New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Sam Altman-run OpenAI on Monday launched ‘GPT-4o’ — a new version of its GPT-4 model which can generate any combination of text, audio, and image outputs.

GPT-4o’s text and image capabilities have been rolled out for all ChatGPT users.

“We are making GPT-4o available in the free tier, and to Plus users with up to 5 times higher message limits,” the company said during a livestream event.

OpenAI will soon roll out a new version of Voice Mode with GPT-4o in alpha within ChatGPT.

“Our new model: GPT-4o, is our best model ever. it is smart, it is fast, it is natively multimodal,” Altman posted on X.

“It is available to all ChatGPT users, including on the free plan! so far, GPT-4 class models have only been available to people who pay a monthly subscription. this is important to our mission; we want to put great AI tools in the hands of everyone,” he noted.

GPT-4o can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in a conversation.

GPT-4o is especially better at vision and audio understanding compared to existing models.

The company plans to launch support for GPT-4o’s new audio and video capabilities to a small group of trusted partners in the API in the coming weeks.

With GPT-4o, the company trained a single new model end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning that all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network.

“Because GPT-4o is our first model combining all of these modalities, we are still just scratching the surface of exploring what the model can do and its limitations,” said OpenAI.

The company also launched a Mac desktop app for ChatGPT.

During the event, OpenAI also announced that its custom GPT Store is now available free for users.

The GPT Store will lets users create their own chatbots, called GPTs, and share them.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday announced the creation of a Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence in Paris during the Choose France Summit.

Based at the new TCS PacePort in Paris, the centre will focus on the brain-machine interface, developing empathy in machines, and unleashing the creativity of AI, the company said.

“The new centre will focus on boosting human-centered AI capabilities for the banking & financial services (BFS), manufacturing, and consumer sectors, to start with,” Rammohan Gourneni, Country Head, TCS France, said in a statement.

“We will hire new talent and partner with universities to offer internships and projects to support the National AI Mission,” he added.

The new centre will join France’s growing AI ecosystem and tap into its deep talent base in design and engineering, to build advanced technologies in the space of human-centric AI.

According to the company, the centre will, initially, focus on areas such as brain-computer interface, building empathy in machines, and unleashing the power of AI in arts and culture.

“Our new AI centre in Paris will focus on many of these areas, including the development of talent and leveraging the world-renowned culture that France has for design – reflected in its fashion, luxury sector and museums,” said Harrick Vin, Chief Technology Officer, TCS.

TCS has been making investments in France since starting operations in 1992. With the acquisition of TKS-Teknosoft in 2006, and of Alti in 2013, TCS significantly boosted its presence in the region.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Elon Musk-run Tesla has regained the top position in BEV (battery electric vehicle) sales in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024, despite a 9 per cent (year-on-year) decline, a new report showed on Monday.

Tesla takes the top spot in BEV sales with a 19 per cent market share in Q1, according to Counterpoint Research.

Among the top three OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), only BYD Group achieved growth with 13 per cent (year-on-year), while both Tesla and Volkswagen experienced drops of 9 per cent and 4 per cent (year-on-year), respectively.

According to the report, global passenger EV (BEV+PHEV) sales increased 18 per cent (year-on-year) in Q1 this year.

While BEV sales grew by a modest 7 per cent (year-on-year) during the quarter, PHEV (plug-in hybrid EV) sales grew 46 per cent (year-on-year).

“The cheaper upfront cost of PHEVs when compared to BEVs and the availability of a fuel tank that eliminates range anxiety were among the main reasons for high PHEV demand,” said Research Analyst Abhik Mukherjee.

As per the report, Tesla and BYD have managed to trim their BEV manufacturing costs, allowing them to offer competitive prices.

This has put pressure on other automakers like Ford and GM which are struggling to reduce their manufacturing costs. While analysts believe the EV market is set for significant growth in 2024, there are also signs of a slowdown and annual growth could fall below 20 per cent.

“The levelling off of early-adopter interest suggests a shift in consumer dynamics to the mass market in the long term and a new phase of evolution for the EV industry,” said Associate Director Liz Lee.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) Homegrown geospatial software provider MapmyIndia on Monday reported operating revenue of Rs 379.4 crore in FY24, up 35 per cent (year-on-year).

The deep-tech digital map data platform clocked 47 per cent growth in operating revenue for the January-March period (Q4) to Rs 106.9 crore.

Annual new order bookings grew 63 per cent to Rs 834 crore in FY24.

“Our overall revenue growth during FY24 was broad-based, with consumer tech and enterprise digital transformation revenue up 49 per cent (YoY) to Rs 194 crore, and automotive and mobility tech revenue up 23 per cent to Rs 186 crore on the markets side,” informed Rohan Verma, CEO and Executive Director, MapmyIndia.

On the products side, the map and data revenue grew 23 per cent to Rs 138 crore and platform and IoT revenue surged 42 per cent to Rs 241 crore.

“Our profit after tax (PAT) grew 25 per cent to Rs 134.4 crore, with PAT margins at 32 per cent,” said Rakesh Verma, Chairman and Managing Director, MapmyIndia.

More than 20 million people have downloaded the company’s Mappls app.

“We continued to acquire new B2B and B2B2C customers — including many businesses and enterprises across industry verticals, new-age consumer-tech companies and key government organisations,” said Rohan.

MapmyIndia has built India’s most comprehensive and feature-rich digital map, down to address and urban building level detail, covering all towns, villages, and the entire road network of the country.

–IANS

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New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) As India continues to build a robust and resilient core digital infrastructure, the country can achieve gigabit connectivity to all households or at least 100-110 million households by 2030, industry experts have said.

While India is the leader when it comes to data consumption on mobile broadband and is the fastest-growing mobile broadband market in the world, the country still lags in fixed or wired broadband as compared to developed nations.

According to the independent think tank Broadband India Forum (BIF), data shows that there is an average data consumption of 187 GB per month in India which is still lower than the US data consumption of 641 GB per month.

Furthermore, fixed broadband subscriptions in India are at a mere 2.85 per 100 people, and almost one-fourth of the global average.

Speaking at a conference in the capital, the industry experts stressed the need for a much higher availability of optic fibre to cater to the exponentially increasing quantum of data.

“With fixed broadband data usage reaching 10-20 times mobile data consumption per capita, we need a minimum 20 per cent annual growth rate in fixed broadband subscriptions over the next six years to reach 100 million additional fibre connections,” said TV Ramachandran, President, BIF.

The conference dwelled on building key elements of digital infrastructure like, optic fibre, mobile towers, licensed spectrum, data centres and Wi-Fi, CDNs, undersea cables, etc.

RS Sharma, former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said that India needs to aggressively work to create massive and inclusive optical fibre infrastructure to reach at par with China, US, and Europe in fibre broadband.

“We also need to create millions of Wi-Fi hotspots in the country which ensures affordable broadband availability to our people in rural and semi-urban areas,” said Sharma.

–IANS

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