U.S. consumers are consolidating their devices, eliminating outdated ones to make room for new ones that better serve their needs, according to the fourth annual Deloitte Connected Consumer survey. The study found that while 48 percent of consumers purchased a minimum of one new connected device this year, the average number of devices per household fell to 21 in 2023 from 25 in 2021, “when many loaded up on technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Although many consumers may be attempting to streamline their digital lives, they remain very interested in virtual experiences and tech innovation. Continue reading Deloitte: Consumer Views of Connected Devices Are Changing

Microsoft says it will assume legal responsibility for commercial customers who get sued for copyright infringement as a result of the company’s AI Copilot product services. A new initiative called the Copilot Copyright Commitment is designed to provide peace of mind to Microsoft business users as more copyright holders challenge the handling of protected works by the companies building AI models. “If a third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, we will defend the customer” and pay any resulting fees, including settlements, Microsoft says. Continue reading Microsoft Copilot AI Customers Shielded from Legal Exposure

Walmart is putting generative AI in the hands of roughly 50,000 non-store U.S. employees who will have access to My Assistant, an LLM trained on information. From speeding the drafting process to serving as a creative partner and summarizing documents, “My Assistant has the potential to change how our associates work and solve problems,” Walmart said, emphasizing the launch goes beyond productivity gains. “We believe the key to unlocking transformation lies in the creativity and innovation of our associates. Ideally, this technology will free them from monotonous, repetitive tasks, allowing more time and focus for improving the customer/member experience.”  Continue reading Walmart Is ‘Empowering’ 50,000 U.S. Associates with GenAI

Sony has introduced two new cameras in its 7C series of compact full-frame interchangeable lens cameras for photographers and videographers. The new Alpha 7C R model has a 61-megapixel high-resolution sensor. The second-generation Alpha 7C II is equipped with a full-frame sensor for 33 effective MP. Both are compact and lightweight (approximately 18 ounces), combining quality and portability for stills and clips. “As the demand for sending and sharing captured content on social media networks has increased, more creators are looking for a combination of compact size and high imaging performance in mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras,” Sony says. Continue reading Sony Showcases New Alpha 7C Series Cameras at IFA 2023

Samsung and LG have entered into a smart home pact that enables each firm’s large home appliances to be controlled by the other’s app. This collaboration sprang from the Home Connectivity Alliance, of which Samsung was a founding member in late 2021. As a result, LG’s ThinQ app will indicate when the door has been left open on a Samsung Family Hub smart fridge. Likewise, Samsung’s SmartThings app can instruct your LG dishwasher to turn on at a specific setting. Samsung was also talking-up 6G and artificial intelligence at this week’s IFA 2023 electronics trade show in Berlin. Continue reading Samsung and LG to Launch Interoperable Smart Home Apps

Seattle-area startup Irreverent Labs has shifted its focus from blockchain-based video games and NFTs to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it wants to build foundation models for text-to-video generation and related content creation tools. Text-to-video is being explored by several companies but is still in development. Samsung Next was intrigued enough with the proposition to invest an undisclosed sum in Irreverent. While there are several apps that output cartoonish results, ambitious efforts are limited. Animations that aim for photorealism, such as Meta’s Make-a-Video and Runway’s Gen-2, can output only four or five seconds of video at a time. Continue reading Samsung Next Invests in Irreverent Labs’ Text-to-Video Tech

Google DeepMind and Google Cloud have teamed to launch what they claim is an indelible AI watermark tool, which if it works would mark an industry first. Called SynthID, the technique for identifying AI-generated images is being launched in beta. The technology embeds its digital watermark “directly into the pixels of an image, making it imperceptible to the human eye, but detectable for identification,” according to DeepMind. SynthID is being released to a limited number of Google’s Vertex AI customers using Imagen, a Google AI language model that generates photorealistic images. Continue reading Google Introduces an AI Watermark That Cannot Be Removed

Google has unveiled a spate of security enhancements to products in its Google Workspace collection including Gmail and Drive. Artificial intelligence is helping to steer some of the changes, automating specific tasks. The upgrades take a new approach, combining the idea of zero trust with the concept of data loss prevention (DLP). Under zero trust, all users, devices and components are considered untrustworthy at all times — even those within an organization’s network. These Workspace tools are in development or at various stages of testing, but Google says they will begin going live in general release later this year and into Q1 2024. Continue reading Google Is Using AI to Bring Zero Trust Security to Workspace

Amazon is using artificial intelligence to change the way viewers experience “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon Prime Video this season. Now in the second year of its 10-year NFL deal, Amazon joins Disney’s ESPN in using AI to change how people experience televised sports by parsing a variety of analytics and using machine learning to interpret 2D video into 3D for a variety of viewpoints on any play. Amazon is auto-generating highlights feeds for each game, so late arrivals can catch up. September 14 marks the debut of the new AI Prime features and the games in 1080p HDR. Continue reading Amazon Integrating AI to Modernize NFL Viewing Experience

This fall, gamers will be able to enjoy more realistic play thanks to the latest Nvidia AI neural rendering techniques in DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction. Unlike the boost Nvidia provided with DLSS 3’s Frame Generation add-on, DLSS 3.5 boosts ray tracing across the RTX GPU lineup. Nvidia’s new DLSS 3.5 release isn’t only for gamers. Ray Reconstruction is also coming to third-party 3D creator tools like Chaos Vantage and D5 Render as well as the Nvidia Omniverse line of products, providing more accurate previews, among other advantages. Continue reading Gaming Gets Boost with Nvidia DLSS 3.5 AI Neural Rendering

Nvidia announced Q2 revenue of $13.51 billion, a 101 percent year-over-year increase that sets a new company record. The data center division — which accounts for the majority of AI chip sales — also established a new benchmark: $10.32 billion in Q2, a 171 percent leap over the prior fiscal Q2. Nvidia projects that revenue for the current quarter will hit $16 billion — about $3.5 billion above analysts’ expectations. Nvidia chips power OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT and other generative AI and cloud computing apps from companies including Amazon, Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and VMWare. Continue reading Demand for AI Chips Drives Nvidia to Revenue Record in Q2

VMware and Nvidia have joined forces on “VMware Private AI Foundation with Nvidia,” a fully-integrated solution designed to bring generative AI training and deployment to enterprise clients running on VMware’s hybrid cloud infrastructure. The full-stack product will provide software, compute power and everything needed to fine-tune large language models using proprietary data. “Together with Nvidia, we’ll empower enterprises to run their generative AI workloads adjacent to their data with confidence while addressing their corporate data privacy, security and control concerns,” said VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram. Continue reading VMware and Nvidia Are Bringing Generative AI to Enterprises

Meta Platforms is releasing SeamlessM4T, the world’s “first all-in-one multilingual multimodal AI translation and transcription model,” according to the company. SeamlessM4T can perform speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, text-to-speech, and text-to-text translations for up to 100 languages, depending on the task. “Our single model provides on-demand translations that enable people who speak different languages to communicate more effectively,” Meta claims, adding that SeamlessM4T “implicitly recognizes the source languages without the need for a separate language identification model.” Continue reading Meta’s Multimodal AI Model Translates Nearly 100 Languages

Salesforce suggests “the retail industry is again on the precipice of major disruption” based on consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, which is being used to change shopping habits and inform purchases through things like personalization, browsing suggestions and recommendations based on past habits and visualizations. Other popular use cases include AI-generated marketing assets and customer service agents. Based on a study conducted in May and June of this year involving 2,400 shoppers and 1,125 retail decision makers, Salesforce notes that one in six shoppers, or 17 percent, have already used generative AI for “purchase inspiration.” Continue reading Salesforce: 17 Percent of Shoppers Have Used Generative AI

YouTube is developing a plan for responsible AI that includes creating a framework to compensate recording artists and copyright holders for machine-generated music. YouTube’s Music AI Incubator — with support from early partner Universal Music Group — aims to help singers, songwriters, musicians and producers sort out issues like compensation and intellectual property protections, and work with trade groups and government officials on means of enforcement. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says creators “have embraced AI to streamline and boost their creative processes,” with YouTube logging “more than 1.7 billion views of videos related to AI tools” this year. Continue reading YouTube Launches Music AI Incubator with UMG as Partner