(This article is part of Today’s Cache, The Hindu’s newsletter on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, innovation and policy. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.)
Telegram CEO charged, banned from leaving France
The French police has issued preliminary charges against Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for allowing alleged criminal activity on the messaging app and barred him from leaving the country until further investigation. Free speech critics have spoken up against Durov’s arrest and detention. The investigation that started earlier this year led to Durov being arrested on Saturday at the Le Bourget airport in Paris. He was eventually released after four days of questioning.
Durov was let off for a bail worth 5 million euros on the condition that he show up to a police station twice a week. Authorities have accused Durov of refusing to share documents with investigators when asked. The first preliminary charge against was of “complicitly in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organised group,” which if found to be true could lead to a 10-year sentence and a 500,000 euro fine. Prosecutors said that Durov was the only one who had been implicated till now but there could be more people eventually.
Nvidia stock slips
AI chipmaker Nvidia has announced results which beat Wall Street estimates pushed by the demand for AI chips in the current boom but still fell short of pleasing investors. The company’s revenue rose to $30 billion up by 122% from a year ago and 15% from the previous quarter while the net income stood at $16.6 billion. But Nvidia shares fell by around 4% in after-hours trading.
As tech companies continue to spend massively on AI chips and data centers, Nvidia has grown to become one of the biggest companies in the stock market. Earlier in June, the Jensen Huang-led company became the world’s most valuable company in the S&P 500 index for some time. Currently, its valued at $3 trillion. In the first half of the year, the company’s stock was traded at a little more than 100 times the company’s earnings over the whole of last year.
Google’s Gems will allow users to customise chatbots
Google has released a new feature that will allow users to make personalised AI chatbots called Gems for different sets of tasks. Users could have a chatbot with a different character as a partner while writing, coding or working out. Users simply have to type in the introduction they want, the style of responses they want and the character they want and then activate it with a click. They have also released several prebuilt Gems for tasks like troubleshooting code and helping with writing and to describe complex topics.
Google has also upgraded its AI image generator, Imagen 3 so users can generate AI images of people again after it was paused in February. Images of people showed real persons in a different race after it was launched to the public but the company said they have implemented guardrails now to prevent the tool from overcorrecting diversity. The feature has been released now to paid users but will gradually be made available to everyone.
