The scale of illegal gambling and betting in India is staggering, with 1.6 billion visits recorded between October and December 2024 across four analysed platforms -- Parimatch, Stake, 1xBet, and Battery Bet.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed state agencies and public universities to suspend new H-1B visa petitions through May 2027, a move likely to affect Indian professionals. The order comes amid ongoing debate over skilled immigration and potential impacts on academic research and innovation.
An Indian AI Research Organisation official says India has adopted a balanced and pragmatic approach to AI regulation, avoiding the extremes of the US and EU models.
Political parties in Kerala are increasingly using AI-generated content to influence voters in the upcoming elections, raising concerns about the blurring lines between reality and fiction in political messaging.
The artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem is opaque and needs to be made transparent and accountable, said Competition Commission of India's (CCI) Chairperson Ravneet Kaur at the Business Standard Manthan Summit on Wednesday.
Taking hoax bomb-threat messages and calls seriously, the government has started identifying those behind the menace and asked social media platforms like Meta and X to share data on such messages, sources said.
With a confident new generation of innovators, India now has the scale and self-belief to shape its own digital destiny marked by creation, observes Ajay Kumar chairman, UPSC.
'Given the proportion of the global leak, it is very likely that the data of Indian citizens might be on the dataset.'
The US has replaced random H-1B selection with a wage-weighted lottery and a new $100,000 fee for applications, raising uncertainty for students and junior hires.
'The Bhashini Mission has delivered a working technology at large scale, which is as good as or better than the one with MNC tech giants.'
Nasscom on Monday said the US clarification that the H-1B visa fee hike will not affect current visa holders and will apply as a one-time fee only to fresh petitions has helped address the immediate ambiguity surrounding eligibility and timelines.
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw countered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday on his claim that after the COVID-19 pandemic, most incumbent governments, including the one in India, lost elections in 2024, asserting that his statement was 'factually incorrect'.
The Trump administration has announced a massive increase in H-1B visa fees, imposing a $100,000 annual charge that will fundamentally alter how American companies hire skilled foreign workers, particularly impacting Indian IT professionals who comprise the largest group of beneficiaries.
'Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft have large operations in India and rely on smooth trade and data flows.' 'Restrictions could raise their costs, limit AI chip exports, and complicate their India strategies.'
The magnitude of the new H-1B visa application fee for fresh petitions - math of which works out to USD 500 million in case of 5,000 filings - may nudge IT companies to expand offshore delivery or increase local hiring, according to Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
'Returning Indians can leverage their international skills and the strong funding environment for start-ups here.'
Within weeks of announcing his exit as executive chairman of the global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks, its founder Girish Mathrubootham appears to be on an investment spree.
Seeking an apology from social media giant Meta for 'tarnishing' India's image, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the Parliament's Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, said on Tuesday that the panel will summon the firm following its chairman's comments that India's ruling dispensation lost the Lok Sabha election last year.
India is seeking either an exemption or a longer timeline on the pharmaceutical tariffs, expected to kick in by July 31.
'Indian players in the digital market should not be dominated by global players, and they should not dominate the smaller players -- these discussions are on.'
The sources in the know said around 7 flights each of IndiGo, Vistara and SpiceJet got the threats while 6 flights of Air India received the threats.
Google on Tuesday began reinstating about 250 Indian apps it had delisted from its Play Store over a billing dispute as it caved in to government criticism, but the squabble may not yet be over.
Amid a spate of hoax bomb threats to multiple airlines, the IT ministry has asked social media platforms to observe due diligence obligations and promptly remove or disable access to misinformation within the strict timelines prescribed under IT rules.
The senior IPS officer said that 45 percent of cyber financial frauds taking place in the country are originating from the South East Asia.
The high court of Karnataka has orally warned Facebook (Meta) that it may order its operations in India to be shut down if it does not cooperate with police investigation over a fake profile.
Social media giant Meta on Thursday said its India head Ajit Mohan has resigned from the company.
'If Threads doesn't become a distinct identity, and just a text version in the shadows of Instagram, then it may fizzle out.'
The government fully supports foreign and Indian companies in leveraging Internet as "force of good" but will take all measures to ensure that Internet remains open and is not dominated by some big corporates, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday. Chandrasekhar said the government wants to make sure that intermediaries and the big platforms such as Meta (formerly Facebook) and others develop a culture of mutual respect and accountability between the platform and its users. "And we also want to make sure that given that a billion Indians are going to be there... women, children, elderly, pensioners, all of them, that the internet is also safe and trusted.
The content 'actioned' belonged to categories including bullying and harassment, violent and graphic content, adult nudity and sexual activity, child endangerment, dangerous organisations and individuals, and spam, among others.
In comparison, the messaging platform had banned over 16 lakh accounts of Indian users in the month of April, and 18.05 lakh such accounts in March.
'With free software on the Internet and apps, creating a deepfake video can take 3 to 5 minutes. Anyone can make these videos.'
WhatsApp had banned 2.9 million accounts in January, 3.6 million accounts in December and 3.7 million accounts in November.
Indian shoppers accounted for 13 per cent of the total hours spent by mobile users across the globe on their shopping apps in 2023, next only to China in this regard. According to the "State of Mobile -2024" report released a few days ago by data.ai (previously known as App Annie), which looks into various segments of the app economy across the world, in the last calendar year, users in India collectively spent 12.84 billion hours on shopping apps. This represents an increase of over 73 per cent from the time they spent in 2020 and of more than 3.5 per cent over 2022.
Vaishnaw told reporters that the government had recently issued a notice to companies on the deepfake issue, and the platforms responded, but added that the firms will have to be more aggressive in taking action on such content.
The minister also made it clear that "all platforms that do business in India and/or want to continue to do business in India, must use correct maps".
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday met top officials of the finance and corporate affairs ministries to review the implementation of various announcements of the Union Budget FY24. "The finance minister underlined the importance of continuous assessment of progress to ensure that various announcements are implemented in a time-bound manner," the finance ministry said in a tweet. Sitharaman also discussed in detail various issues on the digital competition laws with Rajeev Chandrashekhar, the minister of state for entrepreneurship, skill development, electronics and technology.
'The estimated expenditure is expected to be more than double the Rs 60,000 crore spent in 2019'
This election will be remembered for being the first election where the Election Commission failed to take action on gross violations involving the ruling party that repeatedly used religion, communal slurs, lies and undocumented allegations, observes Ramesh Menon.
Many ethical, competent corporate leaders aspire to join public life today. However, the transition to politics is far from easy, observes Indrajit Gupta.
'We went from zero to about 10 million users in three months. Paytm came out with the wallet play and we came out with the UPI play.'
