English, Arabic, and French dialects can be found on parts of the African continent and are used across tribes, ethnic groups, and national borders, but none is native to Africa. Some estimates put the number of living languages on the continent at 2,000 or more. This can stand in the way of communication, as well as commerce, and earlier the year led to the creation of the Masakhane open source…
What if you could manipulate the facial features of a historical figure, a politician, or a CEO realistically and convincingly using nothing but a webcam and an illustrated or photographic still image? A tool called MarioNETte that was recently developed by researchers at…
The actionable insights AI can unlock from consumer conversation
November 27, 2019
“We’re interested in using AI to understand what’s happening in customer conversations at a high level,” says Chris Hausler, Senior Data Science Manager, Zendesk. “The AI understands the patterns that emerge, and does it in a way that’s a lot more scalable than…
Coralogix raises $10 million to apply AI to software logs
November 26, 2019
Canvasing software logs is tricky business when you’re juggling multiple dev environments. About 50% of logging statements don’t include any information about critical things like variable state at the time of an error, according to GitHub and OverOps surveys, which is perhaps why developers spend an estimated one fourth of their time — more than a full day out of the work week — on…
Pricefx raises $25.3 million to optimize prices with AI
November 26, 2019
It’s not easy for corporations to price their goods and services appropriately, but getting pricing right is critically important to their success. According to a McKinsey & Company report, a 1% price increase translates to an 8.7% increase in operating profits on…
Google Assistant ambient mode turns some phones into smart displays
November 26, 2019
After first teasing it in September, Google has detailed exactly how its new Assistant ambient mode will work on smartphones. The idea is to make your phone more useful by while it’s charging by letting you see Google photo images, play music, control your smart…
It’s no surprise that MediaTek has been working on a 5G system-on-chip (SoC) for some time, with plans to offer a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 alternative for higher-end 5G devices. Today, MediaTek officially named the chip Dimensity 1000 and provided specs for what it says will be the first in a family of 5G SoCs.
The upshot is that Dimensity 1000 will deliver “extreme energy efficiency”…
Appier raises $80 million for AI that improves marketing decisions
November 26, 2019
Getting a customer onto a company’s website to check out its products is challenging enough in itself, but getting them to complete a transaction is a whole different ball game. Last year, 75% of all ecommerce orders were abandoned before finalizing the purchase —…
Amazon researchers use NLP data set to improve Alexa’s answers
November 25, 2019
Improving the quality of voice assistants’ responses to questions is of interest to tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, who seek to address shortfalls in their respective natural language processing (NLP) technologies. They’ve plenty in the way of motivation…
Facebook details the AI technology behind Instagram Explore
November 25, 2019
According to Facebook, over half of Instagram’s roughly 1 billion users visit Instagram Explore to discover videos, photos, livestreams, and Stories each month. Predictably, building the underlying recommendation engine — which curates the billions of pieces of content uploaded to Instagram — posed an engineering challenge, not least because it works in real time.
In a blog post published…
