Facebook has bot fever. The social network wants to turn its chat app Messenger into a customer service utopia, where people can text with chatbots instead of having to talk to agents on the phone. A chatbot is software that can automatically perform simple tasks for you, such as taking an order or making a …
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Soon, eBay will let you shop on its app by snapping pictures. The e-commerce company on Wednesday said it’s developing two new image recognition tools for its mobile app. They’ll only be available in the US and are set for release this fall, with a desktop version arriving later. The first feature, simply called Image Search, will let you take …
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This is part of our Road Trip 2017 summer series “The Smartest Stuff,” about how innovators are thinking up new ways to make you — and the world around you — smarter. Snowflakes flutter around my face, taking me back to my childhood in Ohio where I’d tilt back my head to gaze at the swirl of tiny crystals spiraling toward my …
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Want to give your PC an IQ boost? Intel‘s $80 Movidius Neural Compute Stick lets you plug some computing brains into your laptop’s USB port. The device, geared for tinkerers and programmers, can crank out 100 billion mathematical calculations per second while consuming a paltry 1 watt of power. That’s the kind of thing that can be handy if you’re …
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Now playing: Watch this: Google search gets a Facebook face-lift 1:49 Facebook already tailors its feed of news, sports scores and viral videos to show you what you want. Now Google is going to do it too. In a classic case of Silicon Valley “Anything you can do I can do better,” the search giant on Wednesday updated its free …
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It’ll be a while before Samsung’s Bixby joins Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant on speakers. Samsung announced the Bixby voice assistant with the launch of its Galaxy S8 phone in March, but it only reached devices in the US on Tuesday after multiple delays. Samsung said the voice assistant would be available on its refrigerators, washing machines and televisions, …
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Hey Bixby, nice to finally talk to you. Samsung on Tuesday officially launched voice capabilities for its Bixby smart sidekick in the US, about three months after the artificial intelligence technology first became available on its new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus phones. The company had delayed the launch and missed its own promised “later this spring” deadline, …
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We’re officially living in the future. No, there aren’t any flying cars (yet). And sorry, we still can’t easily travel the stars either. But one promise of the future, computers that can help blind people see, is starting to arrive. The latest example is Microsoft’s Seeing AI, a free iPhone app released Wednesday that “narrates the world around you.” Point …
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For Elon Musk, X marks the spot. Or the domain. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX confirmed in a tweet that he had purchased the X.com domain from PayPal. Musk said he didn’t have any plans for the domain, but that it had “great sentimental value to me.” The X.com domain name was originally a financial services company started by …
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Now playing: Watch this: Samsung’s S8 assistant still isn’t ready 1:27 Samsung’s Bixby is still a no-show. The consumer electronics giant told the Korea Herald on Tuesday that the English version of its digital assistant will be delayed — again — because it lacks enough big data to teach it to work properly. Bixby Voice was supposed to launch in late …
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