Nvidia’s growing AI arsenal now includes video search and summarization tool AI Blueprint, which helps developers build visual AI agents that analyze video and image content. The agents can answer user questions, generate summaries and even enable alerts for specific scenarios. The new feature is part of Metropolis, Nvidia’s developer toolkit for building computer vision applications using generative AI. Globally, enterprises and public organizations increasingly rely on visual information. Cameras, IoT sensors and autonomous vehicles are ingesting visual data at high rates, and visual agents can help monitor and make sense of that workflow. Continue reading Nvidia’s AI Blueprint Develops Agents to Analyze Visual Data

Accenture is forming an internal Nvidia Business Group staffed with 30,000 global employees trained to help clients “reinvent processes and scale enterprise AI adoption with AI agents,” the consulting firm announced. Accenture will also use its AI Refinery platform to help companies customize AI models and agents using the full Nvidia AI stack including AI Foundry, AI Enterprise and Omniverse. “With generative AI demand driving $3 billion in Accenture bookings in its recently closed fiscal year, the new group will help clients lay the foundation for agentic AI functionality,” Accenture said. Continue reading Accenture Has Plans for Scaling Enterprise AI with Nvidia Unit

The European Commission has released a list of more than 100 companies that have become signatories to the EU’s AI Pact. While Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are among them, Apple and Meta are not. The voluntary AI Pact is aimed at eliciting policies on AI deployment during the period before the legally binding AI Act takes full effect. The EU AI Pact focuses on transparency in three core areas: internal AI governance, high-risk AI systems mapping and promoting AI literacy and awareness among staff to support ethical development. It is aimed at “relevant stakeholders,” across industry, civil society and academia. Continue reading Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI Join the EU’s AI Pact

Management consulting firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) has ordered 100,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses from OpenAI, becoming the startup’s biggest third-party customer for the product, which is rolling out to all employees in the U.S. and UK. In addition, OpenAI has named PwC its first resale partner, making it the middleman for selling the AI company’s enterprise products to other businesses. PwC says embedding ChatGPT in its practice will make the Big Four accounting and consulting giant “uniquely positioned to help clients leverage ChatGPT Enterprise for better and faster ways of working.” Continue reading Endorsing GenAI, PwC Is Largest User of ChatGPT Enterprise

Artificial Intelligence is not angling to steal jobs, according to Big Tech, which is galvanizing its forces to push back against that perception by forming a new consortium that addresses the effect of AI on the workforce. Called the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium, it will “assess AI’s impact on technology jobs and identify skills development pathways for the roles most likely to be affected by artificial intelligence,” according to Cisco, which leads the initiative. Accenture, Eightfold, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft and SAP are also participating. Continue reading Big Tech Launches Consortium to Address AI Impact on Jobs

Salesforce has launched AI Cloud, adding generative AI across all its sales, service, marketing, commerce and IT tools. The AI Cloud suite for enterprise is built around Einstein, which Salesforce says is the first AI for CRM, and its new Einstein GPT Trust Layer, designed to deter large-language models from retaining sensitive customer data. “This separation of sensitive data from the LLM will help customers maintain data governance controls while still leveraging the immense potential of generative AI,” Salesforce says. The AI Cloud platform integrates Salesforce tools including Data Cloud, Flow, MuleSoft and Tableau and works with third party apps. Continue reading Salesforce Debuts ‘AI Cloud’ Turnkey Generative Tools Suite

Generative AI for cybersecurity is an emerging category with Google an early entrant. At this week’s RSA Conference 2023 in San Francisco, Google unveiled Cloud Security AI Workbench, a toolkit powered by a customized AI language model called Sec-PaLM that is “fine-tuned for security use cases.” Accenture is the first client to sign up for Workbench. Google also announced it is combining its Google Cloud and Mandiant ecosystems to offer a turnkey solution to ward off threats “from incident response through proactive defense,” drawing on integrations from more than 100 leading cybersecurity vendors. Continue reading Google Workbench Taps AI Tech for Next-Gen Cybersecurity

Mobile Electronics Association president Chris Cook quizzed CES panelists on innovations in the smart car space. Accenture digital strategist Monika Minarcin noted that AI doesn’t just power autonomous driving but also voice recognition, digital assistants and precision marketing. At Humanising Autonomy, chief executive Maya Pindeus is using behavioral AI to build a global standard for interaction between people and machines. DarkStar Vision chief executive Joe Scalisi is working on a passive color night vision solution that he believes can “enhance the automotive sector” with rear view mirrors and motorcycle helmets. Continue reading CES: Digital Disruptors Focus on the Connected Car Industry

Meta Platforms unveiled its anticipated mixed reality headset yesterday at Meta Connect. The $1,500 Quest Pro, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced as “the first in our new line of advanced headsets,” becomes the first full-color AR/VR device to hit the U.S. market on October 25. Although Meta is positioning the Quest Pro as a productivity device, the thrust was that app makers will be encouraged to develop for it. Meta also announced that NBCUniversal content and Microsoft Office, Windows, Teams and Xbox Cloud Gaming are coming to Meta Quest headsets. Continue reading AR/VR Meta Quest Pro Targets Productivity Sector for $1,500

Seventy two percent of Americans say they “love” their user experience with streaming services, according to Nielsen’s State of Play report, which notes that 93 percent of those surveyed will increase their streaming subscriptions or make no change, despite nearly half the respondents admitting they’re somewhat overwhelmed by options. As of February, U.S. viewers could choose from more than 817,000 unique program titles, compared to about 646,000 in 2019. In the 12 months ending February 2022, Americans’ upped their average weekly video streaming time by 18 percent, to 169.4 billion streaming minutes, from 143.2 billion. Continue reading Nielsen Says Viewers ‘Love’ Streaming but Find It Confusing

CES 2022 featured a compelling session that focused on “Artificial Intelligence: Expectations, Rules and Achievement,” which began with introductory remarks by Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) who questioned whether the federal government had AI experts who understood the innovations. “These are disruptive technologies,” she said. “What will it do to our healthcare system? With autonomous vehicles, do we have the relevant policies in place for government and insurance companies?” She also worried about competition in the space. This jump-started a panel discussion on the numerous opinions involving AI. Continue reading CES: Panel Reveals Surprising Statistics on Perceptions of AI

The metaverse, a virtual world where people embody avatars and live their lives online, was largely the purview of gamers and sci-fi movie fans until Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it part of the everyday lexicon, prompting a media assessment of how the metaverse is accessible now. Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled a new Mesh app for augmented reality and virtual reality experiences using various goggles, including its own HoloLens. E-commerce platform Shopify has launched a browser-based game, “Shopify Party,” that lets employees appear as avatars for team events. Other companies are also considering a future in the metaverse. Continue reading Corporate Migration to Metaverse Not Waiting for Zuckerberg

Global firms such as Amazon, IKEA, Mercedes-Benz and Walmart are cutting out traditional financial institutions in favor of financial technology, or “fintech” — startups offering everything from banking and credit to insurance. Embedded finance, a term for companies integrating software to offer services like “buy now pay later” at check out, are poised to disrupt the status quo, according to Reuters, which reports that while “banks are still behind most of the transactions,” analysts are warning that as they “get pushed further away from the front end of the finance chain” they’ll be frozen out of lucrative consumer data mining. Continue reading Embedded Finance Becomes More Popular Across Industries

Microsoft Mesh is a new mixed-reality platform powered by Azure that enables people in different locations to meet and collaborate as digital representations of themselves in holographic experiences across a variety of devices. To demonstrate the shared experience, Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman appeared at the company’s Ignite digital conference this week via holoportation, and was joined by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté, filmmaker James Cameron and Niantic CEO John Hanke to discuss related initiatives. Microsoft announced two apps built on the platform — a preview version for HoloLens 2 and a new Mesh-enabled version of AltspaceVR. Continue reading Microsoft Mesh Aims to Bring VR/AR Devices, Users Together

CES 2021 was the first-ever all-digital version of the annual confab produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). This year’s show featured nearly 2,000 companies and more than 100 hours of conference programming. Despite its new virtual format, CES offered compelling keynote addresses by top executives from major companies such as AMD, Best Buy, General Motors, Microsoft, Verizon and Walmart who discussed plans for new products, services and business models, in addition to an array of changes underway designed to address a world facing a pandemic. Continue reading CES: Keynotes Address 5G, AI, Robotics, Pandemic, Security