IBL News

Category: Top News

  • Fierce Competition Among Chatbots for Being Second After Leading ChatGPT

    Fierce Competition Among Chatbots for Being Second After Leading ChatGPT

    IBL News | New York

    What is the number two chatbot in terms of traffic in the world?

    There is fierce competition among players. However, they all pale compared to ChatGPT, which surged to 500 million weekly active users in late March.

    Google’s Gemini web traffic increased to 10.9 million average daily visits in March, up 7.4% month-over-month.

    At the same time, the number of Microsoft OpenAI-powered Copilot users increased to 2.4 million, up 2.1 percent from February.

    In March, Anthropic’s Claude reached an average of 3.3 million daily visits, xAI’s Grok averaged 16.5 million, and Chinese DeepSeek received 16.5 million visits that month.

    In terms of apps, the consultant Sensor Tower highlighted the case of the Claude app, which saw a 21% week-over-week increase in weekly active users during the week of February 24, when Anthropic released its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

    Also, Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash saw its app’s weekly active users grow by 42%. Google brought a “canvas” feature to Gemini that lets users preview the output of coding projects.

  • Syracuse University Introduced Its New AI Platform for Teaching and Learning

    Syracuse University Introduced Its New AI Platform for Teaching and Learning

    IBL News | New York

    Syracuse University, this month, during the forum “AI at Work,” presented its AI platform developed in collaboration with ibl.ai, the parent company of this news service.

    At the center is MentorAI, a platform run entirely inside Syracuse’s cloud tenancies.

    Andrew Joncas, Leader, Architect, and Technology Evangelist, at Syracuse University, explained, “Creating an AI tutor no longer requires prompt-engineering expertise. Instructors upload a syllabus, slide deck, or even an MP4 lecture; Mentor AI generates an agent that can answer student questions, surface key points, or embed directly in Blackboard.”

    Syracuse University owns data and code and pays by the API call rather than per-seat license; therefore, there’s no premium license, and administrators can mix and match models — from OpenAI GPT-4o to Google Gemini or open-source Llama. This approach also allows the university to adopt newer models as they mature.

    The same event highlighted the Blackboard AI Design Assistant, where AI suggests quiz items, assignments, and rubrics, as Michael Morrison stressed, the instructor remains in charge.

  • Anthropic Introduced the Claude 4, with Advanced Features in Coding and Reasoning, and AI agents

    Anthropic Introduced the Claude 4, with Advanced Features in Coding and Reasoning, and AI agents

    IBL News | New York

    Anthropic last week launched Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, which offer advanced features in coding, reasoning, and AI agents.

    “Claude Opus 4 is the world’s best coding model, with sustained performance on complex, long-running tasks and agent workflows. Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade to Claude Sonnet 3.7, delivering superior coding and reasoning while responding more precisely to your instructions,” advertised the company.

    Both models can use tools like web search and demonstrate improved memory capabilities.

    In addition, the company announced that Claude Code was generally available. It supports background tasks via GitHub Actions and native integrations with VS Code and JetBrains, displaying edits directly in users’ files for pair programming.

    Anthropic, a start-up founded by ex-OpenAI researchers, released four new capabilities on the Anthropic API, enabling developers to build more powerful code execution tools, the MCP connector, Files API, and the ability to cache prompts for up to one hour.

    Claude Opus 4 powers known frontier agent products like Cursor, Replit, Block, Rakuten, and Cognition.

    Anthropic’s Claude 4 models arrived as the company looks to substantially grow revenue. Reportedly, the organization aims to reach $2.2 billion in earnings this year.

  • Elite U.S. Universities Show Dependency on International Students

    Elite U.S. Universities Show Dependency on International Students

    Mikel Amigot, IBL News | New York

    The Trump administration’s threat to block Harvard University from enrolling international students highlighted the risk other American universities face.

    NYU, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon have even larger international student shares than Harvard.

    This metric, which once reflected their financial strength and international prestige, now looks like a vulnerability.

    For universities, a decline in international students could have serious financial consequences, disrupting classrooms, research, and the next generation of workers in the United States.

    Currently, these are the schools with the most international students, according to a graphic released by The New York Times:

    School Students Pct. International
    Illinois Tech 6,571 51%
    Carnegie Mellon 14,517 44%
    Stevens Tech 7,461 42%
    Northeastern 29,738 40%
    New School 8,725 40%
    Columbia 28,756 40%
    Johns Hopkins 16,830 39%
    N.Y.U. 49,847 37%
    Clark 3,830 34%
    Rochester 10,109 33%
    Caltech 2,463 32%
    Chicago 16,499 31%
    Boston U. 29,104 30%
    M.I.T. 11,706 30%
    Harvard 20,807 28%
    U.S.C. 41,648 28%
    WashU 14,282 28%
    Penn 23,948 27%
    Brandeis 4,873 27%
    Rice 7,972 26%
    Cornell 25,334 26%
    Duke 16,557 25%
    Stanford 17,212 24%
    Saint Louis 12,904 24%
    Princeton 8,849 24%
    Yale 14,854 24%
    Northwestern 19,451 24%
    Illinois 47,118 23%
    Ga. Tech 25,178 23%
    U.T. Dallas 25,108 23%
    N.J.I.T. 10,388 23%
    Mt. Holyoke 2,206 22%
    Dartmouth 6,678 21%
    Georgetown 15,453 20%
    U.M.B.C. 11,523 20%
    Brown 10,832 19%
    Case Western 11,143 19%
    Grinnell 1,707 19%
    Emory 13,565 18%
    U.C.S.D. 40,716 18%
    Washington 43,118 18%
    Bentley 4,690 17%
    Fran. & Marshall 1,902 17%
    Berkeley 41,572 17%
    Denison 2,391 17%
    G.W. 18,049 17%
    Michigan 48,167 17%
    U.C. Irvine 35,511 16%
    Tufts 11,953 16%
    U.C. Davis 38,184 15%

     

    The share of international students studying at these colleges has been growing for the past two decades as rising incomes in countries like China and India have produced more families looking to educate their children in America.

    In addition, public research universities have turned to international students, as they pay the full tuition price.

    Higher education is a major American export. Over 1.1 million international students contributed about $43 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023-24 academic year, most of it on tuition and housing, according to nonprofit NAFSA.

    Experts say the higher tuition paid by international students helps subsidize lower costs for U.S. students.

  • Harvard University Sues Trump Administration Over Ban on Enrolling Foreign Students

    Harvard University Sues Trump Administration Over Ban on Enrolling Foreign Students

    IBL News | New York

    Harvard University on Friday sued the Trump administration over its ban on enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation.

    On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said it would block international students from attending the nation’s oldest university.

    In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders”.

    The Ivy League institution enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most are graduate students, and they come from more than 100 countries.

    The Department of Homeland Security gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students’ disciplinary records and paper, audio, or video records on protest activity over the past five years to have the “opportunity” to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated.

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology extended an open invitation to Harvard international students and those accepted in response to the action against Harvard.

    The administration’s action and Harvard’s response signified a dramatic escalation of the battle between the administration and Harvard.

    Meanwhile, a federal judge—Boston judge Allison D. Burroughs—halted temporarily Trump’s administration’s effort to bar international students at Harvard, issuing a temporary restraining order against the federal edict. The judge agreed that Harvard had shown that its implementation would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to the university.

    The move froze the Trump administration’s attempts against Harvard.

    • Harvard University: “Supporting Our International Students and Scholars”

    • President Trump explains the “Harvard problem”:

     

  • Google Now Offers AI Mode to Every Search User In The U.S.

    Google Now Offers AI Mode to Every Search User In The U.S.

    IBL News | New York

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai and his executives presented at the company’s I/O 2025 event new ways to bring users the web intermediated through a series of AI agents, reviewing the concept of Search, based on bringing people from the web for any given search query.

    “We believe AI will be the most powerful engine for discovery that the web has ever seen,” said Google’s VP of Search, Liz Reid, onstage at I/O.

    Essentially, the company suggests that the future of the web, and the company, involves AI agents fetching information from the web and presenting it to users in whatever way they’d like.

    At the I/O 2025, the largest announcement was that Google now offers AI mode to every Search user in the U.S.

    Users will be able to converse with an AI agent that will visit web pages, do summaries, and help them shop.

    Google also announced on Tuesday that the SDK for Gemini models will now natively support Anthropic’s MCP, an increasingly popular standard for connecting agents to data sources across the internet.

    On Wednesday, Google detailed its plans to bring ads to AI Mode, which lets Google Search users ask a question and get an AI-generated response, with the ability to go deeper through follow-up questions and links to websites.

    Perplexity and several of Google’s rivals have experimented with ads in their AI products.

    Google official: 100 things we announced at I/O

  • Microsoft Announced the Multi-Agent Orchestration System During Its Build Conference

    Microsoft Announced the Multi-Agent Orchestration System During Its Build Conference

    IBL News | New York

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled the company’s biggest product moves, including Copilot and Azure updates, developer tools, and more, during this week’s Build conference in Seattle.

    “We’ve entered the era of AI agents. Thanks to groundbreaking advancements in reasoning and memory, AI models are now more capable and efficient, and we’re seeing how AI systems can help us all solve problems in new ways,” said Satya Nadella.

    As an example, the company mentioned that 15 million developers are already using GitHub Copilot, streamlining the way they code, check, deploy, and troubleshoot.

    Hundreds of thousands of customers are using Microsoft 365 Copilot to help research, brainstorm and develop solutions, and more than 230,000 organizations — including 90% of the Fortune 500 — have already used Copilot Studio to build AI agents and automations.

    The Multi-Agent Orchestration, or how multiple specialized AI agents work together to accelerate work, was one of the notorious announcements.

    One example was an onboarding process handled by several agents: one managed human resources paperwork, another set up IT accounts, and a third scheduled training sessions. Each agent handled its part and reported back, with the system summarizing the results for the user.

    In sales, one agent pulled CRM data, another drafted a proposal, and a third scheduled follow-ups in Outlook.

    Microsoft announced that it is moving toward an open, connected agent ecosystem, with Model Context Protocol (MCP), a protocol that lets agents securely access data and services across platforms, and NLWeb, a system that helps websites become accessible to AI agents via natural language.

    The goal is to create an environment where agents can collaborate and interact freely across the web and different apps, no matter who built them or where they run.

    Also, the company presented its Agent Store, a platform where users can access and deploy various AI agents, including those built by Microsoft and third-party developers, within the Microsoft 365 Copilot and other Microsoft services. These agents are designed to perform specific tasks, such as summarizing documents, generating code, or managing meetings, and can be customized for individual needs or business requirements.

    • Microsoft Build 2025: All the Announcements
    • Official summary

    Microsoft Build 2025 Keynote: Everything Revealed, in 14 Minutes

  • Traffic to ChatGPT.com hit a new all-time high of 780 million visits in the US

    Traffic to ChatGPT.com hit a new all-time high of 780 million visits in the US

    IBL News | New York

    According to data from Similarweb, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.com chatbot received 780 million visits from American users in April, a 14% jump from March.

    However, according to the same firm, 780 million monthly visits are still far behind the 16 billion visits to Google.com.

    Google is racking 96 billion web searches per week, versus ChatGPT’s 1 billion.

    chatgpt-traffic

  • Figma Releases New AI Tools for Creating Sites, App Prototypes, and Drawing

    Figma Releases New AI Tools for Creating Sites, App Prototypes, and Drawing

    IBL News | New York

    Figma, a design company, announced multiple AI features this month, during its Config annual conference. These include an AI creator for powering website and app prototypes, a way to create assets in bulk, a new drawing tool, and a blog post generator.

    With this launch, the company is trying to compete with Canva, Adobe, WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Replit, Lovable, and Hostinger, among other firms.

    However, the company denies directly competing with these creative tools by saying that it is in the business of building digital products, with a third of the company’s users being developers.

    Figma also announced a new plan, a content seat, starting at $8 monthly. This plan will give users access to Figma Buzz, Slides, FigJam, and Sites CMS.

  • Google’s Gemma Open Models Reach a Milestone of 150 Million Downloads

    Google’s Gemma Open Models Reach a Milestone of 150 Million Downloads

    IBL News | New York

    Google Gemini’s Gemma open models reached a milestone of 150 million downloads this month.

    Omar Sanseviero, a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind, also revealed that developers have created more than 70,000 variants of Gemma on the AI dev platform Hugging Face.

    This collection of lightweight models, built from the same research and technology that powers Gemini 2.0, was launched in February 2024 to compete with another open model like Meta’s Llama. In late April, it exceeded 1.2 billion downloads.

    The latest Gemma releases are multimodal, enabling users to work with images and text in 100 languages. Versions are also fine-tuned for particular applications, like drug discovery.

    Gemma and Llama have non-standard licensing terms, which some developers say they might be risky for commercial use of the models.