Paramount Global has agreed to sell publishing giant Simon & Schuster to private equity firm KKR for $1.62 billion in an all-cash transaction. Paramount Global President and CEO Bob Bakish said the transaction “delivers excellent value to Paramount shareholders while also positioning Simon & Schuster for its next phase of growth with KKR.” On closing, expected in the first half of 2024, Simon & Schuster will become a standalone private company under the continued leadership of President and CEO Jonathan Karp and COO and CFO Dennis Eulau. Continue reading KKR Will Pay $1.62 Billion for Paramount’s Simon & Schuster

Meta Platforms is releasing AudioCraft, a generative AI framework that creates “high-quality,” “realistic” audio and music from text prompts. AudioCraft consists of three models: MusicGen, AudioGen and EnCodec, all of which Meta announced it is open-sourcing. Released in June, MusicGen was trained on Meta-owned and licensed music, and generates music from text prompts, while AudioGen, which was trained on public domain samples, generates sound effects (like honking horns and barking dogs) from text prompts. The EnCodec decoder allows “higher quality music generation with fewer artifacts,” according to Meta. Continue reading Meta’s AudioCraft Turns Words into Music with Generative AI

Verizon has teamed with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on a discovery app called Replica that lets consumers scan artwork to generate digital collectibles. The augmented reality Replica experience lets museum visitors scan items using a mobile app that stores them to Roblox as objects or avatar accessories. Roblox account holders can also virtually explore the Met’s facade and partake in other immersive experiences. The effort follows a previous Verizon collaboration with the museum and indicates the way institutions can leverage AR to engage consumers. Continue reading The Met Teams with Verizon to Create Roblox AR Experience

Chinese tech firm Rokid released is first AR glasses in 2017, and is now making available an attachment called Rokid Station that brings an immersive 215-inch Android TV virtual screen experience to its new Rokid Max augmented reality eyewear. The Rokid Max glasses list for $439, but bundled with the Rokid Station the price is $529 (via preorder). The Rokid Max glasses feature micro OLED screens that can project what appears to be a 215-inch screen positioned about 10 feet from the user, creating the illusion of an immersive viewing experience. Continue reading Rokid Debuts Portable Android TV Device for Its AR Glasses

DJI’s Osmo Action 4 sports video camera promises “remarkable low-light performance” thanks to a larger 1/1.3-inch image sensor that captures more light through an utrawide f/2.8 aperture 155-degree lens. At $399, the Action 4 retails for about $70 more than the Action 3 but offers improvements including the ability to shoot in 10-bit D-Log M format for higher dynamic range that allows for greater color-correction flexibility in the editing room. The Action 4 also supports greater storage of up to 512GB using a required microSD card (the camera has no internal storage). Continue reading DJI Delivers Upgrades to Its Osmo Action Sports Video Cam

Spotify is rolling out its new Confidence software development product in private beta. Based on its learnings from more than 10 years of experience experimenting at scale, the company says Confidence aims to make it simple for teams to set up, run and analyze their own user tests so they can quickly perfect and productize ideas. “Whether it’s automatically coordinating simultaneous A/B tests or orchestrating the rollout of an AI recommendation system across mobile, desktop, and web, the platform we built scales experimentation best practices and capabilities,” Spotify explains, adding that it plans to make the technology available soon to all companies. Continue reading Spotify’s Confidence Development Platform Is in Private Beta

Apple experienced its third consecutive quarter of declining sales in Q2, with a 1.4 percent slip to revenue of $81.8 billion. But the Cupertino-based company managed to generate record performance in its Services division, up 8.2 percent to $21.21 billion. Sales of the company’s largest device segment, iPhones, underperformed estimates with $39.7 billion in sales, a 2.4 percent dip year-over-year. Overall, however, Apple slightly overperformed Wall Street expectations, which were forecast at $81.64 billion for the quarter ending in June. For Q2, Apple reported 1 billion paid subscriptions — including Apple Music, Apple TV+ and third-party apps. Continue reading Apple’s Sales Decline Tempered by Record for Services Arm

Amazon’s AWS cloud-computing unit generated $22.1 billion in Q2, a 12 percent year-over-year gain that was a highlight in a strong quarter for the e-commerce giant. The company generated a total of $134.4 billion in revenue for the period ending in June, an 11 percent increase over the prior year. Advertising was also strong, jumping 22 percent to $10.68 billion. Cost-cutting and rebounding e-commerce helped propel the Seattle-based company to a quarterly profit of $6.75 billion (its strongest performance since Q4 2021), which contrasted sharply with a loss in the same period last year. Continue reading AWS, Advertising Drive Amazon to 11 Percent Revenue Gain

Social image pinboarding and shopping inspiration platform Pinterest touted its recently announced Amazon partnership and AI efforts as part of its Q2 2023 earnings, which showed a 6 percent gain in year-over-year revenue of $708 million, beating analyst expectations. Pinterest announced the multiyear partnership with Amazon that marked a Pinterest first for third-party ads. On the investor call, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told analysts the company has been testing Amazon ads traffic and is “very pleased” with the early results. When users click on Amazon ads on Pinterest they land on Amazon’s site to complete their purchase. Continue reading Pinterest Touts AI and Amazon Partnership with Q2 Earnings

More than 2 billion logged-in users around the world are watching YouTube Shorts each month. To help creators keep them engaged, YouTube is releasing six new tools to improve creativity. Assists for remixing, adding stickers and effects, going live and more are coming to the platform, which has also begun testing a mobile-first live experience designed to help live creators get noticed in the main Shorts feed. One unusual new feature, Collab, lets creators display a Short in a side-by-side frame with other YouTube or Shorts videos. Collab lets users select from a variety of split-screen layout options. It will debut on iOS with Android to follow.  Continue reading YouTube Shorts Adds Creator Tools Including Collab and Q&A

Google is adding images and video to its Search Generative Experience (SGE), an AI-powered context tool the company began testing in May that some are already calling “the future of Google Search.” Those who have signed up for Search Labs and enabled SGE will begin seeing more multimedia at the top of their search results. The idea is to help searchers “get up to speed on a new topic, uncover quick tips for your specific questions or discover products and things to consider — with article links to dig deeper,” Google explains of its latest AI improvements. Continue reading Google’s AI-Powered Search Delivers Relevant, Visual Results

Mario and Luigi’s cinematic star turn and the new video game “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” boosted Nintendo’s quarterly earnings with a 52 percent profit surge. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures has collected more than $1 billion at the global box office since its April release, while the latest “Zelda” game installment became the fastest-seller in the series’ history when it debuted in May. As a result, Nintendo’s April through June fiscal quarter produced revenue of $3.2 billion, a 50 percent increase year-over-year. Continue reading ‘Mario’ Movie and ‘Zelda’ Game Propel Nintendo Profit Surge

Led by Pixar Animation Studios, a consortium of tech companies has formed the Alliance for OpenUSD to promote an open 3D computer graphics standard for the metaverse and other 3D projects. Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and Nvidia are also founding members along with the Linux Foundation’s Joint Development Foundation. The group will promote the development and standardization of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description tech, a 3D platform that is interoperable across a variety of tools, data and workflows. The goal is to make it easier to describe, compose and simulate large-scale 3D imaging projects and services across industries and platforms worldwide. Continue reading Tech Firms Join Pixar in Group Promoting OpenUSD Standard

Content hubs are gaining traction with streaming platforms as a search and discovery tool, according to a new study by Horowitz Research, which notes eight in 10 consumers indicating they watch content from a collection or hub occasionally. Multicultural audiences are turning to using hub resources in significant numbers, with African American streamers engaging at the 80 percent rate, and Asian viewers at 65 percent. The number trends higher — at 77 percent — among less acculturated Asian streamers. Among Latinx streamers, nearly 59 percent say they’ve turned to Latinx content collections, with less acculturated doing so at higher rates (78 percent). Continue reading Study: Streaming Viewers Are Interested in Hubs for Discovery

Meta Platforms is amping up its AI play, with plans to launch a suite of personality-driven chatbots as soon as next month. The company has been developing the series of artificially intelligent character bots with a goal of using them to boost engagement with its social media brands by making them available to have “humanlike discussions” on platforms including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Internally dubbed “personas,” the chatbots simulate characters ranging from historical figures like Abraham Lincoln to a surfer dude that dispenses travel advice. Continue reading Meta Plans Personality-Driven Chatbots to Boost Engagement