(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.)
Google brings generative AI home
After the hurried and chaotic release of its AI-powered Bard chatbot in February that sent shares tumbling and came without a number of essential features, Google has rolled out generative AI in web searches for India-based users. The Search Generative Experience (SGE) is an opt-in experiment in Search Labs. Indian users can switch between Hindi and English language options, though the Alphabet unit has not yet said whether other languages will be made available. Users can control the search experience via voice commands, and advertisements will also be displayed.
The new search experience is meant to be faster. It should also be able to help with coding-based questions and debugging. The SGE experiment can be accessed via the Chrome desktop and will soon come to Android and iOS.
Social media firms failed to stop Russian misinformation
An independent study for the European Union concluded that Big Tech giants with millions of users failed to manage the spread of pro-Russia propaganda and misinformation related to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The platforms under the scanner included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (name changed to X), YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram.
The study paid special attention to Twitter’s change of ownership and how misinformation spread as the platform’s safety standards were compromised. EU authorities are concerned that Russia may try to interfere with the European parliamentary elections. The region’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect recently, to more strictly regulate platforms with at least 45 million users.
India tops YouTube video removals
With 1.9 million videos in India removed by YouTube, the country tops the list in terms of takedowns due to violations of the video sharing platform’s community guidelines. India has been a major contender in this area since about 2020, with potentially offending videos being flagged by both humans and machines.
This led to over 390,000 appeals from creators whose videos were taken down, with around a third of entries removed before they received a single view. For context, 6.48 million videos were removed globally. A majority of offending videos violated child safety policies, while others were violent or bullied people.
