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• 🏡 Ought to get back

  Amazon has announced that its 350,000 corporate employees must return to the office five days a week starting January 2, sparking speculation about hidden motives. CEO Andy Jassy assured employees that the decision is not a backdoor layoff but a move to enhance company culture. Despite this, dissatisfaction is high, with 91% of surveyed employees unhappy with the policy.

• ❌ 🤳 Banned

  Australia’s PM Anthony Albanese is set to ban social media for under-16s. No exceptions for parental consent mean platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube must block young users. This legislation positions Australia at the forefront of global efforts to shield children from digital dangers.

•  🔢 $76,000

  Bitcoin surged to this all-time high, setting a new record only hours after surpassing the $75,000 mark on Tuesday night. Following Donald Trump’s reelection, strong support within the crypto community for his return to the White House continues to fuel Bitcoin’s upward momentum. Bitcoin’s price is expected to rise further, showing heightened optimism.

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Is Google Search’s Killer Finally Here?

After months of teasing, OpenAI has finally introduced a search feature to ChatGPT, moving head-to-head with rivals Co-pilot and Gemini.

👀 First Impressions: ChatGPT search is “all things early Google was before it started monetising our eyeballs,” Lance Ulanoff said at Tech Radar. “It is admittedly still "way too early" to definitively crown SearchGPT as the better search engine, and it is doubtful that "OpenAI's knowledge graph is anywhere near as rich as Google's," Ulanoff added. "Even so, right now, ChatGPT search just feels better."

💬 Inside the Reddit AMA: Just 24 hours after the launch, OpenAI's leadership team, including CEO Sam Altman, held a Reddit AMA to discuss SEO's future and tackle AI hallucinations.

LET’S DIVE IN  ⏬ 

🔎 Can it beat Google’s dominance in search? 

Altman described ChatGPT search to Redditors as the most exciting thing to happen to AI since ChatGPT’s release. But Google’s 90% hold over the global search engine market is tough to shake. Nonetheless, its capabilities don’t fail in surprising onlookers: 

⚡️ ChatGPT search can: 

• Present the latest news and weather predictions. 

• Generate fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources. 

• Provide users with an ad-free experience along with a natural language interface. 

✋ But there are limitations: 

• ChatGPT search is not yet reliable enough for the most common type of Google query: Short, navigational queries.

• Searching for follow-up information can be tedious since ChatGPT does not offer related search suggestions like Google.

🤖 What about hallucinations? 

Mark Chen, SVP of Research, said OpenAI is working on two main solutions for hallucinations: 

• "Grounding" - connecting AI responses to verified sources (like giving the AI access to reliable reference materials)

• "Reinforcement Learning" - training the AI with a reward system for accuracy (like training a pet, but for truthfulness)

📊SEO for ChatGPT Search

Chief Product Officer Kevin Weill says the product is too new to dominate SEO trends.  But here are a few hints towards where it is heading : 

• Bing is the main service of ChatGPT Search. This makes it an important search engine to rank in. 

• With AI-powered searches, long-tail keywords will evolve into full conversational phrases. 

• One can expect hyper-personalised search results based on user behaviour patterns soon. 

🗣️ Reactions

• Making ChatGPT your primary search engine "doesn't make sense just yet," Calvin Wankhede said at Android Authority. The overall experience with the new engine is "still rather barebones."

• After temporarily switching to ChatGPT search as a default search engine for about a day, "I quickly switched back to Google," said Maxwell Zeff, a senior reporter at Tech Crunch.

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