Top 3 tech, startup and sustainability stories of the week, 20th – 24th Jan, 2025

This week’s stories come from US, UK and France

1-Google Maps turns 20

Google Maps marks its 20th anniversary by expanding its reach and integrating advanced AI tools. What started as an innovative idea by co-founder Larry Page—capturing street-level imagery with a video camera—has evolved into the world’s leading navigation app, with over 2 billion monthly users.

I read this story at Cnbc and Google is introducing new, portable Street View cameras that can be mounted on any car, simplifying global mapping efforts. This enables updates in countries that haven’t been refreshed in a decade and adds three new countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Namibia, and Liechtenstein. The cameras, combined with satellite images, aerial views, and data from over 1,000 third-party sources, allow Google Maps to maintain coverage in more than 250 countries and territories.

Google’s Gemini chatbot, now enhances Maps’ functionality. It can filter locations based on specific criteria, summarize reviews, and provide real-time updates on road conditions and weather.

Waze, which Google acquired in 2013, also leverages Gemini’s capabilities for voice-activated hazard reports, feeding data into both Waze and Google Maps to enhance navigation safety.

Google has implemented robust privacy measures, such as blurring faces and license plates in Street View, auto-deleting location data for sensitive places, and storing location history locally on devices rather than in the cloud.

Though Google’s revenues from Maps remain unannonced, its revenue is largely driven by advertising, licensing its Maps Platform to businesses, and partnerships with companies like Uber and Dominos.

Google Maps turns 20

2-Mistral teams up with AFP

Paris-based startup Mistral and Agence France-Presse (AFP) have announced a partnership to integrate AFP’s news content with Mistral’s AI chatbot, “Le Chat.” The collaboration aims to improve the chatbot’s accuracy and reliability by providing access to AFP’s database of news.

I saw this story at The Next Web and Le Chat will utilize AFP’s daily output of 2,300 news articles in six languages — French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Arabic — to deliver more fact-based and culturally diverse responses. According to Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, the partnership will allow the chatbot to provide “reliable, factual, and up-to-date responses verified by professional journalists.”

For AFP, this deal represents an opportunity to diversify its revenue streams and explore new applications for its content beyond traditional media. “This partnership helps AFP reach a clientele outside the media industry and broadens the use of our content in businesses’ daily operations,” said Fabrice Fries, AFP’s CEO.

Let me note that OpenAI’s partnerships now extend to nearly 20 publishers, including The Financial Times, Le Monde, and AP. However, not all news outlets are on board. Recently, The New York Times and other publishers filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright violations. They claim OpenAI used their content without permission, while the company argues its actions fall under “fair use.”

The rollout of AFP’s content to Le Chat users is expected in the coming weeks, although the financial details of the multi-year agreement remain undisclosed.

Mistral signs deal with AFP

3-Meet Humphrey: UK’s AI assistant for civil servants to cut bureaucracy

UK government announced a plan to make big investments into AI, laying out more details around how this will take shape in the public sector. For example AI assistants to speed up public services; data-sharing deals across siloed departments; and a new set of AI tools — called Humphrey, a character from  an old U.K. TV political sitcom from the 80s.

At their heart, the projects are all about efficiency. The government, Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said, currently spends some £23 billion annually on technology, and the idea will be to redeploy that money in a more modern way.

DSIT is honing in on three areas initially: 1. The work of government employees. Humphrey is a set of apps aimed at reducing the typical daily workload of civil servants, much of it centered around vast amounts of data that they are required to read and process.

2. Another strand of the efficiency push will be around speeding up public-facing services. The idea here is to take aim at legacy bureaucracy, of which there is a lot in the U.K., such as the 100,000 calls that the tax authorities get daily, or the need for people to appear in person to register a death, or, bizarrely, posting ads in local papers as part of the process of getting a license to drive a truck.(By the way I have story here about a Turkish fashion startup, which uses AI-based solutions)

3.A final area will be focused on more collaboration between departments in aid of sharing data to speed up how services are procured, and then how they work. Taken together, the various projects are a signal that the government means business on its new AI push. DSIT’s thinking is that overhauling processes like these with more AI-fueled automation could save £45 billion annually.

Meet Humphrey: UK’s AI assistant for civil servants to cut bureaucracy

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