Why is Google going "offline"?

Google tests offline

"Back to the future", seems to be the new motto at Google. For security reasons, the data colossus is sending thousands of its employees on a nostalgic journey through time: Office PCs without internet access, how sweet! 2500 'Googlers' will have to cope with this as if they were back in the 90s. Maybe they should also consider whether dot-matrix printers and floppy disks should have a revival.

Of course, some employees aren't thrilled about this, but hey, at least Google has the heart to let them off the time machine. And in case you're wondering, yes, those tech survivors can still use Gmail and Google Drive.

WormGPT helps scammers

The irony of progress! With WormGPT, criminals could now harass us with polished phishing emails that read like poetry. Until now, we could easily expose most scams because they sounded like they were typed by a monkey. But this tool, based on the GPT-J language model, could change that.

Self-proclaimed "reformed ex-black hat hacker" Daniel Kelley has proudly shown us that we could soon be receiving "perfect and convincing" scam emails. Well, we're all looking forward to that! But before we get too creeped out: The phishing email presented by Kelley lacked detail. Let's hope the crooks don't do their homework.

Whatsapp online everywhere

So now it's finally worked, WhatsApp. After a nerve-wracking beta phase, the standalone app is rolled out for Google's Wear OS smartwatches. Users can now happily start new conversations, reply to messages and make VoIP calls - all without having their smartphone with them. Wow, what an innovation! And don't worry, Apple users, you'll still get the stripped-down experience, just the way we love it.

But hey, you can still look at and reply to incoming messages if your notification settings are right. Good job, WhatsApp, and keep it up, Google! Amazing you still haven't knocked the Apple Watch off the smartwatch throne.

  
iPhone talks soon

Well, well. Apple, the king of pretty hardware, is catching up in the field of artificial intelligence and developing a chatbot in the style of ChatGPT. According to an internal codename, it will be called "Apple GPT". Maybe they should call it "iChat" to stay on trend? Regardless, Apple doesn't seem to have an exact plan for releasing this technology yet. Classic Apple, always mysterious. Interestingly, Ajax, the framework for building large language models, was built using Google JAX on the Google Cloud.

But shoo! We don't want anyone to think Apple needed help from Google. A special feature that sets this chatbot apart from others? No way! But don't worry, they're looking for AI talent to catch up. Everything is going according to plan, isn't it?