Generative AI has emerged as a transformative force within the automotive industry, revolutionizing the way vehicles are designed, manufactured, and experienced. A recent article by Sarwant Singh, President (Europe) and Chief Commercial Officer, MarketsandMarkets, published on Forbes.com, explores the various use cases of Generative AI in the automotive sector, highlighting its immense potential to reshape the future of mobility.

The article further sheds light on the remarkable advancements made possible by Generative AI. Singh highlights how this cutting-edge technology has the power to bridge the gap between digital pixels and physical reality, paving the way for unprecedented innovation.

“Generative AI is widely held to be the key to unlocking a truly autonomous vehicle (AV) future. In April 2023, Great Wall Motor-backed Chinese technology start-up Haomo.AI launched DriveGPT, an autonomous driving support platform based on a generative large-scale model (LLM). The platform combines reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) with actual manual driving data to enhance cognitive decision-making capabilities in autonomous driving,” said Sarwant Singh.

By embracing this technology, companies can redefine the boundaries of innovation, creating safer, smarter, and more sustainable vehicles. Generative AI can create virtual worlds and imitate real-world circumstances by using algorithms to produce new information, such as photos, videos, and even text. This enables autonomous vehicles to learn and adapt in a secure setting.

Singh believes that Generative AI will transform AV R&D in three ways, namely simultaneous generation of multiple scenarios, prediction of future vehicle trajectories, and advancement of decision reasoning chains. He also adds that the technology will play a crucial role in vehicle personalization. 

Source: MarketsandMarkets

The post Driving the future: How Generative AI is transforming the automotive industry appeared first on CIO Dimension.

A survey conducted by Alloy revealed that 27% of respondents lost over $1M to fraud in the last 12 months. 70% of respondents reported losing over $500K to fraud, with fintech companies and regional banks being the most likely to report higher losses. 37% of fintech companies and 31% of regional banks estimated losing between $1-10M to fraud.

The Annual State of Fraud Benchmark Report surveyed over 250 decision-makers working at financial institutions including community banks, fintech, crypto, national banks, regional banks, and online lending institutions). The survey ran from September 8-20, 2022, and respondents came from roles across fraud, compliance, risk technology procurement, digital banking strategy, and account opening.

Fraud continues to plague financial institutions of all sizes and across all segments. One-third of respondents said they experienced between 1,000 and 10,000 fraud attacks in the last twelve months. 91% of respondents said fraud has increased year-over-year since 2021.

“Fraud is the highest it’s ever been,” said Tommy Nicholas, CEO and co-founder of Alloy. “Rapid digitization and an influx of cash from pandemic relief scams have created the perfect conditions for fraudsters to thrive. Regardless of sector or size, financial institutions must do more to keep their customers’ assets safe from fraud, but without compromising on the customer experience.”

The report also found that fraud prevention is a costly and time-consuming enterprise for financial institutions: two-thirds of respondents reported that over half of their workforce is working on fraud-related activities. 71% of respondents have increased their spending on fraud prevention YoY. Respondents were also concerned about additional ‘hidden’ costs of fraud such as legal repercussions, regulatory fines, reputational damage, and loss of clients.

Respondents reported that the main barrier to defending against fraud is automation. 46% of respondents cited a greater need for automation as the most common barrier to being prepared to combat fraud, followed by an absence of dedicated teams for fraud (41%) and the inability to adapt to new threats (39%).

The post Over two-thirds of financial institutions lost above $500K to fraud in 2022: Report appeared first on CIO Dimension.

A new research from SASE vendor Netskope, shows that over 400 distinct cloud applications delivered malware in 2022, nearly triple the amount seen in the prior year. Netskope researchers also found that 30% of all cloud malware downloads in 2022 originated from Microsoft OneDrive.

“Attackers are increasingly abusing business-critical cloud apps to deliver malware by bypassing inadequate security controls,” said Ray Canzanese, Threat Research Director, Netskope Threat Labs. “That is why it is imperative that more organizations inspect all HTTP and HTTPS traffic, including traffic for popular cloud apps, both company and personal instances, for malicious content.”

Rise in Uploads to Cloud Apps Means Rise in Malware-Delivered Downloads 

The most significant change in cloud application use in 2022, compared to 2021, was the marked increase in the percentage of users uploading content to the cloud. According to Netskope data, over 25% of users worldwide uploaded documents daily to Microsoft OneDrive, while 7% did so for Google Gmail and 5% for Microsoft Sharepoint. The drastic increase in active cloud users across a record number of cloud applications led to a sizable increase in cloud malware downloads in 2022 from 2021, after remaining close to flat in 2021 compared to 2020.

The correlation between uploads and downloads among the most popular apps is no coincidence. Nearly a third of all cloud malware downloads originated from Microsoft OneDrive, with Weebly and GitHub coming in the next closest among cloud apps at 8.6% and 7.6%, respectively. 

Cloud-delivered malware is more prevalent than web-delivered malware

Industries have increased their reliance on cloud applications and cloud infrastructure to support business operations over the last several years—a trend further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a worldwide shift toward hybrid work. As a result, cloud-delivered malware is now responsible for a much higher percentage of all malware delivery than ever before, especially in certain geographic regions and industries.

In 2022, several geographic regions saw significant increases in the overall percentage of cloud vs. web-delivered malware compared to 2021, including:

• Australia (50% in 2022 compared to 40% in 2021)
• Europe (42% in 2022 compared to 31% in 2021)
• Africa (42% in 2022 compared to 35% in 2021)
• Asia (45% in 2022 compared to 39% in 2021)

In certain industries, cloud-delivered malware also became more predominant globally, especially:

• Telecom (81% in 2022 compared to 59% in 2021)
• Manufacturing (36% in 2022 compared to 17% in 2021)
• Retail (57% in 2022 compared to 47% in 2021)
• Healthcare (54% in 2022 compared to 39% in 2021)

Cyber Preparedness: The Remote Workforce is Here to Stay

Companies have made considerable adjustments to enable remote and hybrid workplaces to flourish. While some industries sought to bring employees back to the office on a more frequent basis in 2022, remote work options appear to remain largely in place. According to Netskope data, user dispersion—the ratio of the number of users on the Netskope platform to the number of network locations from which those users’ traffic originates—is 66%, the same percentage it was at the start of the pandemic over two years ago.

Remote and hybrid work dynamics continue to pose multiple cybersecurity challenges, including how to securely provide users access to the company resources they need to do their jobs and how to scalably and securely provide users access to the internet.

The post Malware-Delivering Cloud Apps Nearly Tripled in 2022: Report appeared first on CIO Dimension.

 Kavita Vishwanath, GM JFrog India, believes that secure use of AI-aided coding will be critical to safeguard the software supply chain.

The Emergence of More Open Source Program Offices 

Compliance has been the primary focus of open source program offices (OSPOs). Given the increased attention being paid to software supply chain security, it’s more crucial than ever for someone to be in charge of a programme and manage the organization’s safe usage of open source software. OSPOs have the opportunity to assume greater control of the curation of open source libraries and packages.

Focus on the Secure Use of AI-Aided Coding

The importance of safeguarding the software supply chain from developer to deployment, as well as how modern enterprises do so as the number of connected devices grows fast.

Containers will continue to Rule 

The overall transition to the cloud and acceptance of K8s will increase as the variety, volume, and size of software packages grows, fueled by developments in cryptocurrencies, metaverse, gaming, and blockchain, among others.

DevOps will further strengthen its momentum 

The DevOps market is expected to grow by $6.38 billion to $14.8 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 12.1%. This growth will be driven by the adoption of cloud-based technologies and automation tools, which are being adopted by startups as well as large enterprises worldwide.

The Rise of 5G & its impact on IoT & DevOps: 5G networks will be adaptable and modular, using technologies such as software-defined networks (SDN), cloud-native computing, and cloud radio access networks (cloud RAN). A flexible architecture allows for the expansion of overall network capacity as needed, completing the standardization of application programming interfaces (APIs) towards underlying infrastructure, which will be critical for automatic access to a heterogeneous network.

The post DevOps Predictions for 2023 appeared first on CIO Dimension.

DXC Technology, a Fortune 500 global technology services company, has unveiled five ways it predicts the metaverse will impact life and business in the next 5 years.

1. Workplace collaboration will never be the same again

Around the world, the metaverse will become part of daily work for an increasing number of employees. Instead of staring at a grid of 2-dimensional faces on a videoconferencing screen, colleagues will be able to choose their seat at a virtual table, pop out of the room for a break, and even go on a virtual walk with their boss.

To maximise benefits, many firms are already combining traditional video conferencing with immersive collaboration technologies. DXC has noticed the positive impact of its own private virtual world, with increased levels of productivity, engagement, and creativity amongst its employees.

“Metaverse experiences are helping employees to concentrate better and retain more information. Virtual worlds can help us get out of our videoconferencing routine and open the door to greater collaboration and innovation”, says Nathalie Vancluysen, Head of Extended Reality at DXC Technology.

2. Large scale professional events will go virtual

The metaverse is a place where thousands of avatars around the world can come together to interact, meet and engage. Controlled by people from the comfort of their chosen location, personalised 3D avatars can roam freely over an almost infinite space and teleport themselves from one place to another instantaneously. In the future, more large-scale events like conferences, expos and summits will take place in virtual worlds, enabling greater worldwide collaboration opportunities and reducing the time, resources and carbon footprint used when travelling.

3. Bands, DJs, sports clubs and dating will transition into the metaverse

More and more individuals and organizations from the music and sports industry are encouraging fans to join them from virtual seats in virtual venues, bringing the excitement of concerts and matches to the individual’s home. Additionally, some dating apps like Nevermet and Flirtual are already offering services in the metaverse. In the next five years, consumers will be offered more interactive, immersive opportunities to do the things they love doing in the physical world – all via their digital avatar.

4. Brands will express themselves in new ways

Virtual customer experiences will become commonplace with brands looking for new and exciting ways to engage with their customers. Major retail brands like Louis Vuitton, Adidas, Gucci, Coke, and Nike, alongside car companies like Nissan, Toyota and Ferrari are already experimenting with virtual environments and augmented reality. In the next five years, DXC expects more and more brands to offer customers an opportunity to explore their brands, solutions and services in 3D – from hotels, to cities, to airports.

5. Recruitment and onboarding will be metamorphosed

Recruiting talent is integral to the success of any business, and reaching talent is the first step. Over the next five years, organizations will increasingly turn to the metaverse to connect with candidates in engaging, enticing ways. The metaverse can also be good for inclusivity. Hosting first-round interviews in the metaverse can help recruiters identify candidates with the right behavioural profile rather than just the ones with the right CV credentials or look.

“Individuals and businesses are opening their minds to the possibility of using the metaverse in everyday activities”, sums up Nathalie Vancluysen. “Many of today’s young adults have grown up socialising and gaming online, so businesses, government organizations and brands must be able to engage them with products and services which feel familiar and exciting.”

The post Five ways metaverse will transform lives and business in the next five years appeared first on CIO Dimension.

The 2023 State of AI Infrastructure Survey, commissioned by Run:ai, sheds light on the growing challenges faced by organizations in AI development. The survey, which was conducted by Global Surveyz Research and gathered responses from 450 industry professionals across the US and Western EU, reveals that infrastructure and compute, chosen by 54% and 43% of respondents respectively, are now the primary hurdles, surpassing data as the key challenge facing AI development. This marks a shift compared to last year’s survey by Run:ai, where the largest number of respondents – 61% cited data as their top challenge.

The survey also pointed to another shift over the past year as the number of organizations deploying less than half of their AI models in production increased from 77%, according to last year’s survey, to 88% this year. Weighted for average, just 37% of AI models make it into production.

The adoption of cloud services for AI infrastructure continues to rise, with 73% of surveyed organizations using cloud services. However, the survey found a significant challenge in accessing GPU compute, as only 28% of respondents reported having timely and sufficient access to compute power upon demand. This shortage of on-demand access leads to frequent GPU allocation issues for 89% of respondents who use a ticketing system.

“Despite being on the cloud, organizations are still facing limitations with unlocking the full potential of their data,” said Omri Geller, CEO of Run:ai. “This highlights the reality that cloud hasn’t delivered on its on-demand promise and the importance of building a robust and scalable infrastructure.”

The survey also found that as organizations scale and require more GPUs, they face a proliferation of third-party tools, making it increasingly complex to manage AI infrastructure and get the most out of it. 77% of respondents indicated they are using multiple third-party tools, making it difficult to get the right amount of compute to different workloads and end-users.

“Organizations must shift their focus from solely acquiring more data to ensuring they have the proper infrastructure in place to effectively process and utilize it,” added Geller.

Some other findings of the survey:

• 91% of companies are planning to increase their GPU capacity or other AI infrastructure by an average of 23% in the next 12 months. This shows that despite the uncertain economic climate, companies are still investing in AI due to the potential and value they see in it.

• 50% of companies plan to implement monitoring, observability, and explainability in the next 6-12 months to keep track of their AI models.

• The second and third priorities were model deployment and serving (44%) and orchestration and pipelines (34%). This indicates that companies are focused on bringing their AI models into production and streamlining the process to make it more efficient.

The post Data no longer the top challenge for AI projects; Infra & Compute are appeared first on CIO Dimension.

The fourth annual Data Protection Trends Report from Veeam found that companies are challenged with more complex hybrid IT environments and are raising budgets to fend off cyberattacks as well as keep up as production environments continue to diversify across various clouds. The result is that IT leaders feel they aren’t sufficiently protected. A top priority of organizations this year is improving reliability and success of backups, followed by ensuring that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) protection is equitable to the protection they rely on for datacenter-centric workloads.

Highlights of the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023:

• Modern Data Protection is needed to keep businesses running: Four out of five organizations believe that they have a gap, or a sense of dissatisfaction or anxiety, between what their business units expect and what IT services can deliver. 82% have an ‘Availability Gap’ between how quickly they need systems to be recoverable and how quickly IT can bring them back. 79% cite a ‘Protection Gap’ between how much data they can lose and how frequently IT protects their data. 
• Data protection budgets are increasing: Globally, organizations expect to increase their data protection budget in 2023 by 5%, which is notably higher than overall spending plans in other areas of IT. Of the 85% of organizations planning on increasing their data protection budgets, their average planned increase is 8.3% and often in concert with increased investments in cybersecurity tools.
• Despite the awareness and increase in preparedness, ransomware is winning: Cyberattacks caused the most impactful outages for organizations in 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to the report. 85% of organizations were attacked at least once in the past 12 months; up from 76% in last year’s report. Specifically, recovery is a main concern as organizations reported that only 55% of their encrypted/destroyed data was recoverable from attacks. According to the survey, the single most important aspect that organizations are looking for in a Modern Data Protection solution is the “integration of data protection within a cyber preparedness strategy.”
• Ransomware is the biggest hindrance to Digital Transformation: Due to its burden on budgets and manpower, ransomware and the current volatile cyber security landscape are taking priority for IT teams. This is causing IT resources and budgets originally allocated towards Digital Transformation initiatives to pivot to cyber prevention. 
• Container-centric workloads are growing in popularity: Containers, and more specifically Kubernetes, show all the characteristics of a mainstream production platform, with the same kinds of data protection strategy disparities as seen in early adopters of SaaS five years ago or virtualization 15 years ago. 52% of respondents are currently running containers, while 40% of organizations are planning to deploy containers – and yet, most organizations are merely protecting the underlying storage, instead of holistically protecting the workloads themselves. 

“IT leaders are facing a dual challenge. They are building and supporting increasingly complex hybrid environments, while the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks is increasing,” said Danny Allan, CTO and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. “This is a major concern as leaders think through how they mitigate and recover business operations from any type of disruption. Legacy backup approaches won’t address modern workloads – from IaaS and SaaS to containers – and result in an unreliable and slow recovery for the business when it’s needed most. This is what’s focusing the minds of IT leaders as they consider their cyber resiliency plan. They need Modern Data Protection.”

The post IT leaders feel increasingly unprotected from cyberattacks appeared first on CIO Dimension.

Web 3.0 has been hailed as the future of Internet. Making a case for Web 3.0, Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood once said: “Centralization is not socially tenable long-term, and government is too clumsy to fix things,” while calling the current web a “big baby” which “has grown old without growing up”. 

Web3 is considered to be a disruptor in that sense, which marks a shift away from large platforms that centralized control. With its core focus on decentralization and blockchain technology, Web 3.0 or simply Web3 promises to democratize the internet. “Web3 innovations will take the internet into new realms and give rise to applications not previously possible,” said Avivah Litan, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. 

Globally, Web 3 market has been booming, with the Web3 blockchain technology sector estimated to surpass six trillion dollars and continue its growth at a CAGR of 44.6% from 2023 to 2030 (Market Research Future). Closer home in India, Web3 received $30.5 Bn of VC funding in 2021 alone, and over $14.5 Bn in just Q1 of 2022, led by investments in DeFi and NFTs, according to Nasscom. The association estimates that there are more than 450 Web3 startups in India, as of H12022. 

While figures certainly paint a positive picture, skepticism towards Web3 has been high in the recent past. Pundits like Peter Schiff has implied that cryptocurrencies, which is one of the building blocks of web 3, will extinct. 

Nevertheless, experts argue that it’s too early to predict the end of this revolutionary technology. “This industry will not be defined by speculative booms and busts but instead by what it is built on: revolutionary technology that will eventually touch all of our corporations, governments and individual lives,” wrote Jordan Calinoff, VP, Strategy and Revenue at Horizen Labs in a blog for Nasdaq. He believes that 2023 will see more Web3 enterprise adoption. 

Experts also re-emphasize the fact the Web3 is not crypto and the potential of this technology should not be decided by the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. Interestingly, the Indian start-up ecosystem that focuses on Web3 are in fact focusing less on cryptocurrency trading. 

A Nasscom report says that Indian startups are instead focusing on building diverse solutions across major application areas such as finance, entertainment, infrastructure and decentralized communities. Non-fungible Token (NFT) and Metaverse are the top horizontal use cases that are seeing faster adoption at this stage. 

In the entertainment sector, for instance, startups are combining NFTs and gaming to offer whole new experiences to consumers. In the finance sector, web3 and smart contracts have already made waves in the form of DeFi. 

Web3 will however need to overcome regulatory and privacy challenges and evolve into a more seamless technology that can offer holistic customer experience. Security and fraud will emerge as other major concerns. But as with any disruptive technology, Web3 too holds the potential to transform industries and businesses.

The post Is Web 3.0 a passing fad for the enterprises? appeared first on CIO Dimension.

According to Technavio, the global metaverse market size is estimated to grow by USD 1,152.35 billion from 2022 to 2027. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 40.06% during the forecast period. Moreover, the growth momentum will accelerate. North America will account for 39% of the market’s growth during the forecast period.  In 2017, the metaverse market was valued at USD 92.48 billion. 

The VR or AR devices segment will account for a significant part of the growth during the forecast period. These devices include headsets, smart glasses, and lenses used for interacting on the metaverse platform. The growth of this segment is attributed to factors such as new product launches and the growing adoption of VR and AR in different application areas.

• The growing smartphone penetration and use of 5G are driving the market growth.
• 5G is becoming popular with the high adoption of smart devices such as smartphones.
• Thus, the use of different apps and online platforms for online shopping is expected to increase.
• Businesses such as e-commerce and finance businesses are expected to adopt advanced technologies such as metaverse to enhance the virtual experience.
• Therefore, the growing smartphone penetration and use of 5G are fueling the growth of the global market during the forecast period.

The post Metaverse market set to grow by $1.15 billion driven by growing smartphone penetration and usage of 5G appeared first on CIO Dimension.

Prime real estate has always been an important factor for most retailers before starting a business, but things might be different with the emergence of a new virtual platform. The metaverse is a platform combining multiple technologies to enable social and economic activity in a digital world connected to the physical one. 

With the effects of metaverse commerce adoption being felt by retail brands at various stages of the shopping journey, global IT research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group’s recently published blueprint highlights some key trends. 

Info-Tech’s research indicates that retailers often struggle to adapt to the evolving needs of virtual shoppers, which can include the use of cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Shopping in the metaverse works differently than in the real world, which has shifted more online since the onset of the pandemic. Retail in the metaverse requires a new outlook, models, and competencies to become competitive.

“The metaverse will fundamentally disrupt the retail ecosystem and take personalization from evolution to a complete revolution,” says Rahul Jaiswal, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “Although metaverse commerce is still in its infancy, many retail brands are testing applications like avatar-driven customer services, augmented reality, and 3D interaction to entice shoppers through virtual stores, products, and events.”

The research shows that metaverse commerce transformation is challenging, requiring superior technology journey mapping and strategies to build cohesive client experiences. Forward-looking retailers working to address the evolving needs of shoppers will need a fully comprehensive approach to complete the transformation and be successful.

According to Info-Tech, virtual and augmented customer experiences can drive value in today’s market. However, most retailers are unsure where to start and lack a structured approach to executing technologies for each shopping journey. The firm recommends that retailers identify opportunities across the shopping journey, capture key customer insights, and use technologies like blockchain, digital twins, infrastructure, and virtual environments.

By harnessing blockchain, the metaverse is expected to advance the shopping experience in the following ways:

1. Smart Contracts to Execute Commercial Transactions and Agreements: Smart contracts use blockchain to enforce the obligations of all parties in a contract without the extra overhead of a middleman. They are computer programs that facilitate, verify, and enforce the negotiation or execution of an agreement.
2. Enhanced Data Portability and Reduced Risk of Storing Customer Information:
3. Know Your Client (KYC) statements can be stored on the blockchain to decrease administration problems and costs while outlining the concerns that still need to be addressed.
4. Deliver Seamless Direct Money Transfers and Payments: Blockchain technology can overcome the current problems of correspondent systems and international money transfers. Fee-intensive, fragmented, cross-border non-cash transactions can be eliminated by excluding third parties and enabling direct money transfers and efficient interbank settlements.
5. Decentralized Ledgers for Trade Settlements: Trade settlement processes usually require two to three days for payments and securities to change hands. Moving this process to a decentralized ledger can have a transformative effect on the markets.

Info-Tech suggests retailers validate their strategies, persistently reinforce the enterprise’s core capabilities, and capitalize on the value of this new prospect to be prepared for what’s potentially around the corner.

The post Metaverse commerce will fundamentally disrupt the retail ecosystem appeared first on CIO Dimension.