Aurelia Butler

REDMOND, Wash. (Reuters) -Microsoft Corp is revamping its Bing search engine and Edge Web browser with artificial intelligence, the company said on Tuesday, signaling its ambition to retake the lead in consumer technology markets where it has fallen behind.The maker of the Windows operating system is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment as it directly challenges Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc’s Google, which for years has outpaced Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in search and browser technology.Now, Microsoft is rolling out an intelligent chatbot to live alongside Bing’s search results, putting AI that can summarize web pages, synthesize disparate sources, even compose emails and translate them into more consumers’ hands. Microsoft expects every percentage point of share it gains will bring in another $2 billion in search advertising revenue.Working with the startup OpenAI, Microsoft is aiming to leapfrog its Silicon Valley rival and potentially claim vast returns from tools generally that speed up content creation, automating tasks, if not jobs themselves. That would affect products for business, such as the cloud-computing and collaboration tools Microsoft sells, as well as the consumer internet.”This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category,” Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella told reporters in a briefing at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.The company’s share of search so far is about an estimated tenth of the market. Still, many investors see new technology as a win for all players. Microsoft’s stock closed 4.2% higher on Tuesday, while Alphabet gained 4.6%. The power of so-called generative AI that can create virtually any text or image dawned on the public last year with the release of ChatGPT, the chatbot sensation from OpenAI. Its human-like responses to any prompt have given people new ways to think about the possibilities of marketing, writing term papers or disseminating news, or how to query information online.Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is live in limited preview on desktop computers and will be available for mobile devices in coming weeks. The company hopes user feedback will improve its AI, which Microsoft officials said may still produce factually inaccurate information known as a hallucination. It meanwhile has pursued work to safeguard against misuse of its tech.Underpinning the new Bing is what Microsoft is calling the Prometheus model – OpenAI’s most powerful technology informed as needed by real-time web data from Bing. That means Bing’s chatbot can brief consumers on current events, a step beyond ChatGPT’s answers that currently are limited to data as of 2021.Jordi Ribas, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for search and AI, told Reuters the tech advances his team witnessed last summer emboldened the company to move ahead with an AI-infused Bing.Microsoft’s chief financial officer also said OpenAI’s “new, next-generation” technology is powering its search engine, though officials declined to specify if this entailed the startup’s highly anticipated upgrade known as GPT-4.FROM BUSINESS TO CONSUMERMicrosoft is aiming to market OpenAI’s technology, including ChatGPT, to its cloud customers and add the same power to its entire suite of products, not just search.In the near term, Gartner (NYSE:IT) analyst Jason Wong said Microsoft’s “partnership with OpenAI is more relevant for its business customers.” Still, he said, it could offer “disruptive opportunities” in consumer businesses as well. “Except for gaming, Microsoft has not been a leader in key consumer technologies, such as search, mobile and social media,” he added.Google has taken note of Microsoft’s challenge nonetheless. On Monday it unveiled a chatbot of its own called Bard, while it is planning to release its own AI in search that can synthesize material when no simple answer exists online.Microsoft’s decision to update its Edge browser will likewise intensify competition with Google’s Chrome competitor. However, the Redmond-based company expects to roll out the updated Bing to other browsers eventually.The rivalry in search is now among the technology industry’s biggest, as OpenAI sets up Microsoft to expand its 9% share at Google’s expense, said Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Alphabet reported $42.6 billion in Google Search and other revenue, while Microsoft posted $3.2 billion from search and news advertising.PRACTICAL USESMicrosoft executives said the new Bing would change how people find information on the internet.A chatbot for instance can help users refine queries more easily and give more relevant, up-to-date results.The AI-driven search engine would be able to give clear answers in plain language, synthesizing what Bing found on the web and in its own data vaults, rather than simply spitting out links to websites. Queries on current events would draw more from live data on the internet.At the news briefing with reporters, Microsoft Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated how the AI-enhanced search engine also could make shopping easier. He showed how Bing could estimate, for example, whether a certain type of seat could fit in the back of a car by pulling together web data on one’s vehicle dimensions and on the shopping product in question.Within the Edge browser, Bing’s AI can present takeaways of financial results or other web pages as well, aiming to save readers from having to make sense of a long or complicated document, Microsoft said. It can suggest computer code, too.Behind these efforts is Microsoft’s plan to invest in supercomputer development and cloud support so OpenAI can release still more sophisticated technology and aim at the level of machine intelligence dreamed up in science fiction.Already, results of this collaboration are manifesting beyond search. Last week Microsoft announced the startup’s AI will generate meeting notes in Teams, its collaboration software, as well as suggest email replies to vendors using its Viva Sales subscription. More

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s current account surplus fell sharply in December after a record rise the prior month, finance ministry data showed on Wednesday, highlighting the impact of persistent trade deficits and a weak yen on the country’s once-solid balance of payments. The current account surplus stood at 33.4 billion yen ($255.51 million) in December, down steeply from a surplus of 1.8 trillion yen the previous month that was driven by income gains from securities investments and hefty Japanese investments overseas.The latest figure also undershot economists’ median estimates for 98.4 billion yen surplus in a Reuters poll.Japan’s current account surpluses have long been regarded as a sign of export might and a source of confidence in the safe-haven yen, but the account has occasionally fallen into the red on a monthly basis in recent years partly as a weaker yen has boosted the costs of imports.The primary income surplus, which includes direct investments, and interest payments and dividends from past investments overseas, hit 1.8 trillion yen, making it the largest amount for the month of December since comparable data became available in 1985.For the whole of 2022, the current account surplus fell the most on record — by 10.1 trillion yen from the previous year — to reach 11.4 trillion yen. A weak yen and rises in energy prices took their toll, resulting in record trade deficits, although this shortfall was offset by a record amount of primary income gains.Some analysts worry that a dwindling current account surplus could put further downward pressure on the Japanese yen over coming quarters. The yen is down nearly 20% against the dollar so far this year.($1 = 132.2500 yen) More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -France and Germany’s economy ministers found a willingness in Washington to engage with Europe’s concerns over subsidies for green technologies under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, but emerged with few specifics from meetings with top officials there.European capitals worry that the act, designed to shelter U.S. companies from the impact of price rises as well as subsidize investments in new green technologies, will undermine their firms’ competitiveness in the giant North American market.German Economy Minister Robert Habeck and his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, said after a meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that they agreed there had to be transparency on the specific subsidies so that the European Union could match them if necessary.”It’s a process, and in a process you go step by step,” Le Maire told reporters. Earlier, Habeck said there was no rush to reach a solution on the question of access to key raw materials.The symbolic trip by the duo in charge of Europe’s two largest economies was designed to highlight the matter’s importance, Habeck added.At stake is Europe’s competitiveness in future industries such as electric vehicles and battery manufacturing, together with access to the raw materials that go into them.After meetings with Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and White House officials, Habeck and Le Maire emerged with few specifics other than pledges to be clear about their competing green subsidies.While Canadian and Mexican companies are eligible to benefit from many of its provisions, the act does not help European competitors.Noting the agreement on both sides on the need for transparency on subsidies, Habeck said, “We will (create) a technical group to make this transparency work.” “You cannot have any fair competition if there is not full transparency on the level of public subsidies and public tax credits that are granted to private companies,” added Le Maire.Among the meeting’s achievements, Habeck listed a commitment to have the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) develop common standards for green goods and an agreement to explore creating a “critical minerals” club to help both sides of the Atlantic reduce dependence on China for minerals in batteries.U.S. RESPONSESReadouts from U.S. officials were less specific about the outcomes and signaled no major concessions. The U.S. Treasury said Yellen discussed both the U.S. and European clean energy subsidy plans, “stressing the need to stimulate innovation and technology development and deployment on both sides of the Atlantic” to meet climate goals.The Commerce Department said Raimondo noted in the meetings that the “IRA is a key tool for the United States and is the most significant U.S. climate legislation to date.” But Commerce said she applauded the TTC’s work to promote transparency for U.S. and EU semiconductor subsidies and support supply chains. Some U.S. lawmakers say opening the act’s tax credits up to European rivals would lessen the competitive advantages they would confer on U.S. companies and limit U.S. investments. More

Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives will follow themes he has repeatedly highlighted since taking office. AMERICA, THE GREAT “The story of America is a story of progress and resilience…We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again.” “Today, COVID no longer controls our lives. And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.”THE US ECONOMY “Two years ago our economy was reeling. As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years. Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much.””My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.””Maybe that’s you watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it.””That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind. Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years. This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.”APPEALS TO REPUBLICANS”To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress. The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.””And that’s always been my vision for the country: to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America: the middle class, to unite the country. We’ve been sent here to finish the job!” More

The previous year was marked by heavy losses in the capital markets amid uncertainty triggered by the war in Ukraine, decades-high inflation and fears of an imminent recession. The benchmark S&P 500 Index closed 2022 roughly 19% lower. Amid this economic backdrop, investors have rushed to pull capital from risky assets and equities, choosing to instead hold cash or move towards safe-haven bond markets. Shares in Prudential fell 3% in extended trading after results. The company reported a 21% decline in AUM in the quarter to $1.38 trillion. “Our fourth quarter operating results reflect lower variable investment and fee income, partially offset by improved COVID-19 mortality,” said Chief Executive Charles Lowrey in a statement.Prudential added it had made headway through the year in moving business focus from market-sensitive revenue segments to more stable and recurring sources of income, in line with previously announced plans. “We made further progress on our transformation to become a higher growth, less market sensitive, and more nimble company,” Lowrey added.Last week, rival MetLife Inc (NYSE:MET)’s profit also declined due to market weakness, dragging investment returns at the insurer.The insurer’s after-tax adjusted operating income was $907 million, or $2.42 per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with $1.23 billion, or $3.18 per share, a year earlier. More

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A global ransomware outbreak has scrambled servers belonging to Florida’s Supreme Court and several universities in the United States and Central Europe, according to a Reuters analysis of ransom notes posted online to stricken servers.Those organizations are among more than 3,800 victims of a fast-spreading digital extortion campaign that locked up thousands of servers in Europe over the weekend, according to figures tallied by Ransomwhere, a crowdsourced platform that tracks digital extortion attempts and online ransom payments and whose figures are drawn from internet scans. Ransomware is among the internet’s most potent scourges. Although this particular extortion campaign was not sophisticated, it drew warnings from national cyber watchdogs in part because of the speed of its spread. Ransomwhere did not name individual victims, but Reuters was able to identify some by looking up internet protocol address data tied to the affected servers via widely used internet scanning tools such as Shodan.The extent of the disruption to the affected organizations, if any, was not clear.Florida Supreme Court spokesman Paul Flemming told Reuters that the affected infrastructure had been used to administer other elements of the Florida state court system, and that it was segregated from the Supreme Court’s main network.”Florida Supreme Court’s network and data are secure,” he said, adding that the rest of the state court system’s integrity also was not affected.A dozen universities contacted by Reuters, including the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Rice University in Houston and institutions of higher learning in Hungary and Slovakia, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.Reuters also contacted the hackers via an account advertised on their ransom notes but only received a payment demand in return. They did not respond to additional questions. Ransomwhere said the cybercriminals appear to have extorted only $88,000, a modest haul by the standard of multimillion-dollar ransoms regularly demanded by some hacking gangs.One cybersecurity expert said the outbreak – thought to have exploited a two-year-old vulnerability in VMWare Inc software – was typical of automated attacks on servers and databases that have been carried out by hackers for years.VMWare has urged customers to upgrade to the latest versions of its software. “This is nothing unusual,” said Patrice Auffret, founder of French internet scanning company Onyphe. “The difference is the scale.”Also uncommon is the highly visible nature of the outbreak, which began earlier this month. Because internet-facing servers were affected, researchers and tracking services like Ransomwhere or Onyphe could easily follow the criminals’ trail.Digital safety officials in Italy said on Monday that there was no evidence pointing to “aggression by a state or hostile state-like entity.” Samuli Kononen, an information security specialist at the Finnish National Cyber Security Centre, said the attack was likely carried out by a criminal gang, although he added that it was not particularly sophisticated as many victims had managed to salvage their data without paying a ransom.”More experienced ransomware groups usually don’t make that kind of mistake,” he said. More