Today’s Cache | Apple to update European browser options; Microsoft’s new Phi-3.5 models; YouTube’s AI chatbot to recover hacked accounts | Photo credit: REUTERS
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Apple to update EU browser options
Apple to change how users choose browser options in European Unionadd a dedicated section to change default apps and make more apps deletable, the company said Thursday. The iPhone maker has been under pressure from regulators to make the changes after the EU’s Digital Markets Act came into effect on March 7, requiring big tech companies to offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web browsers on a “choice screen.”
The new rules require mobile software makers to display the choice screen where users can select a browser, search engine, and virtual assistant when setting up their phone, which previously came with preferred options from Apple and Google. In an update later this year, Apple users will be able to select a default browser directly from the choice screen after going through a mandatory list of options.
New Phi-3.5 models from Microsoft
Microsoft has released the latest batch of small open-source AI models in the Phi series, called Phi-3.5. The company claimed that the three small language models beat competitors including Google’s Gemini 1.5 Flash, Meta’s Llama 3.1, and even OpenAI’s GPT-4o in some benchmarks. The set of three new Phi-3.5 models includes the 3.82 billion parameter Phi-3.5-mini-instruct, the 41.9 billion parameter Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct, and the 4.15 billion parameter Phi-3.5-vision-instruct, all of which were designed for tasks such as basic and fast reasoning, more powerful reasoning, and vision tasks such as image and video analysis, respectively.
All three models are available for free download and can be run using a local tool like Ollama. Despite its small size, the Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct model can process images as well as text and is also multilingual. The model performed very well in reasoning tasks and was only beaten by GPT-4o-mini among its rivals.
YouTube AI Chatbot to Recover Hacked Accounts
YouTube announced a new AI chatbot to help users recover their accounts Google accounts that have been compromised by hackers. Dubbed a “troubleshooter,” this feature is available on Google’s support page and can be accessed through the YouTube Help Center. The chatbot then asks the account owner a series of questions and helps them secure their hacked Google login while undoing any changes made to their account.
The support assistant is currently available in English and is limited to a select number of creators, but Google has said it will gradually expand the feature to all YouTube creators. There have been cases in the past where YouTube accounts of large creators have been hacked, while smaller partner accounts that have been hacked have taken a long time to resolve.
