It’s a wrap: News this week (May 11 — May 17)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From OpenAI’s GPT-4o to Google I/O 2024 to acquisitions of the week, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

AWS Bedrock generally available in Mumbai region

AWS announced the general availability of its managed services suite Bedrock in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region (also called BOM). To be sure, AWS Bedrock, which was introduced last year, offers a range of foundational models using which customers can build and scale their generative AI applications.

Its general availability globally was announced in September 2023, however, its availability in the BOM region will support customers across the country, including public sector organisations and companies in regulated industries, to innovate and to have choices on where they can run and store applications, the company said in a statement.

OpenAI’s GPT-4o

Just a day ahead of Google’s flagship Google I/O 2024 event, ChatGPT maker OpenAI announced GPT-4o, which the company calls a step closer to natural human-machine interaction. The ‘o’ in the name stands for omni. It accepts multimodal inputs — that includes text, audio, image, or even a combination of the three — and generates multimodal output. 

OpenAI demonstrated the capabilities of GPT-4o through a series of live demos, which included real-time language translation, describing the surrounding environment, two GPT-4o systems interacting with each other, playing rock-paper-scissor, cracking jokes, and customer service (in proof of context), among others. 

Google I/O held this week

Google hosted its flagship Google I/O event this week, making various generative AI announcements. Google launched a lightweight model called Gemini 1.5 Flash, which the company says is the fastest Gemini model in API. 

Google also launched a video generation model Veo, which is widely touted as rival to OpenAI’s Sora. It uses natural language and visual semantics as input to generate videos in 1080p resolution in different cinematic and visual styles. Another major announcement from Google is the introduction of Project Astra, a universal artificial intelligence (AI) agent built on the Gemini model. Other important highlights from the event include the introduction of Trillium, Imagen 3, and VideoFX, among others tools and solutions.

In separate but related news, Google Cloud on Friday said that it is bringing its AI-powered security operations (SecOps) region to India to comply with India's data localisation norms. This means that enterprises in the country can now store their Google security operations customer data in the Mumbai region.

Additionally, telecom services provider Airtel announced a long-term collaboration with Google Cloud to deliver cloud solutions to Indian businesses. Under this partnership, Airtel’s customers, which include more than 2,000 large enterprises and one million emerging businesses, will access a suite of cloud-managed services to accelerate cloud adoption and modernisation. 

TCS sets up human-centric AI CoE in France

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the establishment of a Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre of Excellence in Paris during the Choose France Summit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron.

The new AI center will be located in the upcoming TCS PacePort in the La Défense area of Paris, which will be inaugurated in June 2024. It will become the seventh facility in TCS' global Pace network, following locations in Amsterdam, London, New York, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Tokyo.

Infor concludes Infor Velocity World Tour in Mumbai

On May 17, the US-based enterprise cloud software provider Infor concluded the Infor Velocity World Tour in Mumbai. This executive event gathered CXOs, industry analysts, and expert speakers. Among various keynotes and discussions, the company announced the launch of two new solutions: Infor GenAI and ESG Reporting. The GenAI solution is designed for companies across all industries, from healthcare to manufacturing to distribution, that are seeking to leverage technology to enhance productivity and agility. On the other hand, Infor ESG Reporting aims to assist customers in meeting the growing demand and evolving requirements from both internal and external stakeholders regarding environmental footprint reporting, simplifying the process.

IT services doyen Vineet Nayyar passes away

Former vice-chairman of Tech Mahindra, Vineet Nayyar passed away on Thursday at 85. He also served as the Managing Director of HCL Corporation and as the Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies. He was also the founder & CEO of HCL Perot Systems. A former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Nayyar worked with the World Bank for over 10 years in different posts including the Chief for the Energy, Infrastructure and Finance Divisions for East Asia and Pacific.