Informatica on Wednesday unveiled its Fall 2024 Release featuring new tools aimed at enabling customers to prepare data for training AI models and applications, including improved data integration capabilities.
Data is the foundation of any AI model or application, providing the AI tool with the intelligence it needs to inform decisions and take actions. The data, however, must be prepared properly for the model or application to be effective.
With poorly prepared data such inaccurate or irrelevant information, the AI tool will deliver incorrect outputs. But with well-prepared, high-quality data, while accuracy is not guaranteed, the likelihood of AI models and applications delivering inaccurate outputs greatly decreases.
Ensuring that data is properly prepared before using it to train AI models and applications is therefore vital, according to Stephen Catanzano, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group.
Advertisement
“Data readiness for AI is critical since the outputs from AI are only as good as the data it is trained on,” he said. “If you train AI on data that says the world is flat, that is what it will believe.”
Proper data preparation for AI includes building trusted data sources with top data quality including accurate, reliable, contextual, governed, current and diverse data, Catanzano continued.
“This is the most crucial step in the process of building a generative AI solution using enterprise data along with the data platform infrastructure to support it,” he said.
Kevin Petrie, an analyst at BARC U.S., likewise noted that proper data preparation is a crucial part of AI development. Without governance measures that result in trustworthy data, models and applications won’t succeed.
Advertisement
“We’ve reached the stage in this latest AI innovation cycle in which early adopters realize that, to achieve meaningful production deployments, they need to get serious about data governance,” Petrie said. “Powerful models will fail without trusted inputs by making incorrect inferences, generating false or toxic content, and so on.”
Based in Redwood City, Calif., Informatica is a data management specialist whose platform, the Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC), enables customers to integrate and prepare data for analysis.
In May, the vendor launched Claire GPT, a generative AI-powered assistant that lets customers use natural language rather than code to work with data, and a low-code/no-code environment for developing generative AI tools. A month earlier, the vendor was a rumored acquisition target of Salesforce before talks fell through amid dissatisfaction from investors.
New capabilities
Fueled by OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, which was a significant improvement in generative AI capabilities, enterprise interest in developing both traditional AI as well as generative AI tools has surged over the past two years.
Advertisement
Because large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini enable true natural language processing, enterprises are aiming to combine their proprietary data with LLM capabilities to enable their employees to work with data using natural language rather than code. With coding skills no longer always needed to work with data, more employees within organizations can use analytics to inform decisions, making decision-making more efficient and accurate.
In addition, because LLMs can be trained with proprietary data to automate repetitive tasks that take up a significant amount of data experts’ time, AI tools can make application developers, data engineers, data scientists and other trained experts more efficient.
However, if the proprietary data used to train AI tools isn’t prepared properly, the models and applications trained on that data won’t perform as intended.
Enterprises often possess massive amounts of data, much of it unstructured such as text, images and audio files that have been loaded into a data lake or some other storage repository and left untouched. Even some structured data such as financial and point-of-sale transaction records is often simply loaded into a data warehouse and left alone.
Advertisement
To get all that data ready to inform AI tools, it needs to properly prepared, according to Gaurav Pathak, Informatica’s vice president of product management AI and metadata.
“Many organizations hold terabytes or petabytes of data, both structured and unstructured. But too much of that data has not been properly managed and governed — it’s not what we call AI ready,” he said. “Cleaning up messy data will help enterprises prepare data for AI.”
Informatica’s Fall Release is intended to enable enterprise customers to clean up their messy data. One key component of the update is improved integration capabilities for data stored in Databricks and Google BigQuery, according to Catanzano.
The Fall 2024 Release includes an integration between Informatica’s no-code tools and Databricks’ generative AI capabilities; an SQL-based data transformation feature that enables users to process extract, load and transform (ELT) pipelines in Databricks Delta Lake and Google BigQuery’ and a task wizard that helps guide users as they ingest and replicate data for AI projects.
Advertisement
“Aligning with Databricks is a solid step since they are moving quickly with their [generative AI capabilities],” Catanzano said. “As an intelligent data management platform, Informatica needs to be well integrated wherever their customers are or want to be as a management layer.”
Petrie likewise noted the significance of adding ELT pipelines to Delta Lake and BigQuery.
“The ELT enhancements make a lot of sense,” he said. “Many data teams now favor ELT … [SS1][EA2] because they can perform sophisticated transformations on data after ingesting it into platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake.”
Informatica’s Fall 2024 Release also includes the following:
Advertisement
Turbo-charged Application Integration Runtime, a feature scheduled for general availability in November that aims to improve application performance with autoscaling, high throughput and low latency integration capabilities and includes a serverless option.
Prebuilt integration templates for integrating data stored in AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google and Oracle, among others.
Connectors to various AI development environments such as Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI as well business and messaging applications including Coupa, Salesforce Streaming Events and Azure Service Bus.
New master data management features designed to improve workflow integration.
Improved data governance capabilities including metadata access controls in Informatica’s Cloud Data Governance and Data Catalog.
Expanded regional availability of Claire GPT.
Petrie noted that Informatica’s update contains a wide range of new and improved features. Perhaps most significant is that they complement one another with a tool such as Turbo-charged Application Integration Runtime targeting the speed and efficiency of integrations enabled by connectors and prebuilt integration templates.
“Informatica’s enhancements for application integration make a lot of sense,” Petrie said. “To differentiate themselves, AI adopters must optimize the user experience with custom applications based on governed, well-integrated data. Informatica is helping companies do this faster and more efficiently on popular data platforms with its new templates and connectors.”
While enabling customers to prepare their data for training AI models and applications is the intent of Informatica’s latest update, the impetus for adding capabilities aimed getting data ready for AI came from a combination of customer feedback and the vendor’s own research, according to Pathak.
“Customer requirements … are always major drivers, along with our own research and development,” he said. “Today, many business and tech leaders are looking to accelerate their GenAI projects and strategic initiatives. We’re helping them with these latest innovations.”
Next steps
Although Informatica’s Fall 2024 Release focuses on enabling customers to prepare data for training AI models and applications, it does not address the actual development of AI tools other than providing integrations, Catanzano noted.
The vendor’s latest platform update includes integrations and connectors with development environments from other vendors such as Databricks and Google but does not include new and improved features for its own development environment.
As a result, Catanzano suggested that Informatica focus some of its future product development and marketing on its own tools for model and application developers.
“I think [Informatica should do] more to get customers to see that their platform is where they should be looking to build GenAI solutions,” he said. “They focus on getting your data ready, but I haven’t seen much about where to go next.”
Advertisement
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now nearly 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.
What letters do today’s Quordle answers start with?
• B
• B
• L
• S
Advertisement
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
Quordle today (game #997) – the answers
(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)
The answers to today’s Quordle, game #997, are…
Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.
Quordle seems to be fond of words with multiple repeated letters in right now. After EERIE and its three Es yesterday and EMCEE on Monday, here’s SASSY and its three Ss.
Advertisement
SASSY was a very tough Wordle when it appeared in that game last November (average score: 5.0) and is likely to cause as many problems here. The other words aren’t too tricky, but I needed a guess to confirm the B in BIRTH and BUILD, then spent another on SAVVY, before completing on the final attempt.
Quantum computers, which promise to revolutionise everything from chemistry to cancer research, aren’t quite ready for the mainstream yet – but that hasn’t prevented the emergence of a new breed of quantum software developers.
“Writing a program for a quantum computer used to mean getting a PhD,” says Lov Grover. He would know – his Grover’s algorithm, created in 1996 for searching a database with a quantum computer, was one of the first pieces of quantum software. At that time, there were no quantum computers that could actually run it, and the work…
In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is a powerful tool designed to streamline and enhance your professional productivity. Whether you’re new to AI or a seasoned pro, this guide will help you through the essentials of Copilot, from understanding what it is and how to sign up, to mastering the art of effective prompts and creating stunning images.
Additionally, you’ll learn how to manage your Copilot account to ensure a seamless and efficient user experience. Dive in to unlock the full potential of Microsoft’s Copilot and transform the way you work.
Copilot is Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, an advanced large language model. It’s available on the web, through iOS, and Android mobile apps as well as capable of integrating with apps across the company’s 365 app suite, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The AI launched in February 2023 as a replacement for the retired Cortana, Microsoft’s previous digital assistant. It was initially branded as Bing Chat and offered as a built-in feature for Bing and the Edge browser. It was officially rebranded as Copilot in September 2023 and integrated into Windows 11 through a patch in December of that same year.
Copilot runs the Microsoft Prometheus model, which is built from OpenAI’s GPT-4 foundational model. Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI, pledging nearly $13 billion in April 2023. You’ll see a lot of overlap in terms of functionality between ChatGPT and Copilot because of this cozy working relationship between the two companies.
Copilot is available as both a 365 integration, where it can access a user’s data to provide real-time summarization and analysis on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and emails, as well as generate text and images, and as a web- and app-based chatbot. The chatbot is available free to users, though Microsoft offers a variety of subscription packages that provide additional features and capabilities.
Advertisement
For example, free users are only afforded a limited number of chat interactions with the model in a given three-hour period (typically about 80 queries and responses). What’s more, they cannot integrate Copilot into 365 applications at the free level. For a $20/month Copilot Pro plan, users gain greater access to the model, drastically increase the number of chats they can have before timing out, and their text-based requests are kicked up to the front of the inference queue — images even generate faster when using Dall-E and Designer.
In October 2024, Microsoft announced new Vision and Voice Interaction features for the Copilot experience on the Edge browser. Copilot Vision is similar to Microsoft’s ill-fated Recall feature, in that it looks over your shoulder while you surf the internet. It stands perpetually ready to answer questions, provide recommendations, and summarize whatever it is you’re currently looking at. To assuage user concerns, Microsoft has made the feature opt-in, meaning you’ll have to actively turn it on every time you use it, and it will display an onscreen indicator whenever it is active. It also won’t work on paywalled or sensitive content, so your browsing history will remain private and secure.
Voice Interactions, similarly, is Microsoft’s response to ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode and Gemini Live. It enables the user to speak to the AI as though it were a regular conversation with another person, using their voice rather than text inputs. Copilot Voice is currently rolling out to Windows users in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, but only in English. Vision will be released in the U.S. “soon,” according to Microsoft, but will only be made available to Pro subscribers at launch. The company plans to eventually release the feature to more users, though there is no timetable set for that rollout yet.
Go to the Copilot website and click the sign-in button in the top right (to the left of the three horizontally stacked lines and to the right of the Get the App! button). Pick whether you’re applying with either a personal account (like Gmail or Proton) or a work/school account (which would have their own domains). At the Microsoft Live sign-in screen, click the “No account? Create one!” link and follow the onscreen instructions.
Advertisement
If you want to upgrade to Pro, sign in/up using the method above. Once you’re on the Copilot home screen, click on the “Try Copilot Pro” radio buttons at the bottom of the screen, just above the context window. Then, again, follow the on-screen instructions and be sure to have a credit card ready. Microsoft will give you the first month of service free but will auto-charge you $20 every following month.
Once you’re logged in, the Copilot homepage offers a number of features and options. In the upper-left corner, you can switch between the Copilot and Notebook options — the former better used for asking questions and conversing directly with the AI, the latter more often used to collaborate with Copilot on longer written works.
The 32k token context window (that’s the total number of tokens that can be included in a prompt-and-response pair) is located at the bottom of the screen. You can upload documents and images for the chatbot to analyze by clicking the picture icon in the lower right of the context window. The microphone icon to its right allows you you simply speak your query rather than type it in. You can also select how rigid Copilot will be in its responses by selecting among the More Creative, More Balanced, and More Precise style options directly above the context window.
In the top-right corner, you’ll see your user name and avatar. Click on that to either sign out or switch to a different account. To the right of your avatar is the settings menu (the three horizontal stacked lines) where you can adjust various privacy, user, and appearance options.
All the way on the right of the screen are the Chats and Plugins menus. Chats is simply a historical list of things you’ve talked about with the AI previously. Check out the “How to manage your Copilot account” section below for more details. Plugins are essentially API calls that you can apply to a given Copilot chat (up to three at a time). They include Instacart, Kayak, and Klarna, which will leverage those companies’ specialized product information to help Copilot better answer your queries about grocery shopping, travel accommodations, and price matching, respectively.
Just because GPT-4 (and, by extension, Copilot) supports 26 different languages doesn’t mean that you can just say anything to it and receive an accurate response. Despite their advanced nature, these are still just computer programs and, as such, you need to really spell out what task, exactly, you want it to perform.
For example, if you ask it to “write a poem about nature,” it’ll return the following:
Amidst the ancient trees, where sunlight weaves, The forest breathes—a symphony of leaves. Moss-clad stones cradle secrets untold, As ferns unfurl, their emerald stories unfold.
Beneath the canopy, a murmuring stream, Its liquid notes dance, a tranquil dream. Wildflowers sway, their colors ablaze, Painting the canvas of these wooded days.
And there, a squirrel scampers, nimble and free, Chasing sunbeams through the verdant sea. The breeze carries fragrant whispers afar, Nature’s lullaby beneath the evening star.
Advertisement
Feel free to wander deeper into the woods, where every rustle and rusted leaf holds a tale.
But if you want that poem to be in the style of a classic Greek epic, you need to actually specify that point to the system. Telling Copilot to “write a poem about nature in the style of Homer’s Illiad,” you’ll get the following, which is much more stylistically on point:
The Song of Aeolus
Sing, O Muse, of the tempests wild, Where Aeolus, the wind-king, held sway. His island fortress crowned by storm-clouds, And gales at his command danced and roared.
Upon the rocky cliffs, he stood resolute, His silver hair streaming like zephyrs. His eyes, deep as the ocean’s abyss, Surveyed the churning seas with ancient wisdom.
Advertisement
“O winds,” he cried, “obey my will! Sweep across the waves, raise them to fury!” And the tempests answered, their voices fierce, Lashing ships, tearing sails, and drowning men.
Brave Odysseus, wanderer of the wine-dark sea, Fought against Aeolus’s wrathful winds. His ship tossed like a leaf in the maelstrom, As Poseidon’s rage echoed through the abyss.
Yet Aeolus, not unkind, relented at last, Binding the winds once more in their leathern bags. “Go forth,” he said, “but beware your hubris, For even gods cannot tame the tempest forever.”
And so Odysseus sailed on, his heart aflame, Seeking Ithaca’s shores, his homeland’s embrace. The winds whispered secrets in his ears, Of sirens, cyclops, and the wrath of gods.
Advertisement
Sing, O Muse, of Aeolus’s ancient song, Of winds unbridled and heroes undaunted. For in nature’s fury, we find both peril and wonder, And the echoes of epic tales carried on the breeze.
In short, you want to include as much detail and context as you can to your query. If you have a specific tone, length, or style in mind, or if you have writing samples and background text, be sure to include those. The more information you can give the AI at the start, the more accurate its responses will be (which translates into less time spent refining and reiterating your idea).
Having Copilot generate images is no different than having it generate written responses. Be sure to be clear in what you’re asking the system for and avoid using subjective terms like “good” or “pretty” (since the AI doesn’t actually understand what those words mean, just how likely they are to appear next in a text string).
So, rather than “draw a picture of a pretty frog playing music at a concert,” try “draw an image of a frog in a top hat and tuxedo playing the violin in a packed concert hall, photorealistic.” The AI will initially return four potential images. You can then pick any one of them to continue further refining (“make its bow tie red”) and reiterating (“remake the image as pixel art”) until you achieve the image output you’re looking for.
Not all chats are worth archiving. In order to eliminate one or more chat sessions from your Recents list, hover your pointer over the chat in question, then click on the trashcan icon to delete it.
Advertisement
If you need to wipe your history entirely, sign in to the privacy dashboard with your personal Microsoft account. You can access that by clicking the Settings icon > Privacy from the menu. Go to Browsing and Search > Manage your activity data. Open the Copilot activity history section, and select “Clear all Copilot activity history and search history.”
It should go without saying at this point that you shouldn’t implicitly trust what a chatbot tells you. AI have a tendency to “hallucinate” facts and figures in their responses, hallucinations that just got one expert witness in seriously hot water with the courts. The witness, Charles Ranson, ran afoul of New York State Unified Court judge Jonathan Schopf for using Copilot to inaccurately verify his damage calculations in a dispute involving a Bahamas rental property, which was included in the deceased owner’s trust to his son. The case depended, at least in part, on his accurate appraisal.
Schopf found that Ranson’s testimony was “entirely speculative” and did not take into account obvious factors like real estate taxes and the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Ranson was adamant in his testimony that the use of Copilot or other artificial intelligence tools, for drafting expert reports is generally accepted in the field of fiduciary services and represents the future of analysis of fiduciary decisions,” Schopf wrote. “However, he could not name any publications regarding its use or any other sources to confirm that it is a generally accepted methodology.”
If you love Xbox and you love Call of Duty, then you’ll be happy to know that you can show off that love with the newly announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 accessories coming for the Xbox platform. Today Microsoft announced that it’s launching a trio of new accessories for fans of the Call of Duty franchise. This includes two different controllers and a wrap for the Xbox Series X. If you own an Xbox Series S, you won’t have any special console customizations available but you can still use either of the two controllers. So let’s mark that down as a win.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches in a little over a week, so this announcement feels right on time. It also sort of coincides with Activision’s recent announcement about the game’s preload times. If you’re looking to get your hands on anything from this collection, the floodgates are open. At least for some of it.
The Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Xbox accessories are available starting today
You can purchase two of the three new accessories starting today, and these are the two controllers. Microsoft is launching a standard Xbox Wireless Controller and an Elite Series 2 Controller with the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 theme. These are available exclusively from the Xbox Design Lab. So you won’t find them officially from retail partners. This means if you see them outside of the Xbox Design Lab, they’re likely from third-party resellers at a higher price, or they’re fake.
Pricing for the Xbox Wireless Controller starts at $84.98 if you don’t add on any customization options. However, if you take the controller as Microsoft designs it, you’re looking at $98.95. This is because it has customized metallic colors for the triggers and D-Pad. And honestly, it looks better this way. That being said, this is the Design Lab. So you can design it however you want.
Advertisement
If you want to step things up to the Elite Series 2, pricing for the Black Ops 6 version starts at $164.98.
The Xbox Series X console wrap is available for pre-order
While the controllers may be available today, the Xbox Series X console wrap is only available for pre-order. The good news is that it’s available starting October 22, and anyone who pre-orders early enough should get it by October 23. That’s according to the pre-order page on the Microsoft Store.
Newly unsealed grand jury documents revealed that two Sudanese nationals allegedly attempted to launch thousands of distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks on systems across the world. The documents allege that these hacks aimed to cause serious financial and technical harm to government entities and companies and even physical harm in some cases.
(DoJ) unsealed charges against Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer that resulted in federal grand jury indictments. The two are allegedly connected to more than 35,000 DDoS attacks against hundreds of organizations, websites and networks as part of a “hacktivism” scheme as part of the cybercrime group Anonymous Sudan and a for-profit cyberattack service.
Even though Anonymous Sudan claimed to be an activist group, the pair also held some companies and entity’s systems for ransom for rates as high as $1,700 per month.
Both face indictments for their role in the coordinated cyberattacks including one count each of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed also faces three additional counts of damaging protected computers and could receive a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, according to court records filed last June in the US Central District Court of California.
Advertisement
The brothers’ activities date back to early 2023. The two used a distributed cloud attack tool (DCAT) referred to as “Skynet Botnet” in order to “conduct destructive DDoS attacks and publicly claim credit for them,” according to a DoJ statement. Ahmed posted a message on Anonymous Sudan’s Telegram channel, “The United States must be prepared, it will be a very big attack, like what we did in Israel, we will do in the United States ‘soon.’”
One of the indictments listed 145 “overt acts” on organizations and entities in the US, the European Union, Israel, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Skynet Botnet attacks attempted to disrupt services and networks in airports, software networks and companies including Cloudflare, X, Paypal and Microsoft that in June of last year. The attacks also targeted state and federal government agencies and websites including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Pentagon and the DoJ and even hospitals including one major attack on Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles causing a slowdown of health care services as patients were diverted to other hospitals. The hospital attack led to the hacking charges against Ahmed that carry potential life sentences.
“3 hours+ and still holding,” Ahmed posted on Telegram in February, “they’re trying desperately to fix it but to no avail Bomb our hospitals in Gaza, we shut down yours too, eye for eye…”
FBI special agents gathered evidence of the pair’s illegal activities including logs showing that they sold access to Skynet Botnet to more than 100 customers to carry out attacks against various victims who worked with investigators including Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Digital Ocean, Google, PayPal and others.
Advertisement
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was one of Anonymous Sudan’s victims as part of the hacking-for-hire scheme, according to court records and . AWS security teams worked with FBI cybercrime investigators. Security teams discovered the attacks were coming from “an array of cloud-based servers, many of which were hosted at a US server-hosting provider.” The discovery helped the FBI determine that the Skynet Botnet attacks were coming from a DCAT instead of a botnet that forwarded the DDoS to its victims through cloud-based servers and open proxy resolvers.
Perhaps the group’s most brazen and dangerous attack took place in April of 2023 that targeted Israel’s rocket alert system called Red Alert. The mobile app provides real time updates for missile attacks and security threats. The DDoS attacks attempted to infiltrate some of Red Alert’s Internet domains. Ahmed claimed responsibility for the Red Alert attacks on Telegram along with similar DDoS strikes on Israeli utilities and the Jerusalem Post news website.
“This group’s attacks were callous and brazen — the defendants went so far as to attack hospitals providing emergency and urgent care to patients,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said in a released statement. “My office is committed to safeguarding our nation’s infrastructure and the people who use it, and we will hold cyber criminals accountable for the grave harm they cause.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login