Amazon Web Services is introducing Amazon Q, an AI chatbot geared toward enterprise clients who can customize it to increase productivity for their specific business needs. AWS also announced that it has updated its homegrown Graviton4 chips for a 30 percent performance boost. AWS confirmed it will be the first Big Tech firm to deploy the latest version of Nvidia’s Grace Hopper Superchip AI accelerator, and additionally will become a data center host for Nvidia’s DGX Cloud service. The announcements were disclosed at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Continue reading Amazon Unveils Productivity Chatbot, Gets Nvidia Superchip

YouTube is following in Netflix’s footsteps as the latest streamer to expand into games. YouTube Premium subscribers on mobile and desktops will be able to access a suite of games it has branded “Playables.” A total of 37 mini-games can be found using the Explore tab for those who opt-in. Titles include “Angry Birds Showdown,” “Daily Solitaire,” “Brain Out,” and “Daily Crossword.” The streaming games don’t need to be downloaded or installed, but can be played directly from YouTube’s servers. YouTube says the games will initially be available through March 28, making the effort seem somewhat experimental. Continue reading YouTube Experiments with Streaming Video Game Playables

Amazon’s new Thin Client is a new $195 device that allows enterprise users to connect to virtual desktop environments, such as Amazon WorkSpaces, using the Internet and a box as compact as the Fire TV Cube. In fact, the Thin Client leverages Fire TV Cube hardware, allowing Amazon to tap existing expertise from the e-retail giant’s streaming media player division. However, Thin Client “is not for spending time watching Thursday Night Football, or bingeing ‘Invincible,’” but aims to convenience workers while reducing technology costs and enhancing security for enterprise, the company says. Continue reading Amazon Thin Client Connects Employees to Virtual Desktops

Nvidia logged another record quarter, with Q3 revenue of $18.12 billion, up 206 percent from a year ago and a 34 percent increase from Q2 that exceeded both its own and analyst projections. The surge, attributed to increasing demand for the chips that drive artificial intelligence, logged primarily under Nvidia’s data center results a record $14.51 billion, up 279 percent from the prior year and 41 percent from Q2. Profits swelled to $9.2 billion, a stunning 1,259 percent increase from 2022’s $680 million. The results for Nvidia’s Q3 were for the three-month period ending October 31. Continue reading Nvidia Sales Surge as Rivals Circle and China Sanctions Loom

Microsoft is previewing a new cloud-based Windows App that lets users securely stream Windows remotely using Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Microsoft Dev Box, Remote Desktop Services or remote PCs. The new Windows App also works with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, and web browsers. “When using a web browser on a desktop or laptop, you can connect without having to download and install any software,” Microsoft explains. Smartphones and tablets are also supported, but at the moment the preview does not offer dedicated Android support. Continue reading New Windows App Allows Remote Workflow Using the Cloud

Rumors were running rampant over the weekend as an unanticipated executive shuffle played out at OpenAI. It began on Friday when CEO Sam Altman was pushed out by the OpenAI board. President and co-founder Greg Brockman quickly resigned in solidarity, followed by several top researchers. Reports circulated the following day that investors were pressuring the board into reconsidering its decision, but by Sunday evening, OpenAI announced that former Twitch leader Emmett Shear would serve as the new interim chief. Shortly after, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Altman, Brockman and other OpenAI employees would join Microsoft to lead an advanced AI research unit. Continue reading Sam Altman Joins Microsoft After Abruptly Ousted by OpenAI

Microsoft Ignite 2023 was all about the transformative change of artificial intelligence, and the event was the setting for Bing Chat’s debut as Bing Copilot. The company also introduced three additional Copilot offerings: Copilot for Azure, Copilot for Service and Copilot in Dynamics 365 Guides. The new Copilot Studio gained tools for connecting Copilots in Microsoft 365 apps — including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the Edge browser and Windows — to third-party data. In addition, the company showcased software for client-configured chatbots, and introduced its first custom designed AI processor, the Maia 100 chip. Continue reading Microsoft Rebrands Bing as Copilot, Debuts First Custom AI

Microsoft’s Xbox wants to help game developers harness the power of generative AI. The company has entered into a multi-year partnership with Inworld AI to build automation tools for creating game dialogue and narrative tools at scale. Inworld has expertise in working with generative AI models for character development while Microsoft will contribute cloud solutions including Azure OpenAI Service and the technical insights of Microsoft Research on the future of play. The Xbox division will oversee the initiative as part of its ongoing effort to bring responsible creator tools to its developers. Continue reading Microsoft’s Xbox Partners with Inworld AI on Game Dev Tools

Qualcomm has debuted a new flagship platform, the Snapdragon X Elite series. Built for artificial intelligence and capable of running generative models with over 13 billion parameters, Qualcomm claims it offers “4.5 times faster AI processing power than competitors.” Described as “the most powerful computing processor it has ever created for the PC,” Qualcomm says the chipset is also one of the most efficient, “with up to multiple days of battery life.” Leading OEMs are expected to begin shipping models with the new processors in mid-2024. Continue reading Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon X Elite Series, Created for AI

Microsoft has launched Radius, a language-agnostic collaboration app for creating and running cloud-native applications. Radius sprang from the Microsoft Azure Incubations team, whose projects include the development app Dapr, event-driven autoscaling solution KEDA, and the Copacetic security tool. Dapr and KEDA are among the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects. Microsoft submitted Copacetic to CNCF and plans to submit Radius, which standardizes deployment and automates resource provisioning through features like Recipes and Connections. Continue reading Microsoft’s Radius App is Open Source and Cloud Agnostic

Earlier this year, Google introduced support for passkeys as part of a larger initiative to improve security and eventually eliminate the need for passwords. Since the launch, consumers have begun using passkeys across Google apps such as Search, YouTube and Maps. As the next step in establishing “a simpler and more secure way to sign into your accounts online,” and following positive feedback from early users, the company is offering passkeys as the default option across personal accounts. When signing into accounts, users will receive prompts for creating passkeys. Additionally, Google account settings will feature a toggle that reads “skip password when possible.” Continue reading Google Makes Passkeys Default Option on Personal Accounts

Startup Reka AI is releasing in preview its first artificial intelligence assistant, Yasa-1. The multimodal AI is described as “a language assistant with visual and auditory sensors.” The year-old company says it “trained Yasa-1 from scratch,” including pretraining foundation models “from ground zero,” then aligning them and optimizing to its training and server infrastructures. “Yasa-1 is not just a text assistant, it also understands images, short videos and audio (yes, sounds too),” said Reka AI co-founder and Chief Scientist Yi Tay. Yasa-1 is available via Reka’s APIs and as docker containers for on-site or virtual private cloud deployment. Continue reading Yasa-1: Startup Reka Launches New AI Multimodal Assistant

Dell Technologies is expanding its Generative AI Solutions portfolio to help enterprise customers add GenAI to their workflow. The expansion includes support for advanced infrastructure and collaborative data solutions that optimize and help secure intelligence gathering and utilization. Dell takes a “validated design” approach to optimization and acceleration, testing different hardware configurations designed to fit the needs of various use cases. Dell has partnered with Nvidia for validated GenAI design for model customization, and with Starburst on data lakehouse solutions that tap multi-cloud data for AI end-use. Continue reading Dell Partnering with Nvidia and Starburst for GenAI Solutions

Zoom Communications kicked off its Zoomtopia 2023 confab with innovations underpinned by artificial intelligence. It’s showpiece, Zoom Docs, is a collaboration tool built from the ground up around AI. The modular workspace integrates with Zoom and third-party apps as a way to streamline teamwork, manage projects and stay organized. Scheduled for general release in 2024, Zoom Docs combines traditional document functionality with AI assists for things like adding content generated from Zoom Meetings to docs, summarization and search. Zoom Docs leverages the power of the previously announced Zoom AI Companion, a GenAI assistant that just got whiteboard capability. Continue reading Zoom Reveals Upcoming Collaboration Tools Powered by AI

Microsoft would like to make OneDrive “the center of your files experience in Microsoft 365.” Sixteen years after the cloud-based storage platform was launched, it “hosts trillions of files, with nearly 2 billion more files added every day,” the company says. The result is OneDrive source files sprawling across the entire Windows ecosystem — extending to SharePoint libraries, traveling as attachments and exchanged through Teams chats. Now Microsoft is adding AI Copilot integration and AI and, overall, making it easier to find things in what it calls the next generation of OneDrive. Continue reading OneDrive 3.0 Aspires to Become Main Windows File Manager