China is now No 2 in metaverse-related global patent applications. The metaverse is a concept that loosely refers to an immersive virtual world. It combines technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality. China has a plan to grow the market size of China's VR industry beyond 350 billion yuan ($50.4 billion)
Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. It's suspending U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals as of February 8th. The company says it's working to restart service as soon as possible. Binance US, a unit of the company regulated by the Treasury Department, says it’s not affected.
Treasury and Bank of England want to ensure public has access to safe money. Central-bank digital currency could be a new "trusted and accessible" way to pay. But it will not be built until at least 2025. Ten digital pounds will always be worth the same as £10 in cash.
The Arena Group owns brands including Sports Illustrated and Men's Journal and has partnered with Nota and Jasper to produce articles and ideas for stories using AI technology. The company has tested the technology by feeding old content through it and incorporating human editors in the production process. Tests showed strong audience engagement and improved workflow efficiency by more than 10 times. The Arena Group expects that around 250 outlets will use AI technology. Other media companies such as BuzzFeed and CNET are also exploring the use of AI.
Companies and the U.S. government are shelling out billions of dollars to establish a supply chain for batteries in North America, a manufacturing effort that is critical to the auto industry’s long-range plans to put more electric vehicles on the road. Batteries are the most expensive component in an electric vehicle, accounting for about one-third of its cost.
Microsoft is holding a major news event at its Redmond headquarters tomorrow. The company is expected to announce a number of new projects. The event comes just moments after Google announced its own ChatGPT rival. Microsoft is also expected to unveil its Bing integration with OpenAI. It will also be the exclusive cloud partner for the AI research project.
Elon Musk declared that “removing child exploitation is priority #1’ in a tweet in late November. “Twitter 2.0” will be different, the company promised. But a review by The New York Times found that the imagery, commonly known as child pornography, persisted on the platform.
Google is releasing its own artificial intelligence chatbot, called Bard. The company is also adding the technology behind Bard to the Google search engine. Bard will be released to specialist product testers on Monday and will then be made more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
Dell Technologies facing plummeting demand for personal computers, will eliminate about 6,650 jobs, becoming the latest technology company to announce it will let thousands of employees go. The company is experiencing market conditions that “continue to erode with an uncertain future,” Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke wrote in a memo viewed by Bloomberg. The reductions amount to about 5% of Dell’s global workforce, according to a company spokesperson.
Interpol secretary general Jurgen Stock says the global police agency is investigating how the organisation could police crime in the metaverse. The metaverse is the widely-discussed, but not yet realised, concept that in the future people will be represented by 3D avatars in their online lives. Interpol has built its own virtual reality (VR) space, where users can do training and attend virtual meetings.