Brightest phone displays test: Oppo Find X6 Pro vs Galaxy S23 Ultra vs iPhone 14 Pro Max - PhoneArena

The newest flagship phone from Oppo's Find series - X6 Pro - brings with it many records like the biggest periscope zoom or ultrawide camera sensors, but it also earned a top ranking in our best phone displays 2023 list as it one-ups Apple and Samsung at their own screen game with the brightest phone panel around.

These peak brightness numbers, however, are achieved when only a minuscule section of an OLED display is lit up at full power and displaying white, or in the situation when an OLED panel consumes the most energy. Moreover, outdoor visibility is a function of several other factors, too, such as screen coating and reflectance, or display contrast.

In reality, the typical brightness level that Apple advertises is 1000 nits max brightness with 1600 nits only when showing HDR content, while the 2000 nits peak brightness level is for sections of the display when the iPhone 14 Pro series is used outdoors under direct sunlight.

Ditto for the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra whose maximum is 1200 when displaying HDR content, and 1750 nits outside under strong sunlight on automated brightness setting. Still, when we measured the Oppo Find X6 Pro typical display brightness, its numbers were indeed higher than what both the iPhone 14 Pro Max or the Galaxy S23 Ultra managed to muster:

Display measurements and quality

The brightest phone display

While the Oppo Find X6 Pro advertises humbler typical everyday brightness maximum indoors of 800 nits, which can rise to 1500 nits with HDR content, it can also rev up to the jaw-dropping 2500 nits under direct sunlight on automatic settings. This is a niche scenario, unless you live in a seaside town in warm climates and beachgoing comes as a second nature, that is. 

Those who are out and about the whole day in the warm and sunny summer months would also appreciate squeezing any extra nit from their phone screen, so we did a quick improvised test outside to see how everyone's peak brightness claims hold up in reality.

We took the Oppo Find X6 Pro, Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra outdoors, and placed them under the rays of a bright afternoon sunshine. While it is hard to capture minute brightness increments with a camera, especially with all the sunshine blasting around, all three displays remained subjectively visible even in these harsh conditions.

Depending on the sunshine's angle it was either the Oppo Find X6 Pro or the Galaxy S23 Ultra that managed to rev up to the state of most visible phone screen outdoors in the sunlight. They also have colder, subjectively brighter display color temperature compared to the iPhone's yellowish whites.

Long story short, we've lately been witnessing a handful of phone displays that break the 1000 nits typical brightness threshold in our display tests which usually bodes great for their outdoor visibility in direct sunlight as you can see from the pictures here.

The Oppo Find X6 Pro, however, takes Samsung's latest LTPO3 OLED display generation and pushes the technology to achieve record phone screen brightness, while at the same time offering Apple's touch-sensitive dynamic refresh rate adjustments and per-unit wide-gamut color calibration at the factory, something that only an exclusive subset of phone makers troubles themselves with.

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Report: Apple Mixed Reality Headset Delayed to Late 2023 Amid Decreased Confidence in Market Appeal - Road to VR

Ming-Chi Kuo, a respected supply chain analyst, reports that Apple is tamping down enthusiasm for its upcoming mixed reality headset, which was rumored to see its big announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

In a tweet, Kuo reports Apple is delaying release of its MR headset due to decreased optimism in recreating the “iPhone moment” the company was hoping to achieve with the device.

Kuo, an analyst at Asia-Pacific financial services group TF International Securities, is widely considered one of the most accurate voices in predicting Apple releases. Kuo has made many predictions in the past based on supply chain movements, including Apple’s 2020 switch to its own custom ARM-based processors for Mac computers, the 2019 release of a new MacBook Pro with a 16-inch display, and the release of the entry-level iPad with an A13 chip in 2021—just to name a few.

Kuo says Apple’s MR headset, which is reportedly codenamed N301, is being pushed back “another 1-2 months to mid-to-late 3Q23,” noting that the assembly line delay could mean we won’t see the new device at WWDC 2023 in early June as previously reported by The Financial Times earlier this month.

It was said Apple CEO Tim Cook was a leading force in pushing the device’s launch this year, something that’s reportedly been a source of tension between the Apple chief and the industrial design team since the company began efforts in 2016.

Furthermore, Kuo says that due to the device’s delay in mass production, “the shipment forecast this year is only 200,000 to 300,000 units, lower than the market consensus of 500,000 units or more.”

“The main concerns for Apple not being very optimistic regarding the market feedback to the AR/MR headset announcement include the economic downturn, compromises on some hardware specifications for mass production (such as weight), the readiness of the ecosystem and applications, a high selling price (USD 3,000-4,000 or even higher), etc,” Kuo concludes.

If you’ve been following with the Apple rumor mill for the past few years, you’ll know there are almost too many reports to name at this point. To simplify, we’ve included a list of the headset’s rumored features and specs which we’ve collated from those reports.

Take note, none of the info below has been confirmed by Apple, so please take it with a large grain of salt.

Rumored Apple MR Specs

• Resolution: Dual Micro OLED displays at 4K resolution (per eye)
• FOV: 120-degrees, similar to Valve Index
• Chipset: Two 5nm chips. Includes a main SoC (CPU, GPU, and memory) and a dedicated image signal processor (ISP). Chips communicate via a custom streaming codec to combat latency.
• Battery: Waist-mounted battery, connected via MagSafe-like power cable to the headset’s headband. Two-hour max battery life, although hotswappable for longer sessions.
• Passthrough: ISP chip contains custom high-bandwidth memory made by SK Hynix, providing low latency color passthrough
• Audio: H2 chip, providing ultra-low latency connection with the second-generation AirPods Pro and future AirPods models. No 3.5mm and possible no support for non-AirPod BT headphones.
• Controller: Apple is said to favor hand-tracking and voice recognition to control the headset, but it has tested a “wand” and a “finger thimble” as alternative control input methods.
• Prescription Lenses: Magnetically attachable custom prescription lenses for glasses-wearers.
• IPD Adjustment: Automatic, motorized adjustment to match the wearer’s interpupillary distance.
• Eye Tracking: At least one camera per-eye for things like avatar presence and foveated rendering
• Face & Body Tracking: More than a dozen cameras and sensors capture both facial expressions and body movements, including the user’s legs.
• Room Tracking: Both short- and long-range LiDAR scanners to map surfaces and distances in three dimensions.
• App Compatibility: Said to have the ability to run existing iOS apps in 2D.
• Price: $3,000 – $4,000

Design Rumors

• Outer Shell: Aluminum, glass, and carbon fiber to reduce its size and weight. Cameras are largely concealed for aesthetic reasons.
• Presence Displays: Outward-facing display can show user’s facial expressions and also presumably eye movements. Said to be an always-on display similar in latency and power draw of Apple Watch or iPhone 14 Pro.
• Dedicated Passthrough Switch: Digital Crown-like dial on its right side to switch between VR and passthrough.
• Headstrap: Various available, including consumer-focused headstrap similar in material to Apple Watch sport bands with built-in speakers. Unspecified, but different headstrap targeted at developers.

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Google Assistant might be doomed: Division “reorganizes” to focus on Bard - Ars Technica

Enlarge / The lettering "Hey Google" on the Google pavilion at the CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas in 2018. These words activate Google Assistant, Google's virtual personal assistant.

Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance

Is the Google Assistant doomed? The evidence is starting to pile up that the division is going down the tubes. The latest is news from CNBC's Jennifer Elias that says the Google Assistant division has been "reshuffled" to "heavily prioritize" Bard over the Google Assistant. It all sounds like the team is being reassigned.

We'll get into the report details in a minute, but first a quick recap of the past two years of what the assistant has gone through under Google:

• Google Assistant saw eight major speaker/smart display hardware releases in five years from 2016-2021, but the hardware releases seem to have stopped. The last hardware release was in March 2021. That was two full years ago.
• 2022 saw Google remove Assistant support from two in-house product lines: Nest Wi-Fi and Fitbit wearables.
• 2022 also saw a report from The Information that said Google wanted to "invest less in developing its Google Assistant voice-assisted search for cars and for devices not made by Google."
• Google Assistant's driving mode was shut down in 2022.
• Google Assistant's "Duplex on the web" feature was also shut down in 2022.
• One of Google Assistant's core unique features, Reminders, is being shut down in favor of Google Task Reminders soon.
• Google Assistant has never made money. The hardware is sold at cost, it doesn't have ads, and nobody pays a monthly fee to use the Assistant. There's also the significant server cost to process all those voice commands, though some newer devices have moved to on-device processing in a stealthy cost-cutting move. The Assistant's biggest competitor, Amazon Alexa, is in the same boat and loses $10 billion a year.

Each one of those developments could maybe be dismissed individually, but together they start to paint the familiar picture of a looming Google shutdown.

Now the latest news from CNBC makes it sound like the Assistant team isn't going to work on the Assistant anymore. A memo to employees, titled “Changes to Assistant and Bard teams,” lays out a lot of executive changes. One Google Assistant engineering VP, Amar Subramanya, will now lead engineering for Bard. Another VP of engineering for Google Assistant, Jianchang Mao, is leaving Google "for personal reasons." Mao's replacement is Peeyush Ranjan, who is currently a VP in Google's commerce division, overseeing payments. (Payments at Google have been an incredible disaster over the past few years, so seeing someone escape to run a different division is... eyebrow-raising.)

The memo is from Sissie Hsiao, VP and lead of Google Assistant’s business unit, who instructs the Assistant team: “As the Bard teams continue [their] work, we want to ensure we continue to support and execute on the opportunities ahead.” That sounds like the Assistant team is now in a support role for Google's "code red" fight against ChatGPT.

Merging Google Assistant and Bard would make some sense if the two units weren't different products. Everyone expected Bard to integrate with Google Search somehow, just like ChatGPT and Bing, but the product the company released is a standalone "experimental" chatbot with no connection to search at all. Just like ChatGPT, it can generate paragraphs of questionably accurate text based on what it sees on the Internet.

Google Assistant is a voice product that is primarily concerned with voice recognition accuracy, recognizing and performing verbal tasks like "Turn off the lights" or "set a reminder," and "ambient computing" or being available everywhere, on many devices, just like the Star Trek computer. There is some overlap since both services can return answers, but Google Assistant's current Google Search-powered answer system is great for Google Assistant. Google Bard can generate paragraphs of text, but when those answers are being read aloud, the Assistant's shorter answers are better than just droning on and on with the clumsy monotone text-to-speech system.

The interfaces of Bard and the Assistant are similar in that they both look like chat apps, and therefore have similar monetization problems, but you really do use both products for different purposes. If we assume the idea of the Google Assistant—a voice assistant that helps you do things—isn't completely dead at Google, you could imagine a future where Bard's language model helps it understand what you want to do and will do it, but it feels like the service is years away from something like that. The Assistant today doesn't have language model problems, though, just voice recognition problems, and Bard won't help with that.

We've seen Google do this all the time—shut down a good project for a replacement that isn't ready or is full of feature regressions. Bard's development—and Google's AI strategy in general—does seem slow compared to OpenAI and Microsoft's rollout of ChatGPT, so maybe more hands would help with that. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to take resources away from Google Assistant to do that, but the service is purely a money pit.

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E3 Gaming Expo Cancels 2023 Event - Variety

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, has canceled its 2023 event.

E3 was previously scheduled to take place June 13-16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, in-person for the first time since 2019. The gaming convention, once considered the most influential showcase in the industry, was canceled in 2020 and 2022 due to COVID-19 concerns. The expo held a virtual edition in 2021.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and show organizer ReedPop announced the cancellation of the physical and digital events with a joint statement.

“This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3,” said Kyle Marsden-Kish, ReedPop’s global VP of gaming. “We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn’t have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn’t overcome. For those who did commit to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t put on the showcase you deserve and that you’ve come to expect from ReedPop’s event experiences.”

The cancellation comes after some of gaming’s biggest names — including Nintendo, PlayStation and Ubisoft — announced they would not be participating in E3 in any capacity. Microsoft announced it would not be on the show floor but would co-stream its Xbox Games Showcase as part of E3 Digital.

IGN, which first broke the news, obtained an internal memo saying that while E3 “remains a beloved event and brand,” the 2023 version “simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry.”

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Bing Chat To Feature Ads, Shaking Up The Ad-Free Experience - Search Engine Journal

Microsoft has announced plans to introduce ads within the AI-powered Bing chat experience.

This is a significant move, as Bing chat has been an ad-free platform up until now.

In a blog post, Microsoft explains why it’s making this change.

Ads In Bing Chat – More Revenue For Publishers?

Since launching the new Bing search experience and Edge browser, Microsoft has aimed to provide an all-in-one experience encompassing search, chat, answers, and content creation.

This strategy is paying off, with over 100 million daily active users on Bing and over 100 million chats recorded.

Interestingly, one-third of the users in the preview are new to Bing, creating an opportunity for publishers.

As Bing chat evolves to better address users’ search needs, questions have arisen about the implications for content publishers.

Microsoft’s goals in this new search landscape include the following:

• Driving more traffic to publishers.
• Increasing revenue for publishers through new features and advertising.
• Fostering a healthy ecosystem through collaboration with the industry.

The early data from the preview suggests Microsoft is on its way to accomplishing these goals.

Unique implementations, such as chat answer citations linked to sources and “learn more” links to additional sources, have helped drive this success.

Exploring New Opportunities For Publishers

Microsoft is actively exploring additional ways to distribute content, positively impacting traffic and revenue.

Some early ideas include:

• Ads in chat: Microsoft is considering placing ads in the chat experience and sharing ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.
• An expanded hover experience: Hovering over a publisher’s link will display more links from that publisher, encouraging user engagement and driving more traffic to the publisher’s website.
• Rich captions for Microsoft Start partners: Placing a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content beside chat answers can drive user engagement and ad revenue sharing with partners.

Although these discussions are in the early stages, feedback has been positive.

Microsoft plans to continue working directly with publishers to shape the search’s future.

In Summary

The success of Bing’s all-in-one strategy, which combines search, chat, answers, and content creation, is evident in its growing user base.

This growth provides a unique opportunity for publishers to reach new audiences and increase traffic.

As Microsoft continues to explore new opportunities for publishers, such as ads in chat, the potential for increased user engagement and ad revenue sharing becomes more evident.

Although in the early stages, the positive feedback from publishers indicates that these changes could mark a turning point in the future of search and digital advertising.

---

Source: Microsoft

Featured Image: DANIEL CONSTANTE/Shutterstock

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iPhone 15 Pro Rumored to Feature Multi-Use Action Button Instead of Mute Switch - MacRumors

iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models are rumored to feature a customizable Action button like the Apple Watch Ultra, according to a MacRumors forum member who leaked accurate details about the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro models last year.

The source claimed the Action button will replace the Ring/Silent switch that has been included on every iPhone model since 2007. They did not explain how the Action button will work, but it will presumably be customizable like it is on the Apple Watch Ultra, allowing users to map the button to various system functions for convenient access.

Apple's exact implementation remains to be seen, but here are some potential functions that could be controlled by tapping the Action button:

• Ring/Silent
• Do Not Disturb
• Flashlight
• Low Power Mode
• Light/Dark Mode
• Lock Rotation
• Show the Home Screen
• Show the Lock Screen
• Open Control Center
• Open Notification Center
• Open Camera
• Screenshot
• Screen Recording
• Run a Shortcut
• Toggle on Reachability
• Show the App Switcher
• Show the App Library
• Shazam
• VoiceOver
• Magnifier
• Background Sounds

Most of these functions can already be controlled with Back Tap, an accessibility feature introduced with iOS 14. Back Tap lets you double or triple tap the back of an iPhone to trigger a certain action, such as turning on the flashlight or taking a screenshot. The feature can be set up in the Settings app under Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap.

On the Apple Watch Ultra, the Action button can be mapped to these apps and features:

• Workout
• Stopwatch
• Waypoint
• Backtrack
• Dive
• Flashlight
• Shortcut

It was already rumored that the mute switch would be replaced with a button on iPhone 15 Pro models, but an Action button was mostly logical speculation until now. The source claimed the Action button will continue to work for a period after an iPhone runs out of battery thanks to the inclusion of a new low-power chip.

In addition to an Action button, iPhone 15 Pro models are rumored to have a singular volume button that can adjust the volume both up and down. Both buttons are expected to have a solid-state design, meaning they will not physically move when pressed and instead provide haptic feedback from additional Taptic Engines to simulate the feeling of movement, similar to the Home button on the iPhone 7 and the latest iPhone SE.

Apple will likely unveil the iPhone 15 series in September as usual. These changes are only rumored for the Pro models, with the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models still expected to have a mute switch and two volume buttons.

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Apple Seeds First Betas of iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5 - MacRumors

Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a day after the launch of iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4.

Registered developers can opt in to the betas by opening up the Settings app, going to Software Update, tapping on the "Beta Updates" option and toggling on the iOS 16 Developer Beta. Note that an Apple ID associated with a developer account is required to download and install the beta.

We don't yet know what's included in the betas, but Apple has delivered many of the promised features that were announced when ‌iOS 16‌ was first unveiled. We are still waiting on the Apple Card Savings account and Apple Pay Later, a feature that Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said was coming "soon."

When we learn what's included in the update, we'll share details.

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Nokia Is Sending 4G Internet to the Moon - Gizmodo

Image: Nokia/Lunar Mission

Nokia announced it is sending a 4G internet service to the Moon during an upcoming space mission. The company says the technology will hopefully pave the way for more lunar discoveries and create opportunities for a human presence on the Moon and beyond.

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The system is expected to be deployed during Intuitive Machines’s upcoming IM-2 mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in November aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Intuitive Machines’s Nova-C lunar lander will take the system and other payloads to our natural satellite, bringing Nokia’s 4G communications system to its final destination on the Shackleton crater in the southern region of the Moon, CNBC reports.

Nokia, working alongside Lunar Outpost and Intuitive Machines, created the 4G technology, which is designed to withstand the harsh conditions in space. The tech demonstration could set the stage for use during future crewed Artemis missions to the Moon. The current plan is for NASA to land two astronauts on the lunar surface in 2025, marking the first time astronauts will walk on the Moon since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.

Anshel Sag, the principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told CNBC that 2023 was an “optimistic target” for Nokia to launch the 4G network, adding: “If the hardware is ready and validated as it seems to be, there is a good chance they could launch in 2023 as long as their launch partner of choice doesn’t have any setbacks or delays.”

Nokia announced the project in 2020 when it was selected by NASA and its Bell labs were granted $14.1 million to fund the project, CNN reported at the time. Nokia said in the blog post that it will initially test the lander’s short and long-range communication capabilities at proximities ranging from a few hundred meters to between two and three kilometers away. The network will be critical for “any sustained human presence on the Moon and Mars in the future,” Nokia said in a blog post.

“It became evident to us that, for any sustained human presence on the Moon and Mars in the future, connectivity, and communications are critical,” Thierry Klein, head of the enterprise and industrial automation research lab at Nokia Bell Labs said in the post. He added that it is imperative for astronauts to have the same access to technology as they do on Earth to run their applications and support their activities in space. Ideally, astronauts will use the 4G internet during the Artemis 3 mission to enhance “voice and video communications capabilities, telemetry and biometric data exchange, sensing applications, or controlling robotics.”

Nokia did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

The company hopes to assist with further explorations and experiments to find ice on the Moon that could provide breathable oxygen for astronauts, drinkable water, and rocket fuel. Although the Moon’s surface is dry, uncrewed missions have signaled remnants of ice in some of the Moon’s sheltered craters.

Klein said in a press release late last month that Nokia and Bell Labs are looking forward to bringing the technology to space in the coming year. He said the 4G network “will have a big impact on future crewed missions to the Moon and beyond, and validate that cellular technologies can be adapted for mission-critical space communications needs. Instead of reinventing the wheel by creating a proprietary network in space, we are leveraging the same technology that connects billions of devices cost-effectively on Earth.”

For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on Twitter and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page. 

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Apple Demos AR/VR Headset to Top Executives, Report Says - CNET

Some of Apple's top executives gathered in Cupertino, California, recently for a special demonstration of the company's unreleased AR/VR headset, according to a report from Bloomberg.

"The demonstrations were polished, glitzy and exciting," Mark Gurman, Bloomberg's Apple reporter, wrote.

Gurman noted that the demonstration took place in the Steve Jobs Theater, Apple's largest venue. According to Gurman, this might suggest the headset is close to a public unveiling.

The headset will have a starting price around $3,000, and it will have an external battery that'll need to be replaced after a few hours of use, Gurman wrote. The headset is also reportedly uncomfortable and would lack a standout app upon release. 

According to the report, some Apple executives are aware of the challenges the headset and company might face, and they are trying to set realistic expectations. But executives expect interest in the headset to grow over time. 

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gurman also reported in his Power On newsletter that Apple's iOS 17 will likely be a larger release than expected. Initially, iOS 17 was thought to focus on bug fixes and performance improvements. But Gurman wrote that the goal of iOS 17 now will be to bring some of users' most requested features to iPhones. 

For more on Apple, check out what else to expect from Apple's AR/VR headset and iOS 16.4 beta features testers can try now.

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iOS 17 just got exciting with report that ‘most requested features' are on the way - Macworld

For the past several months, we’ve assumed that the next iOS release would be light on features and heavy on performance improvements and bug fixes. But a new report says that might not be the case—in fact, iOS 17 might be the most exciting release in years.

According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Apple has pivoted from its initial strategy for iOS 17, which was originally “focused more on fixing bugs and improving performance than adding new features.” Now, he reports, Apple is all-in on new features, and iOS 17 is “expected to boast several ‘nice to have’ features” when it arrives this fall. 

While he doesn’t divulge what those features could be, he claims that they are among the “most requested features” by iPhone users. It’s not hard to make a list of features we’ve wanted for years—multiple users, custom icons, multiple timers, multitasking, separate volume controls for media and calls, etc.—but Gurman says the features will be smaller ones since iOS 17 “lacks a tentpole improvement like last year’s revamped lock screen.” 

But it’s still an intriguing notion and makes the wait for iOS 17 that much more difficult. While Apple hasn’t officially announced the dates yet, it will show off the next version of iOS at the WWDC keynote this June ahead of its full release this fall. Gurman doesn’t mention whether iPadOS 17 and macOS 14, which will also debut at WWDC, will have the same strategy.

To follow along with the latest rumors, be sure to bookmark our iOS 17 superguide for all the news and rumors as they arrive.

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Adaptive Charging may be adapting itself to Pixel users without alarms - Android Police

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1. Adaptive Charging may be adapting itself to Pixel users without alarms  Android Police
2. Pixel Adaptive Charging might no longer require an alarm  9to5Google
3. Pixel’s Adaptive Charging system might work without Alarms  FoneArena
4. Adapative Charging now gives Pixel owners a much-needed nightly reminder  Android Police
5. Pixel users with Adaptive Charging enabled will now learn when their battery will be at 100%  PhoneArena
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Adaptive Charging may be adapting itself to Pixel users without alarms - Android Police
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How to access ChatGPT plugins, the 'eyes and ears' of OpenAI's chatbot - Mashable

In an announcement on Thursday(Opens in a new tab), OpenAI told the world that ChatGPT will soon have "eyes and ears." Plugins are about to be rolled out, and with them will come a radical expansion of ChatGPT's capabilities.

OpenAI will soon have proprietary plugins, and there will also be third-party plugins. If this doesn't sound exciting, here's an example: ChatGPT sucks at math because its brain is just a language model. If there were a calculator plugin, it wouldn't have to suck at math anymore. Existing plugins appear to allow ChatGPT to browse the internet for information not in its model, go shopping, and more.

There's going to be an iTunes-like "Plugin Store," through which a user can obtain (or possibly purchase) third-party plugins. A tantalizing demo video shows how, once plugins are installed, the necessity to use one of the plugins can be detected by the model itself depending on the nature of the prompt. In its announcement, OpenAI paints a picture of a world in which you can convert your to-do list into a prompt, and plugins can automate both the decision-making and execution of many of your errands.

But no, this world is not quite here. You probably can't try ChatGPT plugins just yet.

How to try ChatGPT plugins right now

ChatGPT plugins are currently only available in the form of a "limited alpha" release for developers and insiders. There's a waitlist page(Opens in a new tab) for those who want access but don't yet have it. Subscribing to OpenAI's paid service, ChatGPT Plus might help, since OpenAI says it's "prioritizing a small number of developers and ChatGPT Plus users."

What is it like using ChatGPT's plugins?

If you're a machine learning engineer with access to the "limited alpha," let's face it: you're not reading this article. If you're just a bystander with more than a passing interest in AI, you might be interested to know how plugins will work.

If that sounds like you, and you've got about forty minutes, you can do a lot worse than this explanation from YouTuber James Briggs. Briggs is seemingly talking to an audience of developers here, but even if you don't speak that language, the video is jargon-light and gives a pretty detailed overview of ChatGPT's retrieval plugin, which is already open source(Opens in a new tab), and looks fairly easy to use.

If any of the things in this video are confusing, there may be a certain chatbot that might be able to help.

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Microsoft reportedly orders AI chatbot rivals to stop using Bing's search data - The Verge

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Microsoft has warned some Bing-powered search engines that it will revoke access to the company’s search index if they continue to use it as the foundation for their AI tools, according to Bloomberg.

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft doesn’t want its rivals to use Bing’s search index to power their AI chatbots, according to a report from Bloomberg. The company reportedly told two unnamed Bing-powered search engines that it will restrict them from accessing Microsoft’s search data altogether if they continue using it with their AI tools.

As noted by Bloomberg, Microsoft licenses out Bing’s search data to several search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and the AI search engine You.com. While DuckDuckGo, for example, uses a combination of Bing and its own web crawler to provide search results, You.com and Neeva also pull some of their results from Bing, helping to conserve some of the time and resources that come along with crawling the entire web.

Microsoft apparently draws the line at using Bing’s search index as fodder for AI chatbots, however. Sources close to the situation tell Bloomberg that Microsoft believes using Bing’s data in this way is a violation of its contract, and that it may choose to terminate its agreements with the search engines accused of misusing this information.

Although we still don’t know which search engines Bloomberg’s referring to in its report, DuckDuckGo, You.com, and have all introduced AI tools of their own. Last month, DuckDuckGo launched DuckAssist, a tool that provides AI-generated summaries from Wikipedia and other sources for certain searches. Meanwhile, You.com offers an AI chat feature that provides answers to users’ questions, and Neeva rolled out a similar AI-powered tool that generates annotated summaries.

“We’ve been in touch with partners who are out of compliance as we continue to consistently enforce our terms across the board,” Microsoft tells Bloomberg. “We’ll continue to work with them directly and provide any information needed to find a path forward.” It’s unclear whether Microsoft took action against any search engines, and the company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

With more companies like Google introducing their takes on OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Microsoft likely wants to make its own search data exclusive to Bing’s chatbot. The tool is already powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, the latest and most powerful version of the company’s language model, and is capable of answering various questions, creating summaries, generating code, writing social media posts, and more.

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Microsoft reportedly orders AI chatbot rivals to stop using Bing's search data - The Verge
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Microsoft wins battle with Sony as UK reverses finding on Activision merger - Ars Technica

Enlarge / Sony's PlayStation 5.

Sony

UK regulators reviewing Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard reversed their stance on a key question today, saying they no longer believe Microsoft would remove the Call of Duty franchise from Sony's PlayStation consoles.

Last month, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) tentatively concluded that a combined Microsoft/Activision Blizzard would harm competition in console gaming. At the time, the CMA said evidence showed that "Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision's games exclusive to its own consoles (or only available on PlayStation under materially worse conditions)." The agency also raised concerns about the merger affecting rivals in cloud gaming.

The preliminary finding was a victory for Sony, which has consistently expressed doubts about Microsoft's promise to keep putting Call of Duty games on PlayStation. But Microsoft argued that the CMA's financial model was flawed and was able to convince the agency to reverse its conclusion. In an announcement today, the CMA said it "received a significant amount of new evidence."

"Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action," CMA Panel Chair Martin Coleman said.

As a result, the CMA panel investigating the deal "updated its provisional findings and reached the provisional conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK," the agency announcement said.

Pulling CoD would cause “significant” financial loss

The updated findings said pulling Call of Duty off PlayStation would cause "a significant net financial loss for the Parties under all scenarios that we considered plausible," but numbers were redacted from the public version of the document.

The CMA said the "most significant new evidence" submitted to the agency relates to Microsoft's financial incentives to make Activision games exclusive to Xbox consoles, adding:

While the CMA's original analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable under most scenarios, new data (which provides better insight into the actual purchasing behaviour of CoD gamers) indicates that this strategy would be significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario. On this basis, the updated analysis now shows that it would not be commercially beneficial to Microsoft to make CoD exclusive to Xbox following the deal, but that Microsoft will instead still have the incentive to continue to make the game available on PlayStation.

UK hasn’t dropped cloud gaming concerns

This should make it easier for Microsoft to get UK approval for the merger, but the company still needs to convince regulators that the deal won't harm competition in cloud gaming.

"Our provisional view that this deal raises concerns in the cloud gaming market is not affected by today's announcement. Our investigation remains on course for completion by the end of April," Coleman said.

The CMA's provisional findings last month said evidence "indicates that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision's games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service (or only available on other services under materially worse conditions). Microsoft already accounts for an estimated 60-70 percent of global cloud gaming services and also has other important strengths in cloud gaming from owning Xbox, the leading PC operating system (Windows) and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming)."

Buying Activision Blizzard, the CMA said, "would reinforce this strong position and substantially reduce the competition that Microsoft would otherwise face in the cloud gaming market in the UK. This could alter the future of gaming, potentially harming UK gamers, particularly those who cannot afford or do not want to buy an expensive gaming console or gaming PC."

Microsoft, in response, told the CMA that "Activision games would not have been available to cloud gaming services absent the Merger," and that there's "no evidence that Activision content would have been an important input for cloud gaming providers." Microsoft also said its proposed licensing remedies would "ensure wide availability of CoD and other Activision titles on cloud gaming services."

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Microsoft wins battle with Sony as UK reverses finding on Activision merger - Ars Technica
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Bard vs. ChatGPT vs. Bing AI Chatbots: Why Google Built a Boring One - The Wall Street Journal

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OpenAI turns ChatGPT into a platform overnight with addition of plugins - VentureBeat

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OpenAI today announced its support of new third-party plugins for ChatGPT, and it already has Twitter buzzing about the company’s potential platform play.

In a blog post, the company stated that the plugins are “tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services.”

A sign of OpenAI’s accelerating dominance

The announcement was quickly received by the public as a signal of OpenAI‘s ambitions to further its dominance by turning ChatGPT into a developer platform.

we are starting our rollout of ChatGPT plugins.

you can install plugins to help with a wide variety of tasks. we are excited to see what developers create!https://t.co/NQ684Yp2LK pic.twitter.com/m7b6vJrj5D

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 23, 2023

“OpenAI is seeing ChatGPT as a platform play,” tweeted Marco Mascorro, cofounder of Fellow AI.

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And @gregmushen tweeted: “I think the introduction of plugins to ChatGPT is a threat to the App Store. It creates a new platform with new monetization methods.”

In sharing the announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted: “We are starting our rollout of ChatGPT plugins. you can install plugins to help with a wide variety of tasks. we are excited to see what developers create!”

OpenAI, he said, is offering a web browsing plugin and a code execution plugin. He added that the company is open-sourcing the code for a retrieval plugin.

The plugins, he said, are “very experimental still,” but maintained that “we think there’s something great in this direction; it’s been a heavily requested feature.”

ChatGPT plugins: Major milestone in development of AI chat

OpenAI announced that plugin developers who have been invited off the company’s waitlist can use its documentation to build a plugin for ChatGPT. The first plugins have already been created by companies including Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, OpenTable and Zapier.

According to Expedia, their new plugin simplifies trip planning for ChatGPT users. “Until now, ChatGPT could identify what to do and where to stay, but it couldn’t help travelers shop and book,” said a press representative in an email.

Now, once a traveler enables the Expedia plugin, they can bring a trip itinerary created through a conversation with ChatGPT “to life” with information powered by Expedia’s travel data including real-time availability and pricing of flights, hotels, vacation rentals, activities and car rentals. When ready to book, they’ll be sent to Expedia, where they can log in to see options personalized to what they prefer, as well as member discounts, loyalty rewards and more.

The update represents a major milestone in the development of AI chat as a platform for accessing and interacting with the internet. ChatGPT is not only providing a service, it is creating an ecosystem where developers can create and distribute their own plugins for the benefit of users. This is similar to how Apple’s App Store revolutionized the mobile industry by allowing third-party apps to flourish on its devices. ChatGPT’s plugin feature could potentially open up new possibilities and markets for AI chat in the future.

OpenAI said they would begin extending plugin alpha access to users and developers from its waitlist and plan to roll out larger-scale access “over time.”

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