If you wanted to previously find an image that perfectly matched what you saw in your head online, you had to type in a wordy search inquiry. You’d hit send and hope you find the perfect match from the billions of images out there.
Now, that mental snapshot can be crafted in seconds by artificial intelligence and sometimes it’s even better than you could imagine.
“We want to solve a big problem that everyone has, which is roughly half of the searches today are going unanswered,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer. “But with A.I., we can now start to answer more and more of those questions.”
Microsoft invested $10 billion in Open A.I., the artificial intelligence research laboratory responsible for text-based ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E. It recently combined its powers with its search engine Bing. Not only will it store the searches, it will use third-party apps like Open Table and the breadth of the internet to give you simplified answers. Think of it as the modern version of Ask Jeeves, but it actually works, Mehdi said.
“You can just talk to it like an everyday person, and the A.I. does all the work and comes back with simple answers,” he explained.
When you describe something to Bing through its chat function and ask for an image, it will generate it for you using DALL-E technology in seconds -- even if it’s something that never existed like Baby Yoda sharing a drink with Boba Fett in Mos Eisley.
Or you can ask Bing to come up with reference images to give to a contractor. Mehdi recently queried for pictures of a mid-Century modern-style bar to serve as inspiration for an upcoming house remodeling project.
“It's going to make people in their current jobs that much more productive, that much more effective, than we're seeing that today,” Mehdi said. “Second, it’s going to create a new set of jobs where people can learn how to take advantage of the A.I.”
If what you need can only be described in words, Bing and ChatGPT combine together to give you answers with context. Instead of having to research individual items and draw your own conclusions, it will compile the results for you. It can be especially useful when it comes to travel.
“Travel planning takes multiple weeks, people taking lots of notes, lots of tabs, having to compile it together,” he said. “What you can see here is in one chat session, you can literally just ask multiple questions like we were saying, “Hey, give me a day-by-day itinerary. Tell me about the festivals. What should I wear? What should I know about the customs of coming in?”
At the end of the day, it will save us time.
“We're automating the mundane tasks, the things you don't want us to do so it frees you up to do the really interesting work,” Mehdi said.
Markets closed the day mixed, and well off their lows of the day following a market meltdown earlier in the session. The Nasdaq staged a comeback late in the day, even amid ongoing worries about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Doug Flynn, certified financial planner and co-founder of Flynn Zito Capito, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the markets' close and what's driving the major indexes.
Two companies recently announced a new partnership aimed at addressing the growing demand to borrow against crypto - digital assets capital markets firm CrossTower is partnering with commercial bank, BankProv. The companies are launching a crypto lending platform that will allow Bitcoin miners to receive loans to invest in crypto mining equipment. The companies say the program also addresses the difficulty of breaking into crypto mining due to the high cost. CrossTower research analyst Martin Gaspar joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Next-gen social sports platform Break the Love recently raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Break the Love's platform and iOS app allows users to discover and book group-based tennis activities, to either learn, train, or compete. The new company has already gotten support from a few big names in the world of tennis, including the coach of Naomi Osaka, as well as the United States Tennis Association and the brand Wilson. Break the Love founder and CEO Trisha Goyal joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The world of NFTs and cannabis are colliding as luxury cannabis company Peakz gears up to launch a digital dispensary in the metaverse. CEO Jessie Grundy and Tiffany McBride, managing director of social equity ventures at The Parent Company, an investor in Peakz, joined Cheddar to break down exactly how a digital dispensary would work. Grundy also talked about offering low-cost NFT courses in an effort to help Oakland, California, residents not miss out on new investing opportunities, and McBride discussed why the tech-forward vision of Grundy was worth investing in for The Parent Company. "He comes with really fresh ideas that he's vetted, that he's experienced in, and I really believe the thinking along Jessie's lines is the future of cannabis," she said. "He's more than just flower and a story. He comes with concepts that are new that are innovative, and that is easy for us to get behind."
Daniel O'Brien, president and global head of enterprise at HTC America, joined Cheddar's "Closing Bell" to discuss new products and services the virtual reality brand showed off at CES 2022, including a wrist tracker — in lieu of controllers — for more accurate interactions connected to its all-in-one headset, the VIVE Focus 3. O'Brien also described a cloud-based, 5G content delivery system. "We partnered up with Lumen Technologies and from six miles away we delivered high bandwidth VR to a headset directly in the Wynn Hotel during CES," he said. "And people were able to walk around in their virtual experience through a wireless signal."
Samsung unveiled a slew of new electronics and upgraded designs at CES 2022. With a heavy focus on gaming and the future of work, the company showed off its all new Odyssey Ark, which boasts a massive 55 in. curved display designed to give users a more immersive and captivating experience. Sang Kim, SVP, Samsung Electronics joined Cheddar's Michelle Castillo to discuss the company's biggest launches as well as major trends to watch in 2022.
The UK's Information Commissioner's office is scrutinizing Facebook's parent company Meta over child safety practices linked to the Oculus headset, according to a report. The agency is looking to question the tech giant about how it's protecting children from harmful experiences in virtual reality.
