Google unveiled new Android Q features Tuesday that it says can caption home videos in real time, with no internet connection needed. It’s possible because Google’s speech recognition software requires less processing power, so it can run on your phone or tablet, Google said. That comes with an added privacy benefit. Instead of streaming audio …
Read More »
If you’re feeling like Google’s data centers are holding back your AI abilities, the company now lets you gang together lots of its tensor processing unit (TPU) chips for better performance. The Google Cloud service now offers TPUs linked together into “pods,” the company announced at its Google I/O conference Tuesday. The resulting speedup is chiefly of interest to the …
Read More »
Facebook uses both human beings and artificial intelligence to combat some of its toughest problems, including hate speech, misinformation and election meddling. Now, the social network is doubling down on AI. The tech giant has come under fire for a series of lapses, including its failure to pull down a live video of terrorist attack in New Zealand that killed 50 people …
Read More »
Robotics company Anki will close its doors on Wednesday. The San Francisco-based maker of adorable mini-robots Vector and Cosmo will lay off its entire staff, according to Recode, which reported that CEO Boris Sofman made the announcement at an all-hands meeting on Monday. Nearly 200 employees will receive only a week of severance pay, the report noted. In the days …
Read More »
Qualcomm, best known for mobile phone chips, plans to build AI chips that run in data centers packed with thousands of powerful servers. Artificial intelligence — or neural network tech based loosely on human brains — is revolutionizing computing with the abilities like distinguishing what’s in a photo or understanding human speech. Lots of AI runs on your phone or laptop, …
Read More »
You and your family are at the pier, giddy to board the massive cruise ship docked nearby. Ahead lies a week of sunny beaches, indulgent buffet feasts and lounging around doing absolutely nothing. And then you see the long lines for security, baggage and ID checks. It often takes 75 minutes for passengers to check in, but the Pool Deck …
Read More »
Some photographers who contributed photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site were surprised IBM used those same photos in a million-image collection to train AI face-recognition systems — but perhaps they shouldn’t have been. The Flickr photos had been shared under a Creative Commons license, a framework under which people can loosen restrictions on photos, text, video or other material that otherwise would …
Read More »
A new computing tool developed by Google will let developers build AI-powered apps that respect your privacy. Google on Wednesday released TensorFlow Federated, open-source software that incorporates federated learning, an AI training system. It works by using data that’s spread out across a lot of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to teach itself new tricks. But rather than send …
Read More »
Samsung’s long-awaited Galaxy Home speaker will launch by April, the company’s co-CEO said Wednesday. DJ Koh, the head of Samsung’s mobile business, made the comments to CNET following the company’s Unpacked event in San Francisco. The company unveiled four new Galaxy S10 smartphones (including a model that runs on 5G networks), its Galaxy Fold foldable phone, Galaxy Buds earbuds and three new …
Read More »
After training an AI system on a billion photos, Adobe has reworked a fundamental part of digital photography for a 30 percent increase in image quality in its Lightroom software. The improvement comes in new Lightroom releases Tuesday with an option called “enhance details” that can break past ordinary image-quality limits in areas with lots of fine details. It’ll take …
Read More »
