Entertainment, in all of its forms, has always been an important pastime for Americans. And now with millions sheltering at home, it’s taken an even more crucial role in helping people escape the boredom and anxiety that comes with a global pandemic. As a result, there have been huge increases in not only TV consumption but also gaming. And it’s not just about playing solo: Social video has…
Xbox Game Pass doesn’t have Friends, but it does have the friends we’ve made along the way. And that’s not just a silly phrase by a very clever reporter (don’t laugh). It’s one of the most powerful elements behind the success of Microsoft’s subscription…
OpenAI today released Jukebox, a machine learning framework that generates music — including rudimentary songs — as raw audio in a range of genres and musical styles. Provided with a genre, artist, and lyrics as input, Jukebox outputs a new music sample produced from…
Microsoft will show Xbox Series X games on May 7
April 30, 2020
Microsoft announced today that it’s holding an event at 8 a.m. Pacific on May 7, showing games running on the Xbox Series X next-generation console for the first time.
At this point, we’ve seen a decent amount about the system. We know what the console and controller look like, and we’ve gotten a glimpse at the specs. But we still haven’t seen any games running on the machine, although we…
In a paper originally published last October and accepted to the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020, researchers affiliated with Google and the University College London propose an AI model that enables control of speech characteristics like…
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and more this holiday
April 30, 2020
After announcing the title yesterday, Ubisoft has given us a better look at Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla today. Ubisoft also confirmed that the game is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox One Series X, along with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, this holiday season.
This…
Google Duo makes video calls pretty easy, but there’s still a roadblock or two to getting users going. Now, it appears Google Duo is preparing to solve one of those issues by allowing users to make calls without a phone number.
Jane Wong spotted a setting Google has not yet rolled out to the Duo app for Android. That new setting enables others to contact you on Google Duo using just your email…
Demonstrating once again the potential of video games to advance AI and machine learning research, Facebook researchers propose a game-like language challenge — Read to Fight Monsters (RTFM) — in a paper that the International Conference on Learning Representations…
Duolingo’s AI drives its English proficiency tests
April 30, 2020
Language learning startup Duolingo leverages AI and machine learning to create and score English proficiency tests automatically, reveals a paper published in the journal Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. In it, researchers peel back the curtains…
Nintendo is telling partner developers it’s not going to hold one of its Nintendo Direct video events in June. The publisher has had a June Direct to correspond with E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) every year since 2013. And before that, it held annual stage presentations. But complications brought about from Japan’s work-from-home order as part of its attempts to mitigate COVID-19 are…
