In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can be easy to overlook the important events of the week. But fear not! We have you covered with the Weekly Tech Wrap, a roundup of the top 5 news stories of the week that made waves in the world of technology. Without further ado, let’s get started. This week, Samsung made a number of major announcements at its Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris, Elon Musk explained how Neuralink may soon be able to give people superpowers, WhatsApp is reportedly working on improving its meta-AI capabilities and more.
Top 5 tech news of the week:
1) Samsung launches Galaxy Z Flip 6, Z Fold 6 and other products:
Samsung unveiled a host of new products at its Galaxy Unpacked 2024 event in Paris. The new product lineup includes Galaxy Z Flip 6, Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, Galaxy Watch Ultra, Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Ring.
Both Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 are powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. The Z Fold 6 has a front camera of 10 megapixels, and 4 megapixels under the display camera. On the rear side, it features three cameras — 12 MP Ultra Wide, 50 MP wide-angle with 2x optical quality zoom and 10 MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is priced at $1899. In India, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is priced at ₹164999.
Galaxy Flip 6, on the other hand, features a 50 MP Wide 2x Optical Quality Zoom and 12MP Ultra Wide camera on the rear. It has a 4000mAh, 300mAh more battery capacity compared to Galaxy Z Flip5. The latest Samsung flip phone will be available in 256GB and 512GB storage variants and will start at a price of ₹1,09,999.
2) Meta AI on WhatsApp could soon get a major upgrade:
WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new update that will allow Meta AI to reply to and edit photos sent by users. The new feature was spotted by WABetainfo in the WhatsApp Beta version 2.24.14.20 and is likely to incorporated soon into the stable build.
The report states that WhatsApp is testing the implementation of a new chat button which will allow users to share their pictures directly with Meta AI. After sending the images to Meta AI, users will be able to ask the chatbot to identify a particular object or provide context. Moreover, users will also be able to ask Meta AI to make changes to an image via a text prompt.
The screenshot shared by WABetainfo also reveals that WhatsApp could state that it will provide full control to users over their pictures since they would be allowed to delete them at any time.
3) Apple could start iPad and AirPods production in India:
According to sources cited by Moneycontrol, Apple‘s earlier collaboration with China-based BYD for iPad production was halted due to geopolitical restrictions. Now, Apple is resuming its efforts and may soon secure an Indian partner to kickstart iPad manufacturing. Additionally, Apple is gearing up to commence AirPods production in India by early 2025.
The company is also looking to boost the production of components for AirPods wireless charging cases through Jabil in India, adds the report. Trial production of these components has already begun in Pune, and Apple is considering a similar collaboration with Taiwan’s Foxconn. Pending successful quality testing and approval, Jabil will increase commercial production of these parts to meet both export and domestic demand.
4) OpenAI may be working on a breathrough reasoning technology called ‘Strawberry’:
A new report by Reuters, Sam Altman-led OpenAI is working on a new reasoning technology for its large language models (LLMs), codenamed strawberry. The ChatGPT maker is reportedly hoping that Strawberry will dramatically improve the reasoning capabilities of its AI models.
Strawberry will reportedly mark a specialized way of processing an AI models after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets. It includes a specialized way of ‘post-training’ OpenAI’s generative AI models or adapting them in order to improve their performance in specific ways even after they have been ‘trained’ on generalized data.
OpenAI reportedly wants to use Strawberry for performing long-horizon tasks (LHT), which require an AI model to plan ahead and perform a series of actions over an extended period of time.
5) Elon Musk’s plan to give ‘superpowers’ to humans:
Elon Musk‘s brain-computer startup Nerualink will implant its device into a second human patient in around a week, top company executives confirmed in a briefing on X. So far, Arizona-based Noland Arbaugh is the only person to receive the brain chip implant, but Musk says he hopes this number would go up into high single digits by the end of this year.
In a briefing live-telecast on X (formerly Twitter), Musk said, the long term goal of Nerualink is to “mitigate the longer civilizational risk of AI”. He said Nerualink can help create a ‘a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence’.
“I think cybernetic superpowers are likely in the future,” Musk added.
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Published: 14 Jul 2024, 05:15 PM IST
