid and emergency care.
• Getty Images and Nvidia join hands to launch Generative AI by iStock, a text-to-image service that generates stock photos and is aimed at SMBs.
• Apple plans to ship its Vision Pro headset on February 2, 2024, in the U.S., after opening pre-orders on January 19 at 8 a.m. ET; says the base Vision Pro model has 256GB of storage and the ZEISS Optical Inserts for readers cost US$ 99 and prescription ZEISS Optical Inserts cost US$ 149. (Apple has also released new visionOS developer guidelines, asking developers to refer to Apple Vision Pro apps as "spatial computing apps", not AR, VR, XR, or MR apps.)
• The Wi-Fi Alliance begins certifying devices with Wi-Fi 7, which could offer big speed and efficiency gains over Wi-Fi 6 in phones, laptops and routers.
• Sony says it has sold 50 million PlayStation 5 consoles, as monthly active users hit 123 million as of December 2023.
• OpenAI responds to copyright lawsuit by The New York Times, stating the publication "intentionally manipulated prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, in order to get our model to regurgitate"; notes that it took down a ChatGPT feature called Browse immediately after we learned it could reproduce real-time content in unintended ways, such as bypassing firewalls, and that "training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use."
• In a filing submitted to a House of Lords subcommittee, OpenAI also said that "it would be impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials" and that "limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today's citizens."
• The European Commission says it's checking whether Microsoft's investment in OpenAI is reviewable under the bloc's merger regulations, a month after the UK competition authority launched an inquiry to decide whether the tie-up poses a "relevant merger situation."
• Google and Samsung merge their respective Nearby Share and Quick Share features under the Quick Share brand, for a more unified cross-Android sharing option; says it's the "best default, built-in option for peer-to-peer content sharing across all types of devices in the Android and Chromebook ecosystems."
• Meta plans to start automatically restricting teen Instagram and Facebook accounts from harmful content, including posts about self-harm, in the coming weeks.
• Amazon announces Matter Casting, an Apple AirPlay-like feature to send videos from Android and iOS to Amazon devices.
• X announces plans to launch peer-to-peer payments this year and plans to improve user and advertising experience on the platform through Artificial Intelligence; quietly removes the ability for paying subscribers to set an NFT as a profile picture, a feature Twitter launched in January 2022 for Twitter Blue subscribers.
• Apple expands Apple Music Classical to China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau following its initial launch in most countries in March 2023.
• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Team, a new subscription plan for teams of up to 149 people for US$ 30 per user per month (or US$ 25 per user per month if billed annually) and debuts a GPT Store for paid users to share and find custom chatbots; quietly removes language prohibiting the use of its technology for "military and warfare" from its usage policy, as part of a major rewrite to make the policy "clearer" and "more readable."
• Netflix's entry into gaming pays off as Netflix Games downloads rises over 180% YoY to 81.2 million globally across the App Store and Google Play in 2023, with Q4 2023 accounting for about 53% of downloads; says its ad tier has more than 23 million monthly active users globally, up from over 15 million in November 2023.
• Brave web browser adds its newly built CodeLLM to its search engine to deliver code snippets for programming queries, along with "step-by-step explanations and citations of the sources for reference and validation."
• Two new studies find that a liter of bottled water may contain nearly a quarter million pieces of the smallest particles of plastic and nearly 90 percent of 16 different kinds of protein commonly eaten by people, including seafood, chicken and beef, and even plant-based meat alternatives such as tofu and veggie burgers, contain microplastics.
• ByteDance plans to shut down music streaming service Resso in India on January 31, after removing the App Store and Google Play apps in mid-December 2023.
• Google announces plans to remove 17 "underutilised" Assistant features in February 2024, including voice-controlled Play Books audiobooks and media alarms, as it pivots to integrating Bard into Assistant.
• Amazon launches "badge pay," which uses its Just Walk Out retail tech to let employees use their badges for payments.
• Google says it will allow users to unlink the Google services they use to comply with the E.U.'s Digital Market Act ahead of the March 2024 deadline; includes Search, YouTube, Ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping and Google Maps.
• Google also emphasises that "When Search, YouTube and Chrome are not linked services, your recommendations in Search, like 'What to watch' and your Discover feed will be less personalised."
• Apple, on the other hand, has appealed the European Commission's designation of its App Store as a gatekeeper, stating it's based on "material factual errors" and that the App Stores for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch distribute apps for a specific platform and type of device, and hence cannot be treated as a core platform service. It's worth noting that Apple unsuccessfully argued last year that its Safari web browser is different for iOS, iPadOS and macOS in an effort to avoid regulation in the E.U.
• A new report from NBC News finds that search engines like Google and Bing are making it easy to surface nonconsensual deepfake pornography by placing it at the top of search results; Google says it strengthen its policies against apps featuring AI-generated restricted content in the Play Store.
• News sharing app Artifact, founded by Instagram co-founders, to shut down the service less than a year after launch; says "the market opportunity isn't big enough to warrant continued investment in this way."
• Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) jointly discover new material that could be used to reduce Lithium use in batteries using a new type of AI trained on molecular data.