NBCUniversal acquires 30% stake in Showmax

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Trust you had fun.I always look forward to the weekend because its time to watch movies, chill, hang out, and probably exercise which Ive failed to do for the last two weeks. \U0001f602Heres what Ive got for you today: Microsoft rolls out new chat modes to all Bing AI usersAs part of the deal, MultiChoice announced the formation of Earth UK Holdings Limited (EarthCo) to act as Showmaxs parent company.In exchange for a 70% stake in EarthCo, MultiChoice will continue to support Showmax with its local market knowledge, capacity for producing local content, portfolio of sports and general entertainment rights licenses, and back-office support operations.The partnership also involves NBCUniversal sister company, Sky. turbo model family is the best model for many non-chat use cases.Its also introducing an API for Whisper, an AI-powered speech-to-text model.Released in September 2022, Whisper is an automatic speech recognition system that OpenAI claims does large-scale transcription in multiple languages for $0.006 per minute.This tool will cost significantly less than the existing language models.Per OpenAI, Whisper outperforms other speech recognition systems and has been trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask data gathered from the web.Greg Brockman, the President and Chairman of OpenAI, claims that this gives it improved recognition capabilities, such as recognising unusual accents, background noise, and technical jargon.However, there are restrictions on how companies can use voice transcription technology, including next-word prediction, due to the enormous data trained with the system.OpenAI warns that Whispers transcriptions may contain words that were not spoken, possibly because it is simultaneously attempting to predict the next word and transcribing.Also, Whisper performs differently depending on the language, with higher error rates for speakers of the training sets less well-represented languages.Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a Cassava Technologies subsidiary, has partnered with Microsoft to provide high-speed Internet access to 20 million Africans by the end of 2025.Why does it matter? According to an International Telecommunication Union report, an astounding 2.7 billion people worldwide remain disconnected from the digital world due to access or cost issues.Because high-speed connectivity is necessary for fully using digital technology, the cyber divide has grown exponentially as Africas adoption has increased.The new partnership will initially focus on areas including, but not limited to, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia through Microsofts Airband initiative.It will also include remote areas in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.Microsoft rolls out new chat modes to Bing AI usersMicrosoft is rolling out three new chat modes creative, balanced, and precise to all Bing AI users.While the tech giant sets the default mode of the Bing chatbot to balance to achieve a balance between accuracy and creativity, you can now switch between these modes while using Microsofts Bing chatbot.Unlike the precise mode, which prioritises accuracy and relevance for more factual and concise responses, the creative mode includes original and imaginative responses.Microsoft has updated the bot, including a significant reduction in cases where Bing refuses to reply for no apparent reason, according to Mikhail Parakhin, Microsofts head of web services.This might imply fewer instances of hallucination in answers, as the Bing chatbot is anticipated to provide less absurd responses.Whats more, this week, Microsoft added a shortcut to the Windows 11 taskbar, providing quick access to its Bing chatbot within the Windows search feature. U.S. regulators rejected Elon Musks bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety risks What the Mesopotamians can teach us about Chat GPT and the impact of new tech Snapchat will now let you pause your Snap Streaks Why is it so hard to escape poverty?

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OpenAI

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