It’s a wrap: News this week (April 7-14)

There have been multiple developments on the tech front this week — from the EU’s task force for ChatGPT and AWS’ launch of generative AI service to the quarterly results of many Indian IT companies. This is the list of the most important developments this week for a quick catch up:

AWS’ foray into generative AI

A little late to the party but Amazon AWS has also jumped on the generative AI bandwagon. On Thursday, the company launched Amazon Bedrock. It is a new service that allows building and scaling generative AI applications that can generate text, image, audio, etc. in response to prompts. 

Amazon Bedrock offers customers easy access to foundational models like Anthropic’s Claude, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, and AI21 Lab’s Jurassic-2 family, along with AWS’ own Titan models. This is expected to give customers the flexibility to choose the best model for their specific use case.

Notably, at the beginning of this month, AWS launched a 10-week Generative AI Accelerator program. Under the accelerator program, select generative AI startups will be given access to artificial intelligence models and tools, customised go-to-market strategies, and machine learning stack optimisation, among others.  

Quarterly results

IT companies Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services announced their quarterly earnings results for the period ending March 31, 2023.

Infosys reported a sequentially weak quarter and its Q4 profit after tax (PAT) was reported at ₹6,128 crore. This is down by about 16% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). The company’s revenue is also down by 2.2% (QoQ) to ₹37,441 crore. Further, in constant currency, Infosys’ revenue growth is 3.2% QoQ and 8.8% year-on-year. India’s second-largest IT company missed its revenue growth target of the last financial year in constant currency terms, due to sluggishness in the banking and financial services sector across the Western markets.

Like Infosys, TCS too missed street’s estimates for Q4 results. The company reported a registered a YoY growth of 14.8% and garnered a consolidated PAT of ₹11,392 crore. The revenue from operations jumped by 16.9% YoY to ₹59,162 crore.

Android Beta 14

Google released the Android 14 Beta 1 for developers and early adopters to access and test new features. This is the first of the four beta versions of Android 14, will be followed by two stability releases in June-July. The final version will be rolled out to the general public in August.

The Android 14 Beta 1 focuses on privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and customisation. The company also said that it will improve the experience on large-screen devices like tablets and foldables.

EU’s ChatGPT watchdog

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) said on Thursday that it has created a task force on ChatGPT. In a statement, the board said, “The EDPB members discussed the recent enforcement action undertaken by the Italian data protection authority against OpenAI about the Chat GPT service.” EDPB is an independent body that oversees data protection in the European Union.

Apart from the EU, the Chinese regulators too have released draft rules for companies developing generative AI products. Framed by the Cyberspace Administration of China, these rules mandate companies to ensure that the data used to train these models are not discriminatory. Further, the rules state that the content should reflect the core values of socialism and not subvert state power.

Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade

Earlier this week, Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade went live. This is the first major change since the Merge last year. The upgrade allows users and validators to withdraw their staked Ether (ETH) on the network. In addition to this, developers have also optimised the network’s gas fees for certain transactions.