By Deepti Pathak Ghoul Re is an exciting Roblox game based on the dark universe of ghouls and humans,…
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By Siôn Geschwindt The Netherlands’ hottest tech festival is just around the corner, and the buzz is electric. TNW Conference brings together Europe’s sharpest minds, boldest startups, and game-changing tech leaders at Amsterdam’s NDSM on June 19 and 20. It’s two days packed with big ideas, fierce debates, and innovations that could shape the future. We’ve combed through the packed schedule and picked seven sessions you absolutely can’t miss — the ones set to challenge the status quo and get everyone talking. 1.Where’s Iron Man? Why tech belongs in defence — Purple Stage, Thursday 16:25 – 16:55 Capital is pouring into defence tech…This story continues at The Next Web

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Generative AI (genAI) poses a classic IT dilemma. When it works well, it is amazingly versatile and useful, fueling dreams that it can do almost anything. 

The problem is that when it does not do well, it might deliver wrong answers, override its instructions, and pretty much reinforce the plotlines of every sci-fi horror movie ever made. That is why I was horrified when OpenAI late last month announced changes to make it much easier to give its genAI models full access to any software using Model Context Protocol (MCP).

“We’re adding support for remote MCP servers⁠ in the Responses API, building on the release of MCP support in the Agents SDK⁠,” the company said. “MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs. By supporting MCP servers in the Responses API, developers will be able to connect our models to tools hosted on any MCP server with just a few lines of code.”

There are a large number of companies that have publicly said they will use MCP, including those with  popular apps such as PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, Square, Slack, QuickBooks, Salesforce and GoogleDrive.

The ability for a genAI large language model (LLM) to coordinate data and actions with all of those apps — and many more —certainly sounds attractive. But it’s dangerous because it allows access to mountains of highly sensitive compliance-relevant data — and a mistaken move could deeply hurt customers. MCP would also allow genAI tools to control those apps, exponentially increasing risks.

If the technology today cannot yet do its job properly and consistently, what level of hallucinogens are needed to justify expanding its power to other apps?

Christofer Hoff, the CTO and CSO at LastPass, took to LinkedIn to appeal to common sense. (OK, if one wanted to appeal to common sense, LinkedIn is probably not the best place to start, but that’s a different story.) 

“I love the enthusiasm,” Hoff wrote. “I think the opportunity for end-to-end workflow automation with a standardized interface is fantastic vs mucking about hardcoding your own. That said, the security Jiminy Cricket occupying my frontal precortex is screaming in terror. The bad guys are absolutely going to love this. Who needs malware when you have MCP? Like TCP/IP, MCP will likely go down as another accidental success. At a recent talk, Anthropic noted that they were very surprised at the uptake. And just like TCP/IP, it suffers from critical deficiencies that will have stuff band-aided atop for years to come.”

Rex Booth, the CISO at identity vendor SailPoint, said the concerns are justified. “If you are connecting your agents to a bunch of highly sensitive data sources, you need to have strong safeguards in place,” he said. 

But as Anthropic itself has noted, genAI models do not always obey their own guardrails. 

QueryPal CEO Dev Nag sees inevitable data usage problems. 

“You have to specify what files [the model] is allowed to look at and what files it is not allowed to look at and you have to be able to specify that,” Nag said. “And we already know that LLMs don’t do that perfectly. LLMs hallucinate, make incorrect textual assumptions.”

Nag argued that the risk is — or at least should be — already well known to IT decision makers. “It’s the same as the API risk,” Nag said. “If you open up your API to an outside vendor with their own code, it could do anything. MCP is just APIs on steroids. I don’t think you’d want AI to be looking at your core financials and be able to change your accounting.”

The best defense is to not trust the guardrails on either side of the communication, but to give the exclusion instructions to both sides. In an example with the model trying to access Google Docs, Nag said, dual instructions are the only viable approach.

“It should be enforced at both sides, with the Google Doc layer being told that it can’t accept any calls from the LLM,” Nag said. “On the LLM side, it should be told ‘OK, my intentions are to show my work documents, but not my financial documents.’”

Bottom line: the concept of MCP interactiveness is a great one. The likely near-term reality? Not so much.

Source:: Computer World

As companies move from testing out generative AI tools and models into real-world use — also known as inference— they’re having trouble predicting what that use will lead to in terms of cloud costs, according to a new report from analyst firm Canalys .

“Unlike training, which is a one-time investment, inference represents a recurring operational cost, making it a crucial constraint on the path to commercializing AI,” said Canalys senior director Rachel Brindley in a statement. “As AI moves from research to large-scale deployment, companies are increasingly focusing on cost-effectiveness in inference, comparing models, cloud platforms, and hardware architectures such as GPUs versus custom accelerators.”

According to Canalys researcher Yi Zhang, many AI services rely on usage-based pricing models that charge per token or API call; that makes it difficult to predict costs when scaling up usage.

“When inference costs are volatile or excessively high, companies are forced to limit usage, reduce model complexity, or restrict implementation to high-value scenarios. As a result, the broader potential of AI remains underutilized,” said Zhang.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Two satellites equipped with European tech have delicately pulled off an artificial solar eclipse — giving scientists unmatched views of the Sun’s scorching corona. The European Space Agency (ESA) developed the probes alongside more than 40 space tech firms. Among them are a trio of startups, which contributed several key technologies for the mission: sensors for solar tracking, light detectors to fine-tune positioning, and software that orchestrated the satellites’ intricate flight path. Launched from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre last year, the expedition — Proba-3 — could mark a new era for solar science. The Sun’s inner corona, coloured artificially…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Deepti Pathak Swiping endlessly through Instagram Reels is probably everyone’s favorite pastime. And while most Reels aren’t particularly…
The post How To View Your Instagram Reel History: 4 Ways appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Meta is looking to up its weakening AI game with a key talent grab.

Following days of speculation, the social media giant has confirmed that Scale AI’s founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, is joining Meta to work on its AI efforts.

Meta will invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the AI startup, which specializes in data labeling and model evaluation services. Other key Scale employees will also move over to Meta, while CSO Jason Droege will step in as Scale’s interim CEO.

This move comes as the Mark Zuckerberg-led company goes all-in on building a new research lab focused on “superintelligence,” the next step beyond artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The arrangement also reflects a growing trend in big tech, where industry giants are buying companies without really buying them — what’s increasingly being referred to as “acqui-hiring.” It involves recruiting key personnel from a company, licensing its technology, and selling its products, but leaving it as a private entity.

“This is fundamentally a massive ‘acqui-hire’ play disguised as a strategic investment,” said Wyatt Mayham, lead AI consultant at Northwest AI Consulting. “While Meta gets Scale’s data infrastructure, the real prize is Wang joining Meta to lead their superintelligence lab. At the $14.3 billion price tag, this might be the most expensive individual talent acquisition in tech history.”

Closing gaps with competitors

Meta has struggled to keep up with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other key competitors in the AI race, recently even delaying the launch of its new flagship model, Behemoth, purportedly due to internal concerns about its performance. It has also seen the departure of several of its top researchers.

 “It’s not really a secret at this point that Meta’s Llama 4 models have had significant performance issues,” Mayham said. “Zuck is essentially betting that Wang’s track record building AI infrastructure can solve Meta’s alignment and model quality problems faster than internal development.” And, he added, Scale’s enterprise-grade human feedback loops are exactly what Meta’s Llama models need to compete with ChatGPT and Claude on reliability and task-following.

Data quality, a key focus for Wang, is a big factor in solving those performance problems. He wrote in a note to Scale employees on Thursday, later posted on X (formerly Twitter), that when he founded Scale AI in 2016 amidst some of the early AI breakthroughs, “it was clear even then that data was the lifeblood of AI systems, and that was the inspiration behind starting Scale.”

But despite Meta’s huge investment, Scale AI is underscoring its commitment to sovereignty: “Scale remains an independent leader in AI, committed to providing industry-leading AI solutions and safeguarding customer data,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Scale will continue to partner with leading AI labs, multinational enterprises, and governments to deliver expert data and technology solutions through every phase of AI’s evolution.”

Allowing big tech to side-step notification

But while it’s only just been inked, the high-profile deal is already raising some eyebrows. According to experts, arrangements like these allow tech companies to acquire top talent and key technologies in a side-stepping manner, thus avoiding regulatory notification requirements.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires mergers and acquisitions totaling more than $126 million be reported in advance. Licensing deals or the mass hiring-away of a company’s employees don’t have this requirement. This allows companies to move more quickly, as they don’t have to undergo the lengthy federal review process.

Microsoft’s deal with Inflection AI is probably one of the highest-profile examples of the “acqui-hiring” trend. In March 2024, the tech giant paid the startup $650 million in licensing fees and hired much of its team, including co-founders Mustafa Suleyman (now CEO of Microsoft AI) and Karén Simonyan (chief scientist of Microsoft AI).

Similarly, last year Amazon hired more than 50% of Adept AI’s key personnel, including its CEO, to focus on AGI. Google also inked a licensing agreement with Character AI and hired a majority of its founders and researchers.

However, regulators have caught on, with the FTC launching inquiries into both the Microsoft-Inflection and Amazon-Adept deals, and the US Justice Department (DOJ) analyzing Google-Character AI.

Reflecting ‘desperation’ in the AI industry

Meta’s decision to go forward with this arrangement anyway, despite that dicey backdrop, seems to indicate how anxious the company is to keep up in the AI race.

“The most interesting piece of this all is the timing,” said Mayham. “It reflects broader industry desperation. Tech giants are increasingly buying parts of promising AI startups to secure key talent without acquiring full companies, following similar patterns with Microsoft-Inflection and Google-Character AI.”

However, the regulatory risks are “real but nuanced,” he noted. Meta’s acquisition could face scrutiny from antitrust regulators, particularly as the company is involved in an ongoing FTC lawsuit over its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. While the 49% ownership position appears designed to avoid triggering automatic thresholds, US regulatory bodies like the FTC and DOJ can review minority stake acquisitions under the Clayton Antitrust Act if they seem to threaten competition.

Perhaps more importantly, Meta is not considered a leader in AGI development and is trailing OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, meaning regulators may not consider the deal all that concerning (yet).

All told, the arrangement certainly signals Meta’s recognition that the AI race has shifted from a compute and model size competition to a data quality and alignment battle, Mayham noted.

“I think the [gist] of this is that Zuck’s biggest bet is that talent and data infrastructure matter more than raw compute power in the AI race,” he said. “The regulatory risk is manageable given Meta’s trailing position, but the acqui-hire premium shows how expensive top AI talent has become.”

Source:: Computer World

By Partner Content What works well for one team becomes chaos when scaled to a department or company level—especially…
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By Bogdan Gogulan A few months ago, at the SmallSat Symposium, a panel issued a sobering warning to space startups: do not chase defence dollars at the expense of long-term sustainability. Why? Because companies, particularly in the space sector, might be tempted to follow the money rather than focus on producing valuable products and services with broader, longer-term applications. It’s of course true that any company should be wary of “leaning in” too closely to what seem like passing fads. But the warning overlooks an important reality: the shift towards defence investing is not a trend. It’s a transformation in space and space…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 was home to a range of announcements that offered a glimpse into the future of Apple’s software design and artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, highlighted by a new design language called  Liquid Glass and Apple Intelligence news.

Liquid Glass is designed to add translucency and dynamic movement to Apple’s user interface across iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs. This overhaul aims to make interactions with elements like buttons and sidebars adapt contextually.

However, the real news of WWDC may be what we didn’t see.  Analysts had high expectations for Apple’s AI strategy. While Apple Intelligence was announced, many market watchers reported that it lack the innovation of Google’s and Microsoft’s generative AI rollouts.

The question of whether Apple is playing catch-up lingered at WWDC 2025 Comments from Apple about delaying a significant AI overhaul for Siri were reportedly interpreted as a setback by investors, leading to a negative reaction and drop in stock price.

Follow this page for Computerworld’s coverage of WWDC25.

WWDC25 news and analysis

For developers, Apple’s tools get a lot better for AI

June 12, 2025: Apple announced one important AI update at WWDC this week, the introduction of support for third-party large language models (LLM), such as ChatGPT from within Xcode. It’s a big step that should benefit developers, accelerating app development.

WWDC 25: What’s new for Apple and the enterprise?

June 11, 2025: Beyond its new Liquid Glass UI and other major improvements across its operating systems, Apple introduced a hoard of changes, tweaks, and enhancements for IT admins at WWDC 2025.

What we know so far about Apple’s Liquid Glass UI

June 10, 2025: What Apple has tried to achieve with Liquid Glass is to bring together the optical quality of glass and the fluidity of liquid to emphasize transparency and lighting when using your devices. 

WWDC first look: How Apple is improving its ecosystem

June 9, 2025: While the new user interface design Apple execs highlighted at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) might have been a bit of an eye-candy distraction, Apple’s enterprise users were not forgotten.

Apple infuses AI into the Vision Pro

June 8, 2025: Sluggish sales of Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset haven’t dampened the company’s enthusiasm for advancing the device’s 3D computing experience, which now incorporates AI to deliver richer context and experiences.

WWDC: Apple is about to unlock international business

June 4, 2025: One of the more exciting pre-WWDC rumors is that Apple is preparing to make language problems go away by implementing focused artificial intelligence in Messages, which will apparently be able to translate incoming and outgoing messages on the fly. 

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Qubits, entanglement, superposition, trapped ions, Schrödinger’s cat. These terms sound strange because the world of quantum mechanics — where things can exist in multiple states at once — is strange.  Thankfully, a group of students from TU Delft are bringing these powerful sub-atomic phenomena to life at TNW Conference through an exhibition of abstract artworks. Their project, Emergence Delft, blends science and creativity into a mind-bending exploration of quantum reality. A centrepiece of the exhibition is Coexist — a mesmerising light installation that captures the elusive nature of quantum mechanics through colour, interaction, and design. At its heart, Coexist tackles…This story continues at The Next Web

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By Deepti Pathak Inspired by the super-popular anime and manga series Bleach, Type Soul is a Roblox game where…
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By Siôn Geschwindt Two years ago, German startup Proxima Fusion emerged from stealth with big ambitions to make a little-known stellarator fusion machine a serious contender in the race for commercial fusion energy. Today, the Munich-based company secured Europe’s largest-ever private investment in fusion power — a €130mn Series A funding round from big-name investors including Balderton Capital, Cherry Ventures, and Plural.  Daniel Waterhouse, partner at Balderton Capital, said he now thinks Proxima has taken its place as the leading “European contender” in the global race to commercial fusion. Proxima was the first company to spin out from the Max Planck Institute of…This story continues at The Next Web

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Beyond its new Liquid Glass UI and other major improvements across its operating systems, Apple introduced a hoard of exciting-seeming changes, tweaks, and enhancements for IT admins at WWDC 2025. These include updates and improvements for Apple Business and School Manager, device and identity management, device enrollment, identity, and shared devices.

It’s important to understand the extent to which all these enterprise-focused changes show that Apple understands it is an enterprise player and wants to ensure its devices are both enterprise ready and consumer simple.

For most people using an Apple device at work, the only interaction with device management will be when they first login to the device. After that, the process is more or less invisible. Here’s my cherry-picked collection of important changes the company introduced at this week’s developer show.

What’s new in Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager?

Apple Business Manager (ABM) and Apple School Manager (ASM) are foundational services that work with MDM solutions, enabling IT to configure and manage devices, accounts and apps. Apple delivered a few improvements, principally around Managed Apple Accounts. It also introduced new ABM and ASM APIs for organizations that enable additional device management features.

Managed Apple Accounts are like any other Apple account, with the exception that they are managed by IT. Apple introduced the ability for IT to lock their domain and take ownership of Apple Accounts created with that domain at WWDC 2024. This year, the company promised admins they will soon be able to download a list of personal Apple Accounts held on a domain, which can help them more easily contact users to get them properly authorized and provisioned.

Apple also expanded Access Management so it’s now possible to prevent personal Apple Accounts from being used to sign into organizationally owned devices. The intention here is to attempt to limit data leakage by ensuring only work accounts are used on work devices.

What’s new in device management?

The company has been widening the information IT can yield from across their managed device fleets. In the last few months, Apple has made it possible to review Activation Lock status, device storage, and cellular information including IMEI and EID. At WWDC, execs said Apple would expand the information to show when devices are released from MDM and will add Mac addresses for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on the iPhone and iPad later this year. The latter is of major importance for organizations that must manage network access. 

In another fine tweak Apple got me into, AppleCare coverage information is also now available to device management, meaning admins will be able to review that information from their remote management console.

Together, these improvements mean IT will be able to query information about groups of devices, assign them to MDM services, get activity status and more — all thanks to those newly-introduced ABM and ASM APIs. Additional device management updates include the ability to set default apps for messaging and calling, ways to limit use of FaceTime and Messaging to a SIM, an allowance to enable temporary use of AirPods or Beats headphones, and a few more tweaks.

Automated Device Enrollment

Apple has extended Automated Device Enrollment to its Vision Pro headset and made it possible to add Vision Pro devices to your managed device stack using an iPhone and Apple Configurator. For other devices, Apple has added a feature that lets IT admins use their MDM server to enroll devices into their fleet via ABM or ASM. Finally, Apple now permits management of Apple TV and Vision Pro devices (including app and software updates) using Declarative Device Management.

Migration songs

The device management market continues to expand, and as it does, customers have begun moving between different MDM providers. Until now, moving to a different partner was a pain, requiring devices be fully wiped or that the end user engage in a troublesome manual process.

Apple felt your pain point and has introduced device management migration support in ABM and ASM, which lets IT reassign an Apple device to a new service. IT can also set a deadline by which migration must be completed (and migration can be automated if the user does not). While a few hurdles still exist, including app and device configurations, Apple’s improvements should make it much easier to shift between different device management providers.

Shared devices

Apple’s Return to Service system makes it much easier to share devices between users, with default apps and configurations re-applied each time a device is passed across. Apple has improved this in a few ways: Return to Service now also supports shared use of Vision Pro, including app preservation and deployment, making this useful for shared work; similarly, the iPhone and iPad can preserve managed apps when they are reset, though user data is wiped.

Do you share your Mac at home? You might at work, so Apple has introduced Authenticated Guest Mode; it lets users log into a Mac using their cloud identity. Once they finish their session, personal data is wiped, and the Mac ready for the next user. Apple has taken this a step further, enabling users to securely login to a shared (and properly configured) Mac with a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch, or by using an NFC reader. I expect this will work well in schools, universities, healthcare and retail environments.

App Management

Turning out focus to some of the enhancements to app management: the new Managed App framework for iPad, iPhone, and visionOS lets organizations deploy app configurations, including certificates and identities, on managed devices. Among other improvements, IT can now limit apps to specific app versions if they want to control the update cadence. On macOS Tahoe, App Store apps, custom apps, and packages can be deployed using Declarative Device Management. (Developers can also use a new ManagedApp framework when building apps.) IT can now manage Safari to ensure bookmarks are in place and an employee or school portal can be set as the Safari start page.

Identity, it’s the answer don’t you see?

Apple has improved Platform SSO, bringing this into Setup Assistant during Automated Device Enrolment. This means that when a user is setting up a new Mac, they will be asked to authenticate using SSO. Once signed in, they will be enrolled into device management and can also be enrolled in their Managed Apple Account, depending on how IT has set things up.

The result is that a user can receive a Mac, start it up, login with their provisioned ID, and watch as the Mac is configured, device management put in place, and approved apps downloaded to their machine — including all their email IDs.

Bit by bit, year by year, WWDC by WWDC, setting up a Mac for work seems is getting even simpler than setting up a brand new Mac at home. That’s a big deal — one that will probably keep those hard-working business teams at your local Apple retail store busy.

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Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt A spacecraft developed by European scientists and companies has captured unprecedented new views of the Sun’s south pole. Built by Airbus in the UK, Solar Orbiter was developed as part of a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. The probe launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2020. A number of European tech firms also contributed to the mission. One of them is Dublin-based Enbio, which developed a protective coating for the probe using crushed animal bones. It’s one of the more unusual materials ever flown into space…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

OpenAI has unveiled its most advanced AI model to date, the o3-pro, which surpasses competitors on key benchmarks and replaces the o1-pro. The o3-pro is now available for ChatGPT Pro and Team users, as well as through the developer API, with access for enterprise and education sectors beginning next week.

The model excels in math, science, and coding, setting a new standard for AI capabilities, as per the company’s release notes.

Alongside the rollout, OpenAI announced a steep 80% price cut for its o3 model, slashing rates from $10/$40 to $2/$8 per million input/output tokens. CEO Sam Altman confirmed the update on X, posting: Users will be “happy with o3-pro pricing for the performance.”

This aggressive pricing directly challenges the previous market dynamic, where Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, priced at $1.25–$2.50 for inputs and $10–$15 for outputs, had an edge on cost at comparable performance levels.

The strategic implications, however, go beyond the economics. “This is a market-defining move,” said Amandeep Singh, associate director at QKS Group. “It’s not pure commoditization, it’s ecosystem lock-in. OpenAI is lowering entry barriers, so enterprises standardize on its stack, much like AWS did in its early days.”

Manish Ranjan, research director at IDC, called the move a “game-changer” for startups and SMBs, making it feasible for them to scale their genAI prototypes into business-wide deployments. “This dramatically reduces the cost of entry while maintaining performance and agility,” Ranjan said, though he noted that many enterprises will still reserve o1-pro for high-stakes workloads where latency and reliability remain critical.

Enterprise appeal, and implementation friction

Early tests show o3-pro outperforms Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro on AIME 2024 math benchmarks and Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus on GPQA Diamond science tests.

Reviewers rated it best-in-class for science, education, programming, business, and writing. Its advanced capabilities, including web search, file analysis, and visual input reasoning, deliver reliable results in complex tasks like physics and coding, as per the company blog post.

Despite OpenAI’s aggressive pricing, mid-sized enterprises may struggle to capitalize. “The price drop opens the door, but it doesn’t build the hallway,” said Singh. “Cheap model access doesn’t guarantee scalable deployment. The real bottlenecks are orchestration, compliance, and governance.”

Singh also warned that without centralized AI policies, CSOs risk governance blind spots, such as prompt injection or data exposure. He noted that as o3-pro shares o3’s safety framework, SOC 2-compliant workflows are essential for regulated sectors.

He further cautioned against “prototype sprawl,” a proliferation of experimental GenAI projects that never reach production due to gaps in data readiness, AI talent, or evaluation tooling. Without a managed abstraction layer like “GenAI-as-a-Platform”, many organizations may be left behind, despite lower costs.

Ranjan said o3-pro offers enterprises more value for less, but only if they adapt to limitations like the lack of temporary chats, image generation, or Canvas support.

Orchestration, auditability, and model-agnostic platforms

With o3 serving three million business users and a 50% enterprise surge since February 2025, OpenAI’s pricing and performance are undeniably compelling. However, procurement priorities are shifting toward orchestration, auditability, and model-agnostic platforms. “You’re not just buying a model, you’re investing in adaptability and compliance,” Singh emphasized. Total cost of ownership now hinges on the infrastructure surrounding the model, not just token pricing.

While Ranjan thinks OpenAI will capture more market share, he advised CIOs to mix models, including open-source options for greater flexibility. Singh agreed, warning that without strong governance, organizations risk exposure and lock-in.

OpenAI, meanwhile, has teased more innovation, with a delayed open-weights model now expected later this summer. “Our research team did something extraordinary. It’ll be worth the wait,” Altman hinted on X. For now, OpenAI is betting on performance, pricing, and developer tools to maintain its edge. “o3-pro and the price cut mark an inflection point,” Singh concluded. “Competitive advantage will increasingly depend on governance, orchestration, and domain expertise, not just model quality.” As enterprises weigh cost, speed, and integration, OpenAI’s latest move signals a new phase in the race to define AI’s future.

Source:: Computer World

By Deepti Pathak The hospitality sector is embracing a tech revolution with the introduction of the Zerith H1 by…
The post Zerith H1: The First Humanoid Robot for Hotel Housekeeping appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Hisan Kidwai Asus’s Vivobook lineup has delivered some solid laptops that combine good performance with a reasonable price….
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What a long, strange trip it’s been.

From its inaugural release to today, Android has transformed visually, conceptually and functionally — time and time again. Google’s mobile operating system may have started out scrappy, but holy moly, has it ever evolved.

Here’s a fast-paced tour of Android version highlights from the platform’s birth to present. (Feel free to skip ahead if you just want to see what’s new in the most recent Android 15 update and the still-under-development Android 16 release.)

Android versions 1.0 to 1.1: The early days

Android made its official public debut in 2008 with Android 1.0 — a release so ancient it didn’t even have a cute codename.

Things were pretty basic back then, but the software did include a suite of early Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Calendar, and YouTube, all of which were integrated into the operating system — a stark contrast to the more easily updatable standalone-app model employed today.

width=”700″ height=”358″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>The Android 1.0 home screen and its rudimentary web browser (not yet called Chrome).
T-Mobile

Android version 1.5: Cupcake

With early 2009’s Android 1.5 Cupcake release, the tradition of Android version names was born. Cupcake introduced numerous refinements to the Android interface, including the first on-screen keyboard — something that’d be necessary as phones moved away from the once-ubiquitous physical keyboard model.

Cupcake also brought about the framework for third-party app widgets, which would quickly turn into one of Android’s most distinguishing elements, and it provided the platform’s first-ever option for video recording.

width=”700″ height=”480″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Cupcake was all about the widgets.
Android Police

Android version 1.6: Donut

Android 1.6, Donut, rolled into the world in the fall of 2009. Donut filled in some important holes in Android’s center, including the ability for the OS to operate on a variety of different screen sizes and resolutions — a factor that’d be critical in the years to come. It also added support for CDMA networks like Verizon, which would play a key role in Android’s imminent explosion.

width=”720″ height=”491″ sizes=”(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px”>Android’s universal search box made its first appearance in Android 1.6.
Google

Android versions 2.0 to 2.1: Eclair

Keeping up the breakneck release pace of Android’s early years, Android 2.0, Eclair, emerged just six weeks after Donut; its “point-one” update, also called Eclair, came out a couple months later. Eclair was the first Android release to enter mainstream consciousness thanks to the original Motorola Droid phone and the massive Verizon-led marketing campaign surrounding it.

Verizon’s “iDon’t” ad for the Droid.

The release’s most transformative element was the addition of voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation and real-time traffic info — something previously unheard of (and still essentially unmatched) in the smartphone world. Navigation aside, Eclair brought live wallpapers to Android as well as the platform’s first speech-to-text function. And it made waves for injecting the once-iOS-exclusive pinch-to-zoom capability into Android — a move often seen as the spark that ignited Apple’s long-lasting “thermonuclear war” against Google.

width=”700″ height=”494″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>The first versions of turn-by-turn navigation and speech-to-text, in Eclair.
Google

Android version 2.2: Froyo

Just four months after Android 2.1 arrived, Google served up Android 2.2, Froyo, which revolved largely around under-the-hood performance improvements.

Froyo did deliver some important front-facing features, though, including the addition of the now-standard dock at the bottom of the home screen as well as the first incarnation of Voice Actions, which allowed you to perform basic functions like getting directions and making notes by tapping an icon and then speaking a command.

width=”700″ height=”532″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Google’s first real attempt at voice control, in Froyo.
Google

Notably, Froyo also brought support for Flash to Android’s web browser — an option that was significant both because of the widespread use of Flash at the time and because of Apple’s adamant stance against supporting it on its own mobile devices. Apple would eventually win, of course, and Flash would become far less common. But back when it was still everywhere, being able to access the full web without any black holes was a genuine advantage only Android could offer.

Android version 2.3: Gingerbread

Android’s first true visual identity started coming into focus with 2010’s Gingerbread release. Bright green had long been the color of Android’s robot mascot, and with Gingerbread, it became an integral part of the operating system’s appearance. Black and green seeped all over the UI as Android started its slow march toward distinctive design.

width=”700″ height=”400″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>It was easy being green back in the Gingerbread days.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android 3.0 to 3.2: Honeycomb

2011’s Honeycomb period was a weird time for Android. Android 3.0 came into the world as a tablet-only release to accompany the launch of the Motorola Xoom, and through the subsequent 3.1 and 3.2 updates, it remained a tablet-exclusive (and closed-source) entity.

Under the guidance of newly arrived design chief Matias Duarte, Honeycomb introduced a dramatically reimagined UI for Android. It had a space-like “holographic” design that traded the platform’s trademark green for blue and placed an emphasis on making the most of a tablet’s screen space.

width=”700″ height=”638″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Honeycomb: When Android got a case of the holographic blues.
JR Raphael / IDG

While the concept of a tablet-specific interface didn’t last long, many of Honeycomb’s ideas laid the groundwork for the Android we know today. The software was the first to use on-screen buttons for Android’s main navigational commands; it marked the beginning of the end for the permanent overflow-menu button; and it introduced the concept of a card-like UI with its take on the Recent Apps list.

Android version 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

With Honeycomb acting as the bridge from old to new, Ice Cream Sandwich — also released in 2011 — served as the platform’s official entry into the era of modern design. The release refined the visual concepts introduced with Honeycomb and reunited tablets and phones with a single, unified UI vision.

ICS dropped much of Honeycomb’s “holographic” appearance but kept its use of blue as a system-wide highlight. And it carried over core system elements like on-screen buttons and a card-like appearance for app-switching.

width=”700″ height=”533″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>The ICS home screen and app-switching interface.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android 4.0 also made swiping a more integral method of getting around the operating system, with the then-revolutionary-feeling ability to swipe away things like notifications and recent apps. And it started the slow process of bringing a standardized design framework — known as “Holo” — all throughout the OS and into Android’s app ecosystem.

Android versions 4.1 to 4.3: Jelly Bean

Spread across three impactful Android versions, 2012 and 2013’s Jelly Bean releases took ICS’s fresh foundation and made meaningful strides in fine-tuning and building upon it. The releases added plenty of poise and polish into the operating system and went a long way in making Android more inviting for the average user.

Visuals aside, Jelly Bean brought about our first taste of Google Now — the spectacular predictive-intelligence utility that’s sadly since devolved into a glorified news feed. It gave us expandable and interactive notifications, an expanded voice search system, and a more advanced system for displaying search results in general, with a focus on card-based results that attempted to answer questions directly.

Multiuser support also came into play, albeit on tablets only at this point, and an early version of Android’s Quick Settings panel made its first appearance. Jelly Bean ushered in a heavily hyped system for placing widgets on your lock screen, too — one that, like so many Android features over the years, quietly disappeared a couple years later.

width=”700″ height=”533″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Jelly Bean’s Quick Settings panel and short-lived lock screen widget feature.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 4.4: KitKat

Late-2013’s KitKat release marked the end of Android’s dark era, as the blacks of Gingerbread and the blues of Honeycomb finally made their way out of the operating system. Lighter backgrounds and more neutral highlights took their places, with a transparent status bar and white icons giving the OS a more contemporary appearance.

Android 4.4 also saw the first version of “OK, Google” support — but in KitKat, the hands-free activation prompt worked only when your screen was already on and you were either at your home screen or inside the Google app.

The release was Google’s first foray into claiming a full panel of the home screen for its services, too — at least, for users of its own Nexus phones and those who chose to download its first-ever standalone launcher.

width=”700″ height=”579″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>The lightened KitKat home screen and its dedicated Google Now panel.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android versions 5.0 and 5.1: Lollipop

Google essentially reinvented Android — again — with its Android 5.0 Lollipop release in the fall of 2014. Lollipop launched the still-present-today Material Design standard, which brought a whole new look that extended across all of Android, its apps and even other Google products.

The card-based concept that had been scattered throughout Android became a core UI pattern — one that would guide the appearance of everything from notifications, which now showed up on the lock screen for at-a-glance access, to the Recent Apps list, which took on an unabashedly card-based appearance.

width=”700″ height=”578″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Lollipop and the onset of Material Design.
JR Raphael / IDG

Lollipop introduced a slew of new features into Android, including truly hands-free voice control via the “OK, Google” command, support for multiple users on phones and a priority mode for better notification management. It changed so much, unfortunately, that it also introduced a bunch of troubling bugs, many of which wouldn’t be fully ironed out until the following year’s 5.1 release.

Android version 6.0: Marshmallow

In the grand scheme of things, 2015’s Marshmallow was a fairly minor Android release — one that seemed more like a 0.1-level update than anything deserving of a full number bump. But it started the trend of Google releasing one major Android version per year and that version always receiving its own whole number.

Marshmallow’s most attention-grabbing element was a screen-search feature called Now On Tap — something that, as I said at the time, had tons of potential that wasn’t fully tapped. Google never quite perfected the system and ended up quietly retiring its brand and moving it out of the forefront the following year.

width=”700″ height=”605″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Marshmallow and the almost-brilliance of Google Now on Tap.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android 6.0 did introduce some stuff with lasting impact, though, including more granular app permissions, support for fingerprint readers, and support for USB-C.

Android versions 7.0 and 7.1: Nougat

Google’s 2016 Android Nougat releases provided Android with a native split-screen mode, a new bundled-by-app system for organizing notifications, and a Data Saver feature. Nougat added some smaller but still significant features, too, like an Alt-Tab-like shortcut for snapping between apps.

width=”700″ height=”460″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Android 7.0 Nougat and its new native split-screen mode.
JR Raphael / IDG

Perhaps most pivotal among Nougat’s enhancements, however, was the launch of the Google Assistant — which came alongside the announcement of Google’s first fully self-made phone, the Pixel, about two months after Nougat’s debut. The Assistant would go on to become a critical component of Android and most other Google products and is arguably the company’s foremost effort today.

Android version 8.0 and 8.1: Oreo

Android Oreo added a variety of niceties to the platform, including a native picture-in-picture mode, a notification snoozing option, and notification channels that offer fine control over how apps can alert you.

width=”700″ height=”613″ sizes=”(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px”>Oreo adds several significant features to the operating system, including a new picture-in-picture mode.
JR Raphael / IDG

The 2017 release also included some noteworthy elements that furthered Google’s goal of aligning Android and Chrome OS and improving the experience of using Android apps on Chromebooks, and it was the first Android version to feature Project Treble — an ambitious effort to create a modular base for Android’s code with the hope of making it easier for device-makers to provide timely software updates.

Android version 9: Pie

The freshly baked scent of Android Pie, a.k.a. Android 9, wafted into the Android ecosystem in August of 2018. Pie’s most transformative change was its hybrid gesture/button navigation system, which traded Android’s traditional Back, Home, and Overview keys for a large, multifunctional Home button and a small Back button that appeared alongside it as needed.

Android 9 introduced a new gesture-driven system for getting around phones, with an elongated Home button and a small Back button that appears as needed.JR Raphael / IDG

Pie included some noteworthy productivity features, too, such as a universal suggested-reply system for messaging notifications, a new dashboard of Digital Wellbeing controls, and more intelligent systems for power and screen brightness management. And, of course, there was no shortage of smaller but still-significant advancements hidden throughout Pie’s filling, including a smarter way to handle Wi-Fi hotspots, a welcome twist to Android’s Battery Saver mode, and a variety of privacy and security enhancements.

Android version 10

Google released Android 10 — the first Android version to shed its letter and be known simply by a number, with no dessert-themed moniker attached — in September of 2019. Most noticeably, the software brought about a totally reimagined interface for Android gestures, this time doing away with the tappable Back button altogether and relying on a completely swipe-driven approach to system navigation.

Android 10 packed plenty of other quietly important improvements, including an updated permissions system with more granular control over location data along with a new system-wide dark theme, a new distraction-limiting Focus Mode, and a new on-demand live captioning system for any actively playing media.

Android 10’s new privacy permissions model adds some much-needed nuance into the realm of location data.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 11

Android 11, launched at the start of September 2020, was a pretty substantial Android update both under the hood and on the surface. The version’s most significant changes revolve around privacy: The update built upon the expanded permissions system introduced in Android 10 and added in the option to grant apps location, camera, and microphone permissions only on a limited, single-use basis.

Android 11 also made it more difficult for apps to request the ability to detect your location in the background, and it introduced a feature that automatically revokes permissions from any apps you haven’t opened lately. On the interface level, Android 11 included a refined approach to conversation-related notifications along with a new streamlined media player, a new Notification History section, a native screen-recording feature, and a system-level menu of connected-device controls.

Android 11’s new media player appears as part of the system Quick Settings panel, while the new connected-device control screen comes up whenever you press and hold your phone’s physical power button.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 12

Google officially launched the final version of Android 12 in October 2021, alongside the launch of its Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones.

In a twist from the previous several Android versions, the most significant progressions with Android 12 were mostly on the surface. Android 12 featured the biggest reimagining of Android’s interface since 2014’s Android 5.0 (Lollipop) version, with an updated design standard known as Material You — which revolves around the idea of you customizing the appearance of your device with dynamically generated themes based on your current wallpaper colors. Those themes automatically change anytime your wallpaper changes, and they extend throughout the entire operating system interface and even into the interfaces of apps that support the standard.

Android 12 ushered in a whole new look and feel for the operating system, with an emphasis on simple color customization.
Google

Surface-level elements aside, Android 12 brought a (long overdue) renewed focus to Android’s widget system along with a host of important foundational enhancements in the areas of performance, security, and privacy. The update provided more powerful and accessible controls over how different apps are using your data and how much information you allow apps to access, for instance, and it included a new isolated section of the operating system that allows AI features to operate entirely on a device, without any potential for network access or data exposure.

Android version 13

Android 13, launched in August 2022, was simultaneously one of the most ambitious updates in Android history and one of the most subtle version changes to date.

On tablets and foldable phones, Android 13 introduced a slew of significant interface updates and additions aimed at improving the large-screen Android experience — including an enhanced split-screen mode for multitasking and a ChromeOS-like taskbar for easy app access from anywhere.

The new Android-13-introduced taskbar, as seen on a Google Pixel Fold phone.Google

On regular phones, Android 13 brought about far less noticeable changes — mostly just some enhancements to the system clipboard interface, a new native QR code scanning function within the Android Quick Settings area, and a smattering of under-the-hood improvements.

Android version 14

Following a full eight months of out-in-the-open refinement, Google’s 14th Android version landed at the start of October 2023, in the midst of the company’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro launch event.

Like the version before it, Android 14 didn’t look like much on the surface. That’s in part because of the trend of Google moving more and more toward a development cycle that revolves around smaller ongoing updates to individual system-level elements year-round — something that’s actually a significant advantage for Android users, even if it does have an awkward effect on people’s perception of progress.

But despite the subtle nature of its first impression, Android 14 delivered a fair amount of noteworthy new goodies. The software introduced a new system for dragging and dropping text between apps, for instance, as well as a number of new improvements to privacy and security — including a new settings-integrated dashboard for managing health and fitness data and a more info-rich and context-requiring system for seeing exactly why apps want access to your location. And it brought about a new set of native customization options for the Android lock screen.

Android 14 includes options for completely changing the appearance of the lock screen as well as for customizing which shortcuts show up on it.
JR Raphael / IDG

Android version 15

Google technically released Android 15 in September 2024, but in an unusual twist, that was only the launch of the software’s raw source code. The new Android version didn’t show up even on the company’s own Pixel devices until just over a month later, in mid-October.

With Google increasingly offering Android enhancements outside of the formal operating system context, some of the more interesting updates in recent months are not connected directly to Android 15 itself. For instance, the Android Circle to Search system and new theft protection features have shown up throughout 2024 for devices running even older Android versions.

As for Android 15 itself, though, the update introduces a number of noteworthy new features — including a system-level Private Space option that lets you keep sensitive apps out of sight and accessible only with authentication. The software also further enhances the multitasking systems introduced in Android 13 with the new option to keep the large-screen-exclusive Android taskbar present at all times and the new ability to launch specific pairs of apps together into a side-by-side split-screen with a single tap.

Once you set up Android 15’s new Private Space feature, certain apps appear in a special protected — and optionally hidden — area of your app drawer.
JR Raphael / IDG

Beyond that, Android 15 includes a redesigned system volume panel, a new option to automatically reenable a device’s Bluetooth radio a day after it’s been disabled, and a Pixel-specific Adaptive Vibration feature that intelligently adjusts a phone’s vibration intensity based on the environment.

Adaptive Vibration and a redesigned volume panel provide welcome upgrades to the Android audio experience.
JR Raphael / IDG

Add in a new charging-time connected-device-control screen saver, a space-saving app archiving option for infrequently used apps, and a long-under-development predictive back visual that lets you see a peek at where you’re headed before you get there — and this small-seeming update is actually shaping up to be a pretty hefty update progression.

Android version 16

In a marked change from recent Android upgrade cycles, Google decided to go with two new Android versions per year as of 2025 — starting with Android 16 in the spring and then following that with another release in the fall. (It’s not entirely clear yet if the second annual update will get its own full number or act as an extension of the Android 16 moniker, but Google says it’ll be a “major” release.)

True to that promise, Android 16 catapulted into the world in early June, just before the start of summer. Somewhat confusingly, while Google has shown off or in some cases been quietly developing a slew of new features that add up to create Android’s most dramatic reinvention in ages — including a bold new design language, a smart new system for multitasking, and an ambitious desktop mode that lets you plug your phone into a monitor and use it like a computer — most of those elements aren’t included in the initial Android 16 release and will instead show up later this year.

Aside from serving as a foundation for those advances, Android 16 marks the start of Live Updates — a new type of notification designed to support persistent, ongoing alerts, similar to what Apple does with iOS’s Live Activities.

Android 16’s Live Updates system makes it easier to keep tabs on persistent, ongoing alerts such as those from delivery apps — at least, once all of those apps begin to support it.
Google

It also adds in a more advanced standard of hearing aid support that should make a meaningful difference for anyone relying on such devices. And, perhaps most significantly, it debuts a new Advanced Protection security supermode that provides a simple new single-switch way to activate a whole slew of advisable Android security settings in one fell swoop.

The Android 16 Advanced Security control panel, as seen on a Google Pixel phone.JR Raphael, Foundry

Combined with a sprawling series of other new security strengtheners, that makes protection seem like the true centerpiece of Android 16 — for now, at least, before the rest of Google’s still-bubbling-beneath-the-surface surprises arrive.

This article was originally published in November 2017 and most recently updated in June 2025.

Source:: Computer World

As much as enterprise IT executives complain today about the sky-high cost of generative AI (genAI) model access, some fear those costs will skyrocket in the next couple of years. 

Why? The theory is that the large language model (LLM) makers will wait until their code has become such an integral part of the enterprise environment that unraveling it and starting over with a different model will be cost-prohibitive. Once that happens, genAI firms will pretty much have their customers over an LLM barrel.

Manuel Kistner, the CEO of software development group New Gravity, recently wrote on LinkedIn about those potential genAI price hikes.

“Remember when Uber rides cost $3 across town? When they threw promo codes at us like confetti? Venture capital was bleeding money to get us addicted to convenience. Then the subsidies stopped. That $3 ride became $25, then $100. We were hooked, so we paid. AI is following the exact same playbook, and the signs are everywhere,” Kistner wrote. “Look at enterprise software pricing. Salesforce charges $300/user/month. Adobe Creative Suite went from $50/month to $600/year per license. These companies price based on value delivered, not development costs.”

New, improved — and pricey

Others echo the point. Dev Nag, the CEO of QueryPal, said recent IT industry history suggests that any technology that is sufficiently different — and delivering materially better value — can obliterate pricing expectations.

“When Netscape tried to charge for browsing, Microsoft answered with a free Internet Explorer and the price of web navigation never recovered,” Nag said. “Chrome later cemented the zero-dollar norm. Let’s Encrypt vaporized the certificate market so completely that 300-dollar SSL fees are now folklore. Skype wrecked international-calling tariffs by moving minutes onto IP, flipping the surplus to consumers in a single release cycle. Smartphones then did the same to point-and-shoot cameras, slicing shipments from 109 million units in 2010 to under 2 million in 2023, while photo taking surged. Each case shows that once a digital good can be cloned at near-zero marginal cost, the lion’s share of value sticks to users.”

Aaron Cohen, an AI consultant, offered his own examples. “Think about Amazon. Is shipping for free and not making a profit still happening?  No, they changed certain practices,” Cohen said. “Expect different pricing models. Like Uber, expect surge pricing for AI.”

Cohen argued that this problem is almost certainly going to get worse. “As the models get better, the dependency will get worse and the prices will eventually be, well, they are going to be stuck with a very large bill,” he said. 

The sad reality is that there are two mostly unrelated issues going on here, both of which could deliver even more stratospheric genAI price issues for very different reasons. 

The old vendor lock-in game

The first issue is good, old-fashioned vendor lock-in. GenAI companies are pushing these models globally, urging every business unit to use it in a variety of ways. Let’s say an enterprise has mainly invested in a language model from just one company, say, maybe AWS, Google or OpenAI. Imagine how disruptive and expensive it would be to reverse that decision in two years if prices rise. (And since most companies are already using multiple models, doesn’t that make tossing everything overboard if prices jump even more complicated?)

The second issue is value pricing, where model makers start to charge based on the value delivered. 

Some have argued that any big price increase won’t happen — at least not to an overly painful extent — because of the large number of genAI competitors. That might be true now, but it won’t be true forever. GenAI consolidation is inevitable. Still, even consolidation will likely leave a good handful of viable players.

But the competition factor only influences the second issue, the value pricing one. It does nothing to help a company that went almost all-in on one model maker.

The vendor lock-in is more than end users relying on a model and the code being deeply embedded in your systems. Your team will have by then spent a massive amount of money fine-tuning those models and feeding it your company-specific data.

That combination is likely to mean vendor lock-in. But there are steps companies can take now to reduce the chance that any one genAI firm could soon hold you hostage for whatever price hike they feel like imposing.

“It’s similar to what the old mainframe timeshare model was in that they are renting not owning. [IT is] literally stuck paying token charges in perpetuity. It’s absolutely insane,” said Stephen Klein, CEO of Curiouser.AI. “It would be just as easy to implement an agnostic, multi-LLM model or, even better, open source [option] that (IT) can own. The problem is that open source is kind of like buying furniture from Ikea. It needs assembly and fine tuning.”

Klein’s point is valid, but enterprises are already doing a lot of assembly and fine tuning. That is a big part of what is going to create the lock-in problem.

Could competition keep prices in check?

Not everyone fears big price hikes. Take James Villarrubia, for example. Until May 30, Villarrubia was a head of NASA digital innovation and AI, serving as a presidential innovation fellow for a NASA unit called the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project. 

Villarrubia said he doesn’t see any upcoming pricing changes as being materially different from what IT experienced in the past. “This does not strike me as any different than the panic we saw during early cloud migration,” Villarrubia said, when feared price hikes never materialized. One reason he’s sanguine about pricing involves the way many genAI vendors have been interacting with each others’ systems.

Enterprises have been “designing their systems to be linked to tools in the lightest way possible,” Villarrubia said. GenAI vendors “were all so desperate to get in on OpenAI business that they were using an OpenAI-flavored API. That made swapping way cheaper.”

Also, Villarrubia argued, the extensive fine-tuning that enterprises are doing will also not likely lock them into any one model. Most are “going straight to a core model” such as Meta’s LLama 4, Villarrubia said. 

“I see the [customized] fine tuning tasks significantly dropped from where it was a year ago,” he said — mostly because Meta made Llama more open, basically telling IT to use it to do model fine-tuning.

“I don’t see a deep monopolistic play yet,” Villarrubia said. “The vendor lock-in is not the thing I see driving up costs. When the new models come out, that is when prices will increase.”

Even then, he doubts price hikes will be unreasonably large because model makers will very much want to encourage upgrades.  “It simplifies their architecture,” Villarrubia said.

Some have suggested trying to negotiate longer-term contracts — such as five-year agreements — to avoid exposure to unlimited price hikes. But Villarrubia questions whether that makes business sense.

“A five-year contract seems insane for products that haven’t been on the market for five years yet,” he said. 

Source:: Computer World