Top Tech News Today: Shutterstock Plans to Sell AI Stock Images and Compensate Artists! UK Votes to Regulate Crypto as Financial Instruments

Shutterstock plans on selling AI stock images and paying the humans! Read more tech news below!

Good morning tech fam, here are some quick tech updates for you to catch on to!

What's New Today: Shutterstock is leaning towards using AI-generated images to compensate artists, and give direct access to DALL.E-2.

Fast-Track Insights: Google's Chief Business Officer has said that the economic slowdown has led to reduced ad spending by companies and other financial firms.

Stock image giant Shutterstock has announced that it will use AI-generated images, in partnership with OpenAI to expand its strategic tie-up. The partnership between Shutterstock and OpenAI will enable users to have open access to the Dall-2 image-generating system with Shutterstock content made available to its users worldwide. The integration is slated to launch in the upcoming months.

A student named Eleanor Mackintosh designed a 3D robot fish that vacuums microplastics from waterways that can be used for sampling and recycling or simply to minimize plastic pollution in the water bodies. Mackintosh named her fish 'Gilbert'. The 3D fish can use its set of gills that will filter the water and keep the microplastics inside its container as it swims. Her team of researchers believes that the extracted microplastics can be recycled at the discretion of the user, one step towards micro-cleaning the water bodies.

Whatsapp stopped working for almost two hours yesterday and it drove people crazy! Users all over the world were facing inconvenience for the inability to send messages and make Whatsapp calls. Meta reassured in a statement that its officials were taking action on the issue to bring back the services. The Whatsapp interface showed a 'trying to reconnect' message.

The lower house of the UK Parliament voted in favor of adding cryptocurrencies to the scope of activities to be regulated through the proposed Financial Services and Markets Bill, which became well-renowned for extending payment rules to stablecoins as well. The members of the lower house have agreed to consider cryptos as regulated financial instruments. The draft bill also includes measures to extend the existing regulations for payments around cryptos pegged to the value of other assets like the US dollar or gold.

Surprisingly, Google has been vastly affected by the ongoing crypto winter. The company's chief business officer blamed a slowdown in the revenue growth in part on reduced ad spending by crypto companies and other financial firms. Google's overall ad growth has been only 6%, which is the weakest since 2013 and during the pandemic period.