Roughly a year ago, Google open-sourced MediaPipe, a framework for building cross-platform AI pipelines consisting of fast inference and media processing (like video decoding). Basically, it’s a quick and dirty way to perform object detection, face detection, hand tracking, multi-hand tracking, hair segmentation, and other such tasks in a modular fashion, with popular machine learning frameworks…
Google’s AI powers real-time orca tracking in Vancouver Bay
January 29, 2020
Google AI today shared that it’s created a model for detecting an endangered species of orca whales in the Salish Sea, a waterway between the United States and Canada. Underwater microphones situated at a dozen points in the Salish Sea that includes the state of Washington…
The number of people of all ages who are visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million globally, of whom 39 million are blind. In an effort to provide assistance where it can, Microsoft in 2016 launched Project Tokyo, a partnership among researchers in the U.S., U.K.
VentureBeat’s Tech Showcase is back at Transform 2020: Accelerating your business with AI, July 15-16 in San Francisco. We’re on the lookout for disruptive AI companies of all sizes that are ready to present their tech on the main stage.
Those selected to present will do so in front of hundreds of industry decision makers. Every presenter will receive coverage from VentureBeat, placing your…
Meena is Google’s attempt at making true conversational AI
January 29, 2020
Conversational AI is a catch-all term for natural language models for artificial intelligence that can interpret human words, speak to people, or carry out tasks or computation with natural language.
But talk to any of the best-known AI assistants today — Alexa, Siri…
AI Weekly: Calls for facial recognition moratorium highlight need for protection from surveillance tech
January 29, 2020
The debate over whether to ban or place moratoriums on the use of facial recognition started last year in cities like San Francisco, but the debate reignited this week when Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he’s open to a moratorium on facial recognition.
“It…
ProBeat: Why Google is really calling for AI regulation
January 24, 2020
On Sunday, the Financial Times published an op-ed penned by Sundar Pichai titled “Why Google thinks we need to regulate AI.” Whether he wrote it himself or merely signed off on it, Pichai clearly wants the world to know that as the CEO of Alphabet and Google, he believes AI is too important not to be regulated. He has concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI, and like any…
Amazon’s AI automatically dubs videos into other languages
January 24, 2020
Ever wish you could automatically dub foreign film dialogue into another tongue? Amazon’s on the case. In a paper published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org, researchers from the tech giant detailed a novel “speech-to-speech” pipeline that taps AI to align…
While most of the world focuses on deploying and improving the performance of early 5G networks, small groups of telecom engineers are working to establish what 6G networks will bring a decade from now. As one of the earliest cellular pioneers, Japanese carrier NTT Docomo…
Boston Dynamics gives its robot dog a developer SDK
January 24, 2020
Now that Spot is more clever and polite, Boston Dynamics is ready to set it free. The Softbank-owned robotics company announced that it’s making Spot’s SDK available to anyone who wants it via GitHub, starting today. The release will allow developers and even non-traditional roboticists “develop custom applications that enable Spot to do useful tasks across a wide range of…
