AI & Robotics

The era of giant battle robots appears to be over… although you might have a chance to bring it back. MegaBots has gone bankrupt after once again running out of money, and it’s auctioning its 16-foot-tall Eagle Prime robot on eBay as part of the shutdown. It’s a fully functional bot that even includes weapon attachments, CAD files and a shipping container full of parts, and the…

Just when you think researchers have found the wackiest possible use for a neural net yet, another team finds an even more novel use for artificial intelligence. Take Facebook’s new Fashion++ AI. It’s a program that will help you become a fashionista. Facebook trained Fashion++ by showing the AI thousands of images of outfits that were deemed “fashionable.” What’s…

Google Assistant users outside the US haven’t had much choice when it comes to voice options — until now, as Google launches a second voice for Assistant in French, German, Dutch, Japanese, Norwegian, Korean, Italian and English for India and the UK. The new voices have been built with DeepMind’s WaveNet technology to help them sound natural, and will be displayed in settings as…

I was pwned online recently. My contact information was revealed to the internet by the Entertainment Software Association’s leaky exhibitor portal. Luckily, confidential info like my SSN and birthdate were not spilled but I still found myself preparing for the inevitable flood of scams and spam, now that my details were out there for the world to see. But the deluge never came, only a…