<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-426736" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai.jpeg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023.  Aly Song | Reuters</figcaption></figure>



Market participants are “overconfident” about their ability to predict the long-term effects of AI, according to Mike Coop, chief investment officer at Morningstar Investment Management.



Despite a pullback so far this month, optimism about the potential of AI to drive future profits has powered the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite to add more than 38% year-to-date, while the S&amp;P 500 is up by more than 16%.



Some analysts have suggested that a bubble effect may be forming, given the concentration of market gains in a small number of big tech shares. Nvidia stock closed Thursday’s trade up 190% so far this year, while Facebook parent Meta Platforms has risen more than 154% and Tesla 99%.



“If you look back at what’s happened over the last year, you can see how we’ve got to that stage. We had the release of ChatGPT in November, we’ve had announcements about heavy investment in AI from the companies, we’ve had Nvidia with a knockout result in May,” Coop told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.



“And we’ve had a dawning awareness of how things have sped up in terms of generative AI. That has captured the imagination of the public and we’ve seen this incredible surge.”



In a recent research note, Morningstar drew parallels between the concentration of huge valuations and the dotcom bubble of 1999, though Coop said the differentiating feature of the current rally is that the companies at its center are “established giants with major competitive advantages.”



“All of our company research suggests that the companies that have done well this year have a form of a moat, and are profitable and have sustainable competitive advantages, compared with what was happening in 1999 where you had lots of speculative companies, so there is some degree of firmer foundations,” Coop said.



“Having said that, the prices have run so hard that it looks to us that really people are overconfident about their ability to forecast how AI will impact things.”



Drawing parallels to major technological upheavals that have re-aligned civilization — such as electricity, steam and internal combustion engines, computing and the internet — Coop argued that the long-run effects are not predictable.



“They can take time and the winners can emerge from things that don’t exist. Google is a good example of that. So we think people have got carried away with that, and what it has meant is that the market in the U.S. is very clustered around a similar theme,” he said.



“Be mindful of what you can really predict when you’re paying a very high price, and you’re factoring in a best case scenario for a stock, and be cognizant of the fact that as the pace of technological change accelerates, that also means that you should be less confident about predicting the future and betting heavily on it and paying a very high price for things.”



In what he dubbed a “dangerous point for investors,” Coop stressed the importance of diversifying portfolios and remaining “valuation aware.”



He advised investors to look at stocks that are able to insulate portfolios against recession risks and are “pricing in a bad case scenario” to the point of offering good value, along with bonds, which are considerably more attractive than they were 18 months ago.



“Be cognizant of just how high a price is being paid for the promise of what AI may or may not deliver for individual companies,” Coop concluded.

107270651-16891871352023-07-12t065357z_76281055_rc2gx1amogo7_rtrmadp_0_china-regulation-ai

Investors are ‘overconfident’ about the impact of A.I., strategist says

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-426384" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636.jpeg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Elon Musk announced that there will be a rebranding of Twitter soon, and speculation points to the implementation of X. Rafael Henrique | Lightrocket | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Elon Musk has long been enamored of the letter X.



Now, he’s killing off the Twitter brand and the iconic blue bird in favor of X as part of an effort to turn his $44 billion acquisition into something that’s genuinely his.



Musk’s vision for X is something akin to China’s WeChat, a super app that people can use for entertainment and buying goods and services online, in addition to posting updates and messaging their friends. But the rebrand comes after months of erratic behavior by the world’s richest person turned off users and pushed away advertisers, leaving Twitter in a troubled financial position and increasingly vulnerable to competition.



Killing an iconic internet brand is “extremely risky” at a time when rival apps such as the new Instagram Threads and smaller upstarts such as Bluesky are luring users, said Mike Proulx, an analyst at Forrester.



Musk has “singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” Proulx said in an email.



A company spokesperson didn’t provide a comment for this story.



It’s not entirely a surprising move. Musk had already converted Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp, which itself is a subsidiary of X Holding Corp, as revealed in an April court filing. Musk said last October, just prior to buying Twitter, that he viewed the $44 billion deal as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”



The letter X features prominently in the name of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. And over two decades ago, X.com was the name of Musk’s payments company that eventually became PayPal through a merger with a rival at the time.



Name changes have become fairly commonplace among storied web companies. Facebook became Meta in late 2021, and Google adopted the Alphabet moniker six years earlier. However, in those cases the newly named parent companies kept the branding of their core services, so Facebook users and Google searchers could keep doing their thing without disruption.



Musk appears to be betting he can get rid of Twitter altogether. Over the weekend, he introduced the new X logo and said in a tweet that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”



Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired as CEO in May, said in an email to employees Monday that the company will “continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”



Succeeding in that mission is easier said than done.



Musk’s desire to turn X into a super app requires “time, money and people,” which Twitter “no longer has,” said Proulx. Earlier this month, Musk said that Twitter has suffered a 50% drop in advertising revenue and that it needs “to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”  



Some advertisers had grown concerned about promoting their products on Twitter because of reports showing a rise of hate speech and racist and offensive comments on the platform as documented by multiple civil rights groups and researchers.



Musk has tried to offset some decline in advertising with a premium subscription service. But at $8 a month, the company would need tens of millions of subscribers to make up for the losses.



Those advertisers remaining on the platform now have to adopt a new lingo. People and businesses around the world know Twitter messages as “tweets.” Like Kleenex, Twitter was able to develop a recognizable brand that was instantly familiar with consumers, a feat that any corporate marketing team would celebrate.



Ralph Schackart, an analyst at William Blair, told CNBC last week that his team of analysts “didn’t pick anything up” from advertisers they polled as part of a recent survey on the digital advertising market that would indicate that these businesses had upped their spending on Twitter. Meanwhile, there are signs that the overall digital ad market could be improving, according to the William Blair survey.



Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said in an emailed statement that the name change marks “a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers” and a “clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back.”



“Twitter’s rebrand is a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, is and has always been the most likely ‘Twitter killer,’” Enberg wrote.

107275471-1690202479067-gettyimages-1550554804-RAFAPRESS_23072023-07636

Musk risks even more damage to Twitter’s business as the messaging app changes name to X

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-820x547.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-426261" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-820x547.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-135x90.jpeg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107258355-16869313282023-06-16t150849z_1166429343_rc2fk1abt1fi_rtrmadp_0_france-tech-musk-scaled.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters</figcaption></figure>



Former Twitter employees in Ghana, who were laid off in November, have been left without severance pay and have not heard from the company for three months, sources told CNBC.



As part of new owner Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts, Twitter fired nearly all of the staff at its only office in Africa.



Following the announcement of the wave of global job cuts, Musk tweeted in November that “unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.”



“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” he added, though it was unclear to which office and jurisdiction he was referring.



Under Ghanaian employment law, staff must be paid redundancy and should be granted three months’ notice before they are made redundant. Twitter’s workers in the capital Accra were given less than a month, according to the sources.



One former employee, who wished to remain anonymous due to sensitive nature of situation, told CNBC that the workers had several compensation requests rejected during the negotiations before they settled for an offer in the hope of drawing a line under the dispute.



“Twitter has dealt with us in bad faith since we were laid off in November 2022. There was no attempt to even negotiate a severance with us until international news started to report on this, and after we had approached the Labour Office in Ghana,” said another source, who also spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity due to sensitive nature of situation.



“It’s been a tedious process and they rejected some of our requests, which we thought were fair given the circumstances and how we’ve been treated.”



Through their legal representative, the employees eventually reached out to accept what they saw as a watered down severance offer in May, but have endured radio silence from Twitter since then.



“We played ball and accepted the offer that they made just so we could move forward with our lives. However, they have completely ignored us since our lawyer reached out to theirs to accept the offer in May. For many of us, expenses owed have also not been paid,” the second source added.



Twitter&nbsp;responded to&nbsp;CNBC’s&nbsp;request for comment with an&nbsp;automated&nbsp;response.



The first source also told CNBC that “everyone is tired and frustrated.”



“This settlement is not even what was promised but we decided to just accept it and that has been a struggle,” they said.



“Some still haven’t gotten jobs yet, have families to feed and this severance will go a long way, so having it delayed in this [manner] is just so sad.”



Since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform in October, Twitter has lost nearly half of its advertising revenue and continues to generate negative cash flow, Musk said over the weekend, along with shouldering a substantial debt pile.



The company also faces competition from new Meta platform Threads, which registered over 100 million users in its first week in operation.



Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern Business School, wrote on Friday that Twitter last week “became MySpace: a social network void of innovation being slowly euthanized by Meta.”



“The decline in revenue is correlated to its reduction in workforce, but not caused by it,” Galloway added.

Twitter laid off most of its workers in Africa last year. They say they’ve been ignored and left without severance

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-820x547.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-426194" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-820x547.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-135x90.jpeg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-1536x1025.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN-scaled.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Africa’s video game market has been doing well. In 2022, games sold in the region generated $862.8 million in revenue, up 8.7% year over year, according to Newzoo’s data. Rodger Bosch | Afp | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Africa’s video game market is having a moment.



Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to data shared exclusively with CNBC.



The figures, which were compiled by Dutch research firm Newzoo for African gaming startup Carry1st, suggest a buoyant market for gaming in Africa, where economic growth has been sluggish as the region grapples with lingering inflation, tough financial conditions and high net debt.



Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth rate dipped to 3.6% in 2022 from 4.1% in 2021, according to the World Bank. And it is forecast to fall further in 2023, to 3.1%.



Despite that, Africa’s video game market has been doing well. In 2022, games sold in the region generated $862.8 million in revenue, up 8.7% year over year, according to Newzoo’s data.



That’s in defiance of a broader contraction in video game activity globally, as the tailwind of Covid lockdowns wears off and a higher cost of living has forced consumers to tighten their belts.



The global games market generated $182.9 billion of revenue in 2022, down 5.1% from 2021, according to Newzoo.



Cordel Robbin-Coker, CEO of Carry1st, which is headquartered in Cape Town , said the most notable thing about the data is the “underlying secular growth in the games market in sub-Saharan Africa.”



“Looking back, we know that Covid was a significant contributor,” Robbin-Coker said. “But now that those benefits have receded, we’re starting to see growth slow and even decline in other markets.”



“We have the fastest-growing population in the world,” he added. “People are coming online for the first time at a really rapid pace. Most of that – over 90% – is via mobile phone. There’s really strong appetite for content.”



Venture capital firm Konvoy, which focuses on gaming-related investments, said it sees Africa’s gaming industry growing 15.7% in 2023 and 13.6% the following year, higher than previous projections of 9.23% and 8.95% growth.



“These initial numbers for gaming on the continent are promising, but the longer-term trends of population growth, internet penetration, and smartphone adoption paint a picture of incredible growth for gaming on the continent,” Jackson Vaughan, managing partner at Konvoy, told CNBC.



Adoption of smartphones, in particular, has boosted Africa’s gaming prospects. A higher-than-normal young population in the region means digital technology has been strongly embraced.



By 2030, 87% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa will own a smartphone, according to mobile industry body GSMA, up from 51% in 2022.



That’s thanks in no small part to falling smartphone prices and the growth in “digital-native” users.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-africa-outpacing-global-games-market"><a></a>Africa outpacing global games market</h2>



The global gaming industry is expected to return to growth this year, with analytics firm Ampere Analysis forecasting it will increase by 3.3% in 2023, driven by mobile gaming “returning to some form.”



But it’s a far cry from the blistering growth of 2020 and 2021, when the coronavirus pandemic forced people inside their homes and allowed people to spend more of their spare time playing games.



“The potential of disruption to user acquisition from future platform privacy changes, plus a broader audience less resilient to changing macroeconomic conditions, means that mobile gaming market performance has become less predictable than in the past,” said Louise Shorthouse, analyst at Ampere Analysis.



In Africa, much of the growth in games was driven by smartphone usage.



According to Newzoo, mobile gaming generated $778.6 million in revenue in 2022, accounting for about 90% of total game sales.



Nigeria led the way in total annual gaming revenue, attracting $249 million, followed by South Africa, which generated $236 million in revenue.



South Africa was previously Africa’s largest video gaming market, according to Newzoo.



The next highest-revenue-generating countries were Kenya ($46 million), Ethiopia ($42 million), and Ghana ($34 million).



Ethiopia recorded the highest year-over-year growth – 13% – while Uganda was the slowest-growing games market, increasing only 6%.



Nigeria and South Africa contributed two times the revenue of the other eight top countries combined, according to Newzoo. All 10 of the countries had year-over-year sales growth.

107270717-1689193367031-gettyimages-1238718652-AFP_323R6MN

Africa’s gaming market is expected to top $1 billion in 2024 — in the face of a global slowdown

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing-820x462.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-426063" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing-820x462.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing.jpg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Emin Sansar | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Just sixteen hours after launch, Instagram’s text-based social network Threads has already surpassed 30 million signups,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/META/">Meta</a>&nbsp;CEO Mark Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.threads.net/t/CuXCjGVrd6R/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;early Thursday. It was also the top free app in Apple’s App Store as of Thursday morning.



The app is Meta’s answer to Twitter, which has seen some of its users and advertisers flee since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social media platform. On Saturday, Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/thousands-of-users-report-problems-accessing-twitter.html">began limiting</a>&nbsp;the number of posts users can read per day to address “extreme levels of data scraping,” which only served to further frustrate users.



A number of Twitter alternatives have emerged in recent months, including decentralized messaging app <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/how-to-use-mastodon-twitter-alternative.html">Mastodon</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/03/users-flock-to-twitter-competitor-bluesky-after-elon-musk-imposes-rate-limits.html">Bluesky</a>, which is backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. But neither platform has been able to match Twitter’s user base and popularity.



Threads may have an easier time attracting users. It’s built on top of Instagram and is automatically linked to a user’s account on the photo-sharing app. Initially, users could only access the service through a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/05/how-to-sign-up-for-threads-metas-new-twitter-competitor.html">roundabout way in the Instagram app</a>. But as of Thursday, the app is available for download from Apple’s App Store, and it’s free to use.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-use-threads"><a></a>How to use Threads</h2>



Users are required to have an Instagram account in order to use Threads. Once you download the app, it will prompt you to login using your Instagram account. From there, Threads will automatically port over your Instagram username, but you can still customize your profile.



Threads gives you the option to automatically follow all of the same accounts you follow on Instagram, or just a few of them, so that you don’t have to painstakingly locate all your friends and followers on Threads.



Meta&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/05/meta-launches-instagram-threads-messaging-app-challenging-twitter.html">is pitching Threads</a>&nbsp;as Instagram’s “text-based conversation app.” And in many ways, Threads looks very similar to Twitter.



Users primarily post text-based messages, or “threads,” that are limited to 500 characters each. You can tag specific users in a thread by using the @ symbol in front of their username. Users can limit replies on their thread to only their followers, or people they’ve tagged in the post. You can also include photos or videos in a thread.



Threads appear in a scrolling feed, where users can like, reply, repost or quote other users’ threads.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>What it’s missing</h2>



Threads may look a lot like its rival, but it’s missing some critical features.



The most glaring omission is direct messaging, or DMs. One-on-one, private messaging is a hallmark of nearly every other major social media network, including Twitter and Meta’s own Instagram and Facebook. Threads didn’t launch with direct messaging, which can pose a problem for journalists, who often receive messages from potential sources, or for brands, which can offer customer service through social media messaging.



The Threads feed pulls in posts from all users, not just the ones you follow. It can be hard to find the content posted by the users or brands that you’ve followed, and as of now, there’s no way to change the way the feed loads.



Like Instagram, Threads isn’t serving up posts in a chronological order. Content is apparently algorithmically ranked and served up to users no matter what time it’s posted.



There are also no paid ads in Threads, yet. Many brands have already joined up, though. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who oversees the new app, told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/5/23784870/instagram-threads-adam-mosseri-interview-twitter-competitor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Verge</a>&nbsp;that advertising would be a “champagne problem” if Threads is able to scale.



Threads also lacks the ability to include hashtags in posts. Hashtags are a core feature of Twitter, and have made it easy for users to discover posts under a certain topic, as well as surface trending content in one place. Similarly, Threads doesn’t have a feature that allows users to search for specific text or phrases.



Another key differentiator is that Threads doesn’t have a desktop website, so you can only access the service via iOS or Android apps.



There’s also one significant downside to Threads being linked to Instagram. For now, Meta&nbsp;<a href="https://help.instagram.com/515230437301944" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">says</a>&nbsp;there’s no way to delete your Threads account without also deleting your Instagram account.

Mark-Zuckerbergs-Twitter-rival-passed-30-million-signups-overnight-—-heres-how-to-use-Metas-Threads-app-and-whats-missing

Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival passed 30 million signups overnight — here’s how to use Meta’s Threads app and what’s missing

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="461" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-820x461.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-425811" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-820x461.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8-1536x864.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/107206075-1678389148948-gettyimages-1246494152-AFP_337P9F8.jpeg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /></figure>



Generative artificial intelligence is all the rage now but the A.I. boom is not just all hype, said Dan Ives from Wedbush&nbsp;Securities, who calls it the “fourth industrial revolution playing out.”



“This is something I call a 1995 moment, parallel with the internet. I do not believe that this is a hype cycle,” the managing director and senior equity research analyst told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.



The fourth industrial revolution refers to how technological advancements like artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and the internet of things are changing the way humans live, work and relate to one another.



“I think this is really transformational changes to technology that I think would change the tech space for the next 20-30 years,” said Ives. “I think we are just starting what we believe is the start of a new tech bull market, despite many of the bears continuing to really being skeptical.”



Adoption of A.I. technology surged after ChatGPT — OpenAI’s viral chatbot — went viral due to its ability to generate humanlike responses to users’ prompts, which amazed researchers and the general public.



“I think it really comes down to the guidance heard around the world with Nvidia’s $4 billion guidance range.&nbsp;I think that’s the tip of the iceberg,” he said.



U.S. chip maker Nvidia produces graphics chips for gaming and A.I. Those chips help drive the technology behind ChatGPT and Alphabet’s Bard chatbots.



Nvidia said it expects sales of about $11 billion in the second quarter — more than 50% higher than Wall Street’s $7.15 billion estimate, which Ives called a “jaw dropping guidance.”



Nvidia stunned investors and analysts by reporting better-than-expected first-quarter profit of more than $2 billion and revenue of $7 billion in May.



“We’re going to have a trillion dollars of incremental spend over the next decade. That could be conservative — that wasn’t here six months ago,” said Ives.



″That’s why I think what you’re seeing is the multiple expansion. Investors recognize this isn’t an A.I. gold rush, which I really view is something. The only parallel would be 1995 Internet and 2007 Apple iPhone moments in terms of what I’ve seen in my career,” said the analyst.

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A.I. is not all hype. It’s the ‘fourth industrial revolution playing out,’ says Wedbush’s Dan Ives

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="592" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-820x592.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-425402" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-820x592.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-300x217.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-125x90.jpg 125w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-768x555.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-1536x1109.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WP7VUMTCFNMJBLJHVA6FHCJGPI-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">FILE PHOTO: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addresses students during a town hall at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India, November 12, 2018. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis</figcaption></figure>



WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters)&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;Twitter was threatened with shut down in India, Nigeria and Turkey unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts, with India wanting to curb journalists&#8217; and protesters&#8217; use of the social media platform, co-founder Jack Dorsey said on Monday.



Dorsey quit his Twitter CEO role in 2021 and the social media platform was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022.



&#8220;India for example, India is a country that had many requests of us around the farmers protest, around particular journalists that were critical of the government,&#8221; Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, said in an interview to YouTube news show Breaking Points.



Indian farmers ended a year of protests in late 2021 after winning concessions from the government regarding certain farm laws. The demonstrations were among the biggest faced by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).



&#8220;It manifested in ways such as: &#8216;We will shut Twitter down in India,&#8217; which is a very large market for us; &#8216;we will raid the homes of your employees,&#8217; which they did; &#8216;we will shut down your offices if you don&#8217;t follow suit.&#8217; And this is India, a democratic country,&#8221; Dorsey added.



The Indian government has previously denied engaging in online censorship and says it only aims to restrict misinformation and posts that curb peace and security.



Dorsey also mentioned similar pressure from governments in Turkey and Nigeria, which had restricted the platform in their nations at different points over the years before lifting those bans.



&#8220;Turkey is very similar (to India), like we had so many requests from Turkey. We fought Turkey in their courts and often won, but they threatened to shut us down constantly,&#8221; he said.



Dorsey also added that the situation in Nigeria was such that Twitter could not even put its employees on the ground in the country out of fear of what the government might do to them.



Nigeria had suspended Twitter in 2021 after it removed a post from then-President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists. It lifted the ban in early 2022 after Twitter agreed to open a local office, among other agreements with authorities.



Advocacy groups have raised concerns about the human rights situations in India, Turkey and Nigeria.



(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

FILE PHOTO: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addresses students during a town hall at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi

India, Turkey, Nigeria threatened to shut down Twitter, founder says

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-424753" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107148377-1667950015739-gettyimages-1244619288-arriens-twittera221108_npnY6.jpeg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">An image of new Twitter owner Elon Musk is seen surrounded by Twitter logos in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on 08 November, 2022.  STR | Nurphoto | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Elon Musk said Thursday that Twitter is getting a new CEO and that he will move to a product and technical role. Musk said via Twitter that the new CEO, an unnamed woman, would start in about six weeks.



He added that he would transition “to being exec chair &amp; CTO, overseeing product, software &amp; sysops.”



Tesla shares jumped more than 2%, in a sign that investors were pleased about the move.



Several Tesla investors were concerned that Musk was too distracted by running Twitter and that he should redirect his time to steering the electric vehicle company, where he is also CEO. In April, a host of progressive Tesla shareholders publicly urged Tesla’s board to ensure that Musk would dedicate more time to the automobile company.



Musk, who is also CEO of the reusable rocket maker SpaceX, completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October and made his mark there immediately. He fired the company’s top executives and laid off hundreds of employees.



Under his leadership, Twitter’s core advertising business has suffered. Multiple companies halted their paid promotional campaigns as the social messaging service saw an increase in offensive speech and hateful rhetoric, several advocacy groups have documented.



Musk has tried to make up for the shortfall with a new subscription service, Twitter Blue, which offers features such as the ability to compose longer tweets. In April, the company removed so-called “legacy” blue checkmarks from non-paying users whose identities had been verified, opening the door to potential impostors. Government accounts and some corporate accounts will still maintain verification through a separate set of icons, in silver and gold, respectively.



He has also allowed previously banned users back on the platform and courted political controversy with statements such as saying that the media is racist against white and Asian people.



Twitter has also weathered several technical errors and outages during Musk’s tenure as CEO, some of which coincided with massive layoffs, which he pitched as necessary for the financial health of the company.



Earlier this week, right-wing TV talk show host Tucker Carlson announced he would be hosting a new show on the platform after being fired by his previous employer, Fox News.

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Elon Musk says he’s stepping down as Twitter CEO, will oversee product

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-424713" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/107238676-1683700429774-gettyimages-1244760150-arriens-twitteri221113_np1h7.jpeg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform’s direct messages feature including the introduction of encryption. STR | Nurphoto | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Twitter could launch encrypted direct messages on Wednesday, Elon Musk said, as the CEO outlined plans to boost communication features on the social media service.



Musk said in a tweet late Tuesday that the latest version of the Twitter app contains changes to direct messages or DMs — non-public messages users send to one another.



The CEO said that users can now reply to any message in a DM thread, not just the most recent, as well as use any emoji to react to a message. Previously, users would only be able to reply to the latest message in a DM thread and only react with specific emojis.



Musk also announced that encrypted DMs “should” be released on Wednesday.



Encryption in messages means that only the sender and receiver are able to see a message. In theory, Twitter and Musk would not be able to see or intercept direct messages between people.



“The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” Musk tweeted.



Facebook parent Meta said in January that it was expanding testing for default end-to-end encryption for its Messenger service. WhatsApp, the other messaging app owned by Meta, has had end-to-end encryption for several years.



Encrypted messaging services have grown in popularity in the past few years as users focus more on privacy.



Musk also said that voice and video calls will be added soon to Twitter so users can “talk to people anywhere in the world” without giving them a phone number.



Since Twitter’s inception, the development of the direct messages feature hasn’t got much attention from previous CEOs. But Musk has signaled numerous times his intention to make Twitter into an “everything app” from messaging to financial services.



New Twitter features Musk promises are not always introduced on time. In February, he said Twitter would introduce a feature to share advertising revenue with creators on the platform. That hasn’t happened yet.

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Twitter to launch encrypted direct messages with voice and video chat to follow, Elon Musk says

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="461" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-820x461.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-424681" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-820x461.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/105193472-RTS1QG9H.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on stage during the annual Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2018. Stephen Lam | Reuters</figcaption></figure>



Artificial intelligence is going to be a central theme at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, as the company is planning to announce a number of generative AI updates, including launching a general-use large language model (LLM), CNBC has learned.



According to internal documents about Google I/O viewed by CNBC, the company will unveil PaLM 2, its most recent and advanced LLM. PaLM 2 includes more than 100 languages and has been operating under the internal codename “Unified Language Model.” It’s also performed a broad range of coding and math tests as well as creative writing tests and analysis.



At the event, Google will make announcements on the theme of how AI is “helping people reach their full potential,” including “generative experiences” to Bard and Search, the documents show. Pichai will be speaking to a live crowd of developers as he pitches his company’s AI advancements.



The updates come as competition ramps up in the AI arm’s race, with Google and Microsoft racing to incorporate chat AI technology into their products. Microsoft is using its investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI to bolster its Bing search engine, while Google has quickly mobilized to try and incorporate its Bard technology and its own LLM across various teams.



Google first announced the PaLM language model in April of 2022. In March of this year, the company launched an API for PaLM alongside a number of AI enterprise tools it says will help businesses “generate text, images, code, videos, audio, and more from simple natural language prompts.” 



Last month, Google said its medical LLM called “Med-PaLM 2” can answer medical exam questions at an “expert doctor level” and is accurate 85% of the time.



Google also plans to share advancements to Bard and Search with “generative experiences,” including Bard being used for coding, math and “logic” as well as expansions to Japanese and Korean languages, the documents show.



The company has been working on a series of more powerful Bard models, and officially launched the tool as an experiment in March.



Internally, the company has worked on a multi-modal version called “Multi-Bard,” which uses a larger data set and solves complex math and coding programs, according to separate documentation viewed by CNBC. The company has also tested versions called “Big Bard” and “Giant Bard.”



Google also plans on expanding on its “Workspace AI collaborator,” including discussing template generation in Sheets and image generation in its Slides and Meet products. In March, the company said it would be giving access to AI capabilities in Gmail and Google Docs to a small number of users as part of a test, with plans to bring additional generative AI features to its Meet, Sheets and Slides applications.



One image, viewed by CNBC, showed a Slides sidebar with a chat box that allowed a user to enter text with the option to “create” an image based on the words.



Additional updates include use cases to image recognition tool Google Lens. The company will show advancements to “multi-search” for camera and voice, after last year allowing users to ask questions about what they’re viewing in images.



Outside of the AI sphere, Google will show off its new foldable phone, The Pixel Fold, as CNBC previously reported. The company claims the Pixel Fold will have “the most durable hinge on a foldable” phone and will offer a phone trade-in option. Google plans to market the Pixel Fold as water-resistant and pocket-sized.



A Google spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Alphabet to unveil A.I. updates at Google I/O, showing off creative writing and coding capabilities

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-820x547.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-424375" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-820x547.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-135x90.jpeg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/107201636-1677683923922-gettyimages-1245066840-RAFAPRESS_24112022-03861-scaled.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /></figure>



Twitter removed blue legacy check marks from nonpaying users’ accounts on Thursday, weeks after the Elon Musk-owned company initially announced that the changes would begin.



The company confirmed on Wednesday that it would begin removing the blue check marks from users who didn’t pay for the company’s subscription service, Twitter Blue. By midday Thursday, check marks had begun to disappear from nonpaying accounts.



Before Musk took Twitter private, the check marks were limited to notable figures in government, media, or who were otherwise in the public eye and ran a heightened risk of impersonation. Musk said Twitter Blue would offer the option for paid verification shortly after he completed his $44 billion takeover of the social media site.



The changeover means that only paying subscribers who have “verified” their phone number will be entitled to Twitter verification and the blue check mark. Government accounts and some corporate accounts will still maintain verification through a separate set of icons, in silver and gold, respectively.



An ensuing uproar over the initial price — $20 — and a poorly executed rollout, including rampant impersonation of public figures and corporations, forced Musk to delay the removal of legacy verification. Twitter later rolled out color-coded verification symbols for verified brands or government-associated organizations



At the time of publication, there were significant gaps in institutional verification, leaving them open to the possibility of impersonation. The Twitter accounts of numerous U.S. attorney offices remained unverified, as did various arms of the U.S. Department of Justice and field offices of the FBI.



Twitter CEO Musk, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, has wielded his power over the platform to alter the verification and labeling of media outlets, including NPR and The New York Times. NPR elected to stop using the platform in an official capacity after it was falsely labeled as being state affiliated; the Times lost its verified status on its primary account after the outlet said it wouldn’t pay for verification on Twitter.

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Twitter finally removes legacy verification check marks

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-423213" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107172382-1672349557233-gettyimages-1245872049-AA_29122022_1006753.jpeg 929w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Visitors take photos in front of the Meta (Facebook) sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on December 29, 2022. Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Meta is rolling out a new paid verification subscription service called Meta Verified, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in an Instagram update Sunday.



For $11.99 a month on the web and $14.99 a month on iOS, users on Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms will be able to submit their government ID and get a blue verification badge. The service will be introduced in Australia and New Zealand this week, and more countries will follow, Zuckerberg said.



“This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuckerberg wrote in the post.



Meta has historically granted verification to notable users like politicians, executives, members of the press and organizations to signal their legitimacy. The company’s new subscription service is similar to Twitter’s revamped service called Twitter Blue, which also grants users a verification badge if they pay a monthly fee.



Twitter launched its updated Twitter Blue subscription service in December after the company’s new owner Elon Musk pulled and delayed the initial launch. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, has said the new verification system will be “the great leveler” and give “power to the people.”



Twitter Blue briefly launched in November, but it was pulled after users abused the new paid option by impersonating celebrities and brands.



A Meta spokesperson said Sunday that there are impersonation protections in place with Meta Verified subscriptions. In order to qualify, users must be at least 18 years old, meet minimum account activity requirements and submit a government ID that matches their profile name and photo. Subscriptions will also include “proactive monitoring” for account impersonation, according to the spokesperson.



Musk has been open about his intent to eventually remove badges from Twitter accounts that were verified prior to the Twitter Blue launch, but Meta will not make changes to accounts that are already verified as the company tests its service, a spokesperson said.



Businesses are not currently eligible to apply for Meta Verified, and the company said users will not be able to change their profile name, username, date of birth, or profile photo without going through the application process again.

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Meta is rolling out a new paid verification subscription service for Instagram and Facebook users

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-423157" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai--1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/104602233-GettyImages-684226980-Sundar-Pichai-.jpg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Google CEO Sundar Pichai Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Google execs understand that the company’s artificial intelligence search tool Bard isn’t always accurate in how it responds to queries. At least some of the onus is falling on employees to fix the wrong answers.



Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s vice president for search, asked staffers in an email on Wednesday to help the company make sure its new ChatGPT competitor gets answers right. The email, which CNBC viewed, included a link to a do’s and don’ts page with instructions on how employees should fix responses as they test Bard internally.



Staffers are encouraged to rewrite answers on topics they understand well.



“Bard learns best by example, so taking the time to rewrite a response thoughtfully will go a long way in helping us to improve the mode,” the document says.



Also on Wednesday, as CNBC reported earlier, CEO Sundar Pichai asked employees to spend two to four hours of their time on Bard, acknowledging that “this will be a long journey for everyone, across the field.” 



Raghavan echoed that sentiment.



“This is exciting technology but still in its early days,” Raghavan wrote. “We feel a great responsibility to get it right, and your participation in the dogfood will help accelerate the model’s training and test its load capacity (Not to mention, trying out Bard is actually quite fun!).”



Google unveiled its conversation technology last week, but a series of missteps around the announcement pushed the stock price down nearly 9%. Employees criticized Pichai for the mishaps, describing the rollout internally as “rushed,” “botched” and “comically short sighted.”



To try and clean up the AI’s mistakes, company leaders are leaning on the knowledge of humans. At the top of the do’s and don’ts section, Google provides guidance for what to consider “before teaching Bard.”



Under do’s, Google instructs employees to keep responses “polite, casual and approachable.” It also says they should be “in first person,” and maintain an “unopinionated, neutral tone.”



For don’ts, employees are told not to stereotype and to “avoid making presumptions based on race, nationality, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, location, or similar categories.”



Also, “don’t describe Bard as a person, imply emotion, or claim to have human-like experiences,” the document says.



Google then says “keep it safe,” and instructs employees to give a “thumbs down” to answers that offer “legal, medical, financial advice” or are hateful and abusive.



“Don’t try to re-write it; our team will take it from there,” the document says.



To incentivize people in his organization to test Bard and provide feedback, Raghavan said contributors will earn a “Moma badge,” which appears on internal employee profiles. He said Google will invite the top 10 rewrite contributors from the Knowledge and Information organization, which Raghavan oversees, to a listening session. There they can “share their feedback live” to Raghavan and people working on Bard.



“A wholehearted thank you to the teams working hard on this behind the scenes,” Raghavan wrote.



Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Google asks employees to rewrite Bard’s bad responses, says the A.I. ‘learns best by example’

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="461" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-820x461.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-423017" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-820x461.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk-1536x864.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107191176-1675871046625-gettyimages-1246879777-raa-openaich230207_npTfk.jpeg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photo: via CNBC</figcaption></figure>



What is ChatGPT? I asked the buzzy artificial intelligence chatbot, which has ignited conversation in schools, corporate boardrooms and social media, to explain itself.



In its own description, ChatGPT is “an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) language model. It uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to text inputs in a conversational manner.”



The tool is the talk of the business world. It has been mentioned on earnings calls by management from a range of companies including oil giants, banks — and even the industrial behemoth Caterpillar.



It has also sparked concerns over potential abuses. In classrooms, students have used ChatGPT to generate entire essays, while hackers have begun testing it to write malicious code.



So what is ChatGPT, exactly? Here’s a simple guide on all you need to know about the popular AI chatbot.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-chatgpt"><a></a>What is ChatGPT?</h2>



ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI. OpenAI was co-founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman and is backed by well-known investors — most notably Microsoft. 



It is one of several examples of generative AI. These are tools that allow users to enter written prompts and receive new human-like text or images and videos generated by the AI.



Prior examples include Dall-E, a text-to-image program from OpenAI that garnered attention from people captivated by its ability to come up with realistic, often absurd, pictures that match people’s text descriptions.



Lensa, an app based on open-source AI project Stable Diffusion, has been used to turn selfies into illustrious self-portraits inspired by everything from sci-fi to anime.



In ChatGPT’s case, the service is a text-based tool that can produce human-like responses to user requests — from poetry in the style of William Shakespeare to advice on what to do for a child’s birthday party.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>What’s so special about it?</h2>



ChatGPT is powered by a large language model, or LLM, meaning it’s programmed to understand human language and generate responses based on large corpora of data.



ChatGPT’s LLM is called GPT-3.5. It is an upgrade of OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model.



With a whopping 175 billion parameters, GPT-3 is one of the largest and most powerful language processing AI models to date.



What makes ChatGPT so impressive is its ability to produce human-like responses, thanks in no small part to the vast amounts of data it is trained on.



“What’s exciting is that the responses are more and more human-like, so what you’re seeing is things that we did not think computers could do before,” Jeffrey Wong, global chief innovation officer at professional services firm EY, told CNBC.



Another thing that differentiates ChatGPT is its ability to log context from users’ earlier messages in a thread and use it to form responses later in the conversation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Why is it so popular?&nbsp;</h2>



No generative AI application has quite managed to achieve the kind of influence and virality that ChatGPT has.



It has been the subject of countless memes and the talk of the business community at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. Chinese tech giant Baidu made its own version called Ernie Bot.



The chatbot signed up 1 million in the five days after its release, according to a Dec. 5 tweet from Altman. By January, ChatGPT had amassed 100 million monthly active users only two months into its launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS note published last week.



It took TikTok nine months to reach 100 million users and Instagram two and a half years.



Jan. 31 was the biggest-ever day for ChatGPT, with its website garnering a record 28 million daily visits, according to data from Similarweb. That was up 165% from a month ago.



One reason for ChatGPT’s popularity is its accessibility. The service is public to anyone via the OpenAI website, and its potential applications range from school homework to legal briefs.



The timing has also played a part, according to Wong.



“When we come out of pandemics, you typically see this burst of creativity,” he said. “The biggest example is, after the Black Plague, there was this Renaissance, this burst of creativity across the board.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Why it’s got tech giants clashing</h2>



Microsoft is betting billions on ChatGPT’s owner, OpenAI. In late January, the tech titan announced a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment deal with OpenAI.



Microsoft declined to disclose a specific dollar amount. A report from Semafor said the Redmond, Washington tech giant was in talks to invest as much as $10 billion in the company. Microsoft previously invested $1 billion into OpenAI.



On Tuesday, Microsoft held a press event where it announced new AI-powered updates to its Bing search engine and Edge browser. Altman confirmed Microsoft had incorporated some of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 language technologies into Bing.



That was a day after Google unveiled its own response to ChatGPT, called Bard AI. The company plans to start rolling Bard out in Google Search in the coming weeks.



ChatGPT is seen as a threat to Google. Rather than turn to the web search pioneer for your most burning questions, people could rely on ChatGPT.&nbsp;



Google was actually early to the advanced conversational AI game, through the launch of its own large language model called Lamda in 2021. It missed the boat on launching its own consumer product based on Lamda — and hopes to change that with Bard, which is powered by the language model.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>How good is ChatGPT, really?</h2>



ChatGPT has its limitations. Responses from the chatbot can contain factual inaccuracies. For example, it can invent fictitious historical names and books that don’t exist, or fail to solve certain math problems.



“The open-ended aspects of these models are a double-edged sword,” Will Williams, vice president of machine learning at British AI startup Speechmatics, told CNBC.



“On the one hand, there’s a high level of flexibility and fluidity in interactions, and an engaging conversation is possible on almost any topic. On the other hand, you never quite know when the model is making contact with reality and not over-confidently hallucinating.”



ChatGPT’s knowledge is still limited to 2021 data, but may improve with time. Going forward, the expectation is that ChatGPT will be the precursor to much more advanced AI systems.



For now, experts say generative AI isn’t yet capable of achieving human-like, “general” intelligence.



Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is often considered the holy grail of the AI community. It most commonly refers to the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.



Plenty of companies hope to achieve that, from OpenAI to Google’s DeepMind.



The possibilities of GPT-3 have already led to excitement about OpenAI’s next-generation LLM model, GPT-4.



Tempering expectations, OpenAI’s Altman pushed back on the hype surrounding GPT-4, stating in a recent interview with StrictlyVC that people were “begging to be disappointed.”

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All you need to know about ChatGPT, the A.I. chatbot that’s got the world talking and tech giants clashing

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="461" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-820x461.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-423013" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-820x461.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/106040702-1564081767821msft.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 7, 2019. Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Shares of Google’s parent Alphabet closed down more than 7% on Wednesday after the company held an event that promoted its new artificial intelligence chatbot called Bard, one day after competitor Microsoft held its own event to show off new AI technologies in its competing search engine, Bing.



Google officially <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/google-announces-bard-ai-in-response-to-chatgpt.html">announ</a>c<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/google-announces-bard-ai-in-response-to-chatgpt.html">ed Bard</a> on Monday, confirming CNBC’s prior reporting, and the company said it will begin rolling out the technology in the coming weeks.



During the event Wednesday, which was livestreamed from Paris, Google executives discussed some of Bard’s capabilities. The presentation showed how Bard can be used to display the pros and cons of buying an electric car, for example, or to plan a trip in Northern California.



Bard is powered by the company’s large language model LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications. Google will open up the conversation technology to “trusted testers” ahead of making it more widely available to the public, the company said in a blog post Monday.



The event also showed AI improvements to a number of other Google products, including Maps and Google Lens, which lets people search for images from their phone’s camera.



Shares of Alphabet slid during the event, suggesting that investors were hoping for more in light of growing competition from Microsoft.



Google’s event took place just one day after Microsoft hosted its own AI event at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft’s event centered around new AI-powered updates to the company’s Bing search engine and Edge browser. Bing, which is a distant second to Google in search, will now allow users get more conversational responses to questions. 



The Microsoft product updates were built on technology from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, in which Microsoft has invested billions.



ChatGPT is AI software that generates text based on complex written prompts. The web-based tool went viral after its debut in November, prompting analysts and Google employees to ask whether the company was falling behind in AI, an area which has been a core focus for Google for several years. In response to ChatGPT’s popularity, Google declared an internal “code red” to accelerate development of Bard and other AI products, and the company’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, reportedly got involved again, years after stepping down from day-to-day work at the company.



Though Microsoft’s latest AI investments increase the pressure on Google search, some analysts say it will take time for Microsoft to see any significant gains.



“Search improvements will act as a tailwind to [advertising revenue long term], but it will take time to bring users back to Bing and they will need a crowbar to pry away advertisers from Google,” Jefferies’ analyst Brent Thill wrote in a Tuesday note. “We view these updates as the tip of the iceberg for MSFT’s AI capabilities, with the largest opportunity in enterprise use cases.”



Analysts at Evercore said there was “little incremental news” from Google’s event, which may have contributed to the falling stock price. The analysts said they believe this was an early and a “perhaps rushed” look at the AI Google has been working on for years.



Even so, the analysts said they believe Google’s AI technology is “at least as good” as its competition.



“Leveraging its years of AI investment (which drove a near doubling of CapEx in 2018) and unparalleled scale, this should help the company defend its market position in the long run,” they wrote in a Wednesday note.



—&nbsp;CNBC’s Jennifer Elias and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Alphabet shares fall 7% following Google’s A.I. event

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M-820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-419396" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M-820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M-135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M.jpg 960w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A view of a sign above the entrance of the Google office, ahead of presentation of the detailed investment plan for Germany, in Berlin, Germany, August 31, 2021. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse</figcaption></figure>



AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Whether it’s helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people, businesses and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives. That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago — and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.



Since then we’ve continued to make investments in AI across the board, and Google AI and DeepMind are advancing the state of the art. Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is&nbsp;<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/2202.05924" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">doubling every six months</a>, far outpacing Moore’s Law. At the same time, advanced generative AI and large language models are capturing the imaginations of people around the world. In fact, our&nbsp;<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Transformer</a>&nbsp;research project and our field-defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you&#8217;re starting to see today.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-introducing-bard">Introducing Bard</h2>



It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and breakthroughs into products that truly help people. That’s the journey we’ve been on with large language models. Two years ago we unveiled next-generation language and conversation capabilities powered by our Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA for short).



We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard. And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.



Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.



We’re releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback. We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a&nbsp;<a href="https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and-high.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">high bar for quality, safety and groundedness</a>&nbsp;in real-world information. We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bringing the benefits of AI into our everyday products</h2>



We have a long history of using AI to improve Search for billions of people. BERT, one of our first Transformer models, was revolutionary in understanding the intricacies of human language. Two years ago, we introduced MUM, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT and has next-level and multi-lingual understanding of information which can pick out&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/products/search/key-moments-video-search/">key moments in videos and provide</a>&nbsp;critical information, including&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/products/search/using-ai-keep-google-search-safe/?_ga=2.98664346.52992333.1675136960-653895777.1637261672">crisis support,</a>&nbsp;in more languages.



Now, our newest AI technologies — like LaMDA, PaLM, Imagen and MusicLM — are building on this, creating entirely new ways to engage with information, from language and images to video and audio. We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search.



One of the most exciting opportunities is how AI can deepen our understanding of information and turn it into useful knowledge more efficiently — making it easier for people to get to the heart of what they’re looking for and get things done. When people think of Google, they often think of turning to us for quick factual answers, like “how many keys does a piano have?” But increasingly, people are turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding — like, “is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?” Learning about a topic like this can take a lot of effort to figure out what you really need to know, and people often want to explore a diverse range of opinions or perspectives.



AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right answer. Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner. These new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Helping developers innovate with AI</h2>



Beyond our own products, we think it’s important to make it easy, safe and scalable for others to benefit from these advances by building on top of our best models. Next month, we’ll start onboarding individual developers, creators and enterprises so they can try our Generative Language API, initially powered by LaMDA with a range of models to follow. Over time, we intend to create a suite of tools and APIs that will make it easy for others to build more innovative applications with AI. Having the necessary compute power to build reliable and trustworthy AI systems is also crucial to startups, and we are excited to help scale these efforts through our Google Cloud partnerships with&nbsp;<a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/accelerating-language-model-training-with-cohere-and-google-cloud-tpus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cohere</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://c3.ai/partners/googlecloud-partnership/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">C3.ai</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/anthropic-forges-partnership-with-google-cloud-to-help-deliver-reliable-and-responsible-ai-301738512.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Anthropic</a>, which was just announced last week. Stay tuned for more developer details soon.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bold and responsible</h2>



It’s critical that we bring experiences rooted in these models to the world in a bold and responsible way. That’s why we’re committed to developing AI responsibly: In 2018, Google was one of the first companies to publish a set of&nbsp;<a href="https://ai.google/principles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AI Principles</a>. We continue to provide education and resources for our researchers, partner with governments and external organizations to develop standards and best practices, and work with communities and experts to make AI safe and useful.



Whether it’s applying AI to radically transform our own products or making these powerful tools available to others, we’ll continue to be bold with innovation and responsible in our approach. And it’s just the beginning — more to come in all of these areas in the weeks and months ahead.

65GOX4BM3RI3VORRYQ5THS3W6M

An important next step on our AI journey

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="461" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-820x461.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-422827" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-820x461.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191-1536x864.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/107186657-1675184474096-gettyimages-1246663793-70794191.jpeg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a Q&amp;A at Teesside University, on Jan. 30, 2023. Oli Scarff | Wpa Pool | Getty Images NewS</figcaption></figure>



The U.K. formally laid out plans to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, with the government looking to rein in some of the reckless business practices that emerged over the past year and contributed to the&nbsp;demise of FTX.



In a widely-anticipated industry consultation launched Tuesday, the government proposed a number of measures aimed at bringing regulation of crypto asset businesses in line with that of traditional financial firms.



Among the proposals unveiled Tuesday was a move that would strengthen rules targeting financial intermediaries and custodians that store crypto on behalf of clients.



A big theme that emerged in 2022 was the rise of risky loans made between multiple crypto firms and a lack of due diligence done on the counterparties involved in those transactions.



The U.K. proposals would crack down on such activities, seeking to establish a “robust world-first regime strengthening rules around the lending of cryptoassets, whilst enhancing consumer protection and the operational resilience of firms,” according to a statement out late Tuesday.



“We remain steadfast in our commitment to grow the economy and enable technological change and innovation — and this includes cryptoasset technology,” Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the Treasury, said in a statement.



“But we must also protect consumers who are embracing this new technology — ensuring robust, transparent, and fair standards.”



The collapse of FTX has added urgency to global regulators’ attempts to govern the regulation-averse crypto space. The European Union and the U.S. have already made proposals of their own to improve consumer protections in crypto.



In a Dec. 2 speech, Griffith said that “recent events in the crypto market reinforce the case for timely, clear and effective regulation.”



The&nbsp;implosion of FTX, which allegedly used customer money to make risky loans and trades, set off a chain reaction of bankruptcies for digital asset lending firms with exposure to the crypto giant, including&nbsp;BlockFi&nbsp;and Digital Currency Group’s&nbsp;Genesis Trading.



The proposals unveiled Tuesday would also enforce tougher transparency requirements on crypto exchanges to ensure they publish relevant disclosure documents and set out clear admission requirements for trading digital tokens.



Another measure would relax strict rules on crypto advertisements, allowing firms with Financial Conduct Authority registration to issue their own promotions while the broader crypto regime is being introduced.



The regulatory move comes as crypto firms in both the U.K. and beyond are feeling the chill of a deep downturn known as “crypto winter.”



Companies are seeing their valuations slashed by investors after the blowup of FTX and a slump in crypto prices, while the industry has also been plagued by numerous rounds of layoffs. Last week, London-based crypto exchange Luno&nbsp;cut 35% of its workforce&nbsp;in a move impacting over 330 roles.



Regulation takes time. It will likely take years before the measures are approved by Parliament. The Financial Services and Markets Bill, which would recognize crypto assets as regulated products, is still making its way through Parliament. The law&nbsp;aims to make the country’s financial sector more competitive post-Brexit.



Nonetheless, even the simple display of being seen as taking action is important, according to some industry executives.



“Having a regulatory roadmap or regulatory direction of travel is going to be super useful for the UK in terms of being a crypto hub,” Julian Sawyer, CEO of Standard Chartered-backed crypto custody services firm Zodia Custody, told CNBC Tuesday in an interview.



Sawyer, who formerly co-founded British fintech firm Starling and led international expansion for crypto exchange Gemini, said it was also important to ensure “general alignment between global markets in terms of the approach to digital assets.”



He noted the European Union has gotten ahead of the game with its Markets in Crypto-Assets law, which is expected to come into force in 2024.



Bitcoin, which has stealthily climbed about 40% since the start of 2023, was trading flat Wednesday at a price of $23,103.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-global-crypto-hub-ambitions"><a></a>Global crypto hub ambitions</h2>



The U.K. wants to become a leader in crypto and blockchain technology on the global stage. However, those ambitions, which were first&nbsp;signposted in April 2022, have been beset by a&nbsp;chaotic revolving door of governments.



Rishi Sunak, who took the reins as U.K. leader in October 2022, is seen by market players as a&nbsp;crypto-friendly prime minister, having previously said he’s “determined” to make the U.K. “the jurisdiction of choice for crypto and blockchain technology.”



As London looks to compete with EU financial hubs after Brexit, crypto could be a way for it to improve its chances, industry insiders said previously.



“There is an opportunity to provide clarity to the industry and allow it to play its role in achieving their mandate to encourage businesses to invest,&nbsp;to innovate, and to create jobs in the U.K.,” Jordan Wain, U.K. public policy lead at Chainalysis, told CNBC in November.



Sunak’s administration will consult on plans to introduce a new set of rules tailored to crypto companies, with a view to closing the consultation by Apr. 30, after which it will formulate more detailed rules.

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