After seeing its stock plunge more than 60 percent this year, Meta Platforms posted another decline, with Q3 revenue falling 4 percent, to $27.7 billion, from $29 billion for the same period last year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that on a constant currency basis “total revenue grew slightly this quarter,” adding that “we’re still behind where I think we should be, but we believe that we will return to healthier revenue growth trends next year,” though just in case “we’re planning our budget somewhat more conservatively.” Meanwhile, Facebook’s number of daily active users hit 1.98 billion, a 3 percent gain year-over-year. Continue reading Meta Revenue Falls Despite Facebook Attracting More Users

Celebrity deepfakes springing up on the web, and even in advertising, are raising concerns. The technology is advancing in sophistication and commercial interest. Apple was just granted rights by the U.S. Patent Office to “face image generation with pose and expression control” from reference images. This month, video of President Biden was manipulated into a performance of the viral children’s tune “Baby Shark,” while a digital doppelganger for Elon Musk hawked investment opportunities for real estate startup reAlpha Tech. Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bruce Willis are also among those artificially misappropriated for promotional use without permission. Continue reading Deepfakes Used for Entertainment, Advertising Draw Concern

Google has redesigned its Family Link experience, launched five years ago to help keep children safe online. The most popular tools — screen time limits, blocking apps and content filters — are now easier to find, and there is a central place for viewing requests and notifications. A Controls tab has been added, enabling parents to set screen time limits for individual devices or specific apps, dial-in content restrictions and manage data permissions. With families in mind, Google is also adding new AI-powered features to Google TV, such as parent-controlled watchlists. Continue reading Google Makes Family Link and Google TV More Child-Friendly

The world is experiencing a skilled labor shortage, and robots are stepping in to fill the void. Last year, some 500,000 industrial robots were added to the global workforce, bringing the total figure to about 3.5 million, according to a new report by the International Federation of Robotics trade group, which says the number of robots added in 2021 exceeds by 22 percent a record set in 2018. The pattern indicates the industrial robotics market will grow from $15.7 billion in 2022 to $30.8 billion by 2027, a CAGR of 14.3 percent, according to the report. Continue reading Robot Renaissance Triggers a Surge in Automaton Workforce

The Biden administration is acting to limit China’s rapid military progress by banning shipments of advanced chips and the production tools needed to make them. This is in response to signs that China is using AI and supercomputing to develop hypersonic weapons and systems that may be able to crack highly encrypted messaging. The new rules, which extend to foreign companies using relevant U.S. technology, have already begun taking effect. But companies including Intel, Samsung, TSMC and SK Hynix have reportedly received limited exemptions allowing them to continue shipping to some factories there. Continue reading U.S. Aims to Slow China Tech Progress with Chip Restrictions

Microsoft put the emphasis on security at Ignite 2022, launching Defender for DevOps and Defender Cloud Security Posture Management in public preview. The two offerings protect software development with runtime security across multicloud and multiple-pipeline environments. The company also touted improved protection tools for Windows and Office, beefing-up anti-ransomware capabilities for Microsoft 365 Defender, which now automatically repels attacks immediately on detection. To combat increasingly pervasive conditions like “tool sprawl” and “alert fatigue,” Microsoft combined six product lines into a single security portfolio. Continue reading New Microsoft Security Suite Focuses on Cloud, Ransomware

Microsoft announced it is integrating OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 into its new Microsoft Designer app, as well as its Microsoft Edge browser and the Image Creator tool in its Bing search engine. Microsoft provides cloud computing services to OpenAI and has partnered with OpenAI in AI commercialization efforts including the Azure OpenAI Service, now in preview, and GitHub Copilot. The Designer web app can be used to create designs for posters, presentations, invitations and other graphics that can be printed and used for display or shared on social or business media. Continue reading Microsoft Integrates DALL-E 2 into Designer and Creator Apps

Intel is fine-tuning its corporate reporting as it gears up a foundry operations that will see the longtime manufacturer and designer of its own chips extend services to third-parties. The idea is to create greater separation between its concept and creation divisions. The change comes as Intel deals with a rapidly shifting global market, where demand for chips has increased in sectors like automotive and AI data centers while the PC business that has been the company’s bedrock suffered a major decline in global shipments of nearly 20 percent in Q3. Continue reading Intel to Restructure Chip Design and Manufacturing Divisions

AI image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Google’s Imagen have been generating a lot of attention recently. Now AI text-to-video generators are edging into the spotlight, with Google debuting Imagen Video on the heels of Meta AI’s Make-A-Video rollout last month. Imagen Video has been used to generate videos of up to 25-minutes at a 24 fps, 1280×768 pixel spec. Imagen Video was trained “on a combination of an internal dataset consisting of 14 million video-text pairs and 60 million image-text pairs,” resulting in some unusual functionality, according to Google Research. Continue reading Google and Meta Are Developing AI Text-to-Video Generators

Online game company and mobile app developer NetDragon Websoft has invested $40 million in Rokid, maker of 5G-friendly AR glasses for business applications. Both companies are based in China. NetDragon has been in the news this past month when it became the first company to appoint an AI as its “rotating CEO.” Following the Rokid announcement, it appears the firm may be interested in developing lifelike AI characters to inhabit its games and augment teaching and enhance its AR initiatives, though to hear NetDragon actual CEO, Liu Dejian tell it, the company can learn a lot from its new c-suite addition, Tang Yu. Continue reading Chinese Game Company Appoints AI CEO and Invests in AR

The White House has issued a “blueprint” for consumer protections with regard to artificial intelligence. Aimed at guiding federal agencies while setting the bar for future legislation, the voluntary directive offers five areas of focus — safety, algorithmic discrimination protection, data privacy, notice, human alternatives — and a section on applying the rules. “Among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public,” begins the bill, which says such tools are “too often used” to limit opportunities and prevent access to critical resources or services. Continue reading White House Creates a ‘Blueprint’ of AI Rights for Consumers

Samsung wants to dominate the global market for advanced semiconductors, unveiling plans to begin producing chips with a 2-nanometer spec in 2025 and launching into the even more advanced 1.4-nanometer market in 2027. The timeline takes the South Korean company beyond the 3-nanometer chip production it began in June. Samsung says it will more than triple production capacity in five years, positioning it to challenge Taiwan’s TSMC in terms of volume, and potentially surpass it in the high-end market for “smart chips.” TSMC said it will mass produce 3nm chips this year and start 2nm production by 2025. Continue reading Samsung 5-Year Plan Speeds Advanced-Chipmaking Timeline

Adobe is taking artificial intelligence to the mass market in Photoshop Elements 2023 and Premiere Elements 2023. The new releases incorporate Adobe Sensei AI-powered features to enable intuitive, streamlined workflows and Step-by-step Guided Edits. The a la carte Elements line has been called “affordable” and “casual.” Adobe describes the overall package as “simple for users at any skill level,” leaving the door wide open for sophisticated features. Adobe says the smaller, lighter Elements 2023 packages offer improved speed and stability, installing 35 percent quicker, with a 50 percent baseline launch-time improvement.  Continue reading Adobe Elements Touts Consumer AI in Photoshop, Premiere

Google is the latest tech giant to be swayed by the influence of TikTok and Instagram as it reimagines a more visual, discovery-centric type of search. That was major media’s takeaway from the third annual Google Search On event, which continued the trend of trying to find more intuitive ways to search, namely visually and vocally, by snapping a photo or asking your phone a question. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, the Alphabet company says it is “going far beyond the search box to create search experiences that work more like our minds.” Continue reading Google Search Reinvention Focuses on Visuals and Discovery

A Kindle that lets you annotate text, a “no-contact” sleep tracker and a refresh on the Fire TV Cube were among the new products Amazon showcased at its annual fall hardware event this week. Updates for Echo smart speakers, an expanded Ring camera inventory and updates to its Eero Wi-Fi extender line were also in the spotlight. Home devices that enable “a silent infrastructure of ambient intelligence to do just about anything” was the through line, according to Wired, with news ranging from pet detection for Astro the robot to a feature called Alexa Shop the Look. Continue reading Amazon Promotes Device Updates at Its Fall Hardware Event