Yelp is introducing more than 20 new updates to improve the experience for community members and business owners. Included are AI-powered summaries that make it easier to find businesses, an updated Yelp Elite badge for reviewers who are passionate about specific subjects, and a new visual home feed and search experience geared toward discovery. For those seeking services, the new “Request a Quote” and “Projects” features are available. Artificial intelligence will also power market and competitive insights for business owners, while AI-powered smart budgets provide recommendations to optimize ad spend, “helping local businesses grow.” Continue reading Yelp Adds 20 Features Plus AI to Help Users and Businesses

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a computer vision system that combines image recognition and image generation technology into one training model instead of two. The result, MAGE (short for MAsked Generative Encoder) holds promise for a wide variety of use cases and is expected to reduce costs through unified training, according to the team. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first model that achieves close to state-of-the-art results for both tasks using the same data and training paradigm,” the researchers said. Continue reading MAGE AI Unifies Generative and Recognition Image Training

Mozilla has bundled two premium security products into a subscription package. Firefox Relay and Mozilla VPN are available together for $6.99 with an annual subscription. With the holiday sales season in full swing, retailers are bracing for hacker attacks and phishing schemes, an angle Mozilla is leveraging with its push. Axios Codebook says “the ongoing economic downturn is prompting more shoppers to look for online discount codes and more hackers to trick these consumers with phony deals.” Firefox Relay protects identities by hiding users real email addresses, while Mozilla VPN is a virtual private network service. Continue reading Mozilla Sets Discount Privacy Bundle: VPN Plus Firefox Relay

At its Adobe MAX show in Los Angeles this week, the company debuted a preview of Photoshop for iPad, stating plans to bring the full version to other tablets. The iPad Photoshop app is based on current code for the desktop version, and, within a few versions, will offer identical tools as the desktop version, including layers, masking and 3D. This move comes after Adobe brought Lightroom to mobile devices; at MAX, the company unveiled facial recognition, improved search and updated sharing tools for Lightroom. Continue reading Adobe Previews Photoshop for iPad and Lightroom Updates