Consumer Technology Association president and chief executive Gary Shapiro held a conversation with the incoming Biden administration’s designated director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese. In that position, Deese will advise President-elect Joe Biden on domestic and international economic policy and coordinate the administration’s economic agenda. “Taking the vision and direction of the president and turning it into an action plan across all agencies is particularly important at times of economic crisis,” he said. Continue reading CES: Economic Council Chief Discusses Biden’s Tech Goals

We need your input! SMPTE and the Entertainment Technology Center have joined forces to investigate potential areas of standardization around Artificial Intelligence in media. We are currently surveying the industry in order to gain a better understanding of where there are the greatest needs for new standards. You can help by filling out our online survey. Feel free to answer as many or as few questions as you would like, and we invite you to forward the survey to anyone either inside or outside your organization who might be able to provide input. Continue reading Join the ETC-SMPTE Survey: Artificial Intelligence in Media

In light of the fact that 26 percent of Americans say they get news on YouTube, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey in January of 12,638 U.S. adults who consumed news on YouTube, asking about their experiences. The Pew study analyzed the news channels consumers watched and the content of videos on these channels, relying on a subset of videos published in December 2019. The study found a news environment on YouTube in which established news organizations and indie news channels “thrive side by side.”

Continue reading YouTube Users Turn to Established and Indie News Channels

Google’s Shoploop, developed in its R&D unit Area 120, is a video shopping platform for consumers to discover, evaluate and purchase products within the app. Shoploop general manager Lax Poojary explained that the experience is “more interactive than just scrolling through images, titles and descriptions on a traditional e-commerce site.” The Shoploop videos, which are under 90 seconds, currently focus on beauty products. Consumers can save products or follow product creators for additional videos. Continue reading Google’s Area 120 Debuts Shoploop Video Shopping Platform

Google’s internal incubator Area 120 debuted Keen for web and Android. Keen co-founder CJ Adams stated that the app acts as a curator for topics and is intended to be an alternative to “mindlessly” browsing feeds. A “keen,” which can be about any topic, said Adams, allows the user to collect content and share it with others. In essence, Keen is proposed as a rival to Pinterest and any other social media feed that customizes its content for individual users. Similar to Pinterest, Keen also uses a pinboard-style design. Continue reading Google’s Area 120 Releases Pinterest-Like AI-Enabled ‘Keen’

Artificial intelligence research institute OpenAI, after collecting trillions of words, debuted its first commercial product, the API. Its goal is to create the “most flexible general-purpose AI language system” in existence. Currently, the API’s skills include translating between languages, writing news stories, and answering everyday questions. The API is engaged in limited testing and, said chief executive Sam Altman, will be released broadly for use in a range of tasks, such as customer support, education and games. Continue reading OpenAI Tests Commercial Version of Its AI Language System

The Semiconductor Industry Association is lobbying for federal funding to the tune of $37 billion to subsidize a new chip factory among other efforts. The trade group’s lobbying effort is aimed at keeping the U.S. ahead of China and other countries that already benefit from government subsidies. Among the SIA’s other proposals are aid for states looking to draw in investments in the semiconductor industry and more funding in research. The coronavirus and growing tensions with China are motivating Congress to act. Continue reading Semiconductor Trade Group Seeks Major Federal Investment

Transforming 2D objects into 3D ones is a challenge that has defeated numerous artificial intelligence labs, including those at Facebook, Nvidia and startup Threedy.ai. Now, a Microsoft Research team stated it has created the first “scalable” training technique to derive 3D models from 2D data. Their technology can, furthermore, learn to generate better shapes when trained exclusively with 2D images. The Microsoft team took advantage of software that produces images from display data, as featured in industrial renderers. Continue reading Microsoft Develops Scalable 2D-to-3D Conversion Technique

Gartner just released figures on total global smartphone sales that show decreased sales in Q4 2019 despite small year-on-year increases for Apple and Xiaomi. In that quarter, consumers purchased 406.6 million new phones compared to 408.5 million in the same quarter the previous year. Samsung, the long-time leader in smartphone sales, retained the same 17.3 percent market share although it sold fewer units year-on-year. In comparison to Q4 2018, Apple sold 5 million more mobile devices in that quarter in 2019. Continue reading Gartner’s Mobile Data Shows a Mixed Bag for Phone Makers

When the Commerce Department banned U.S. manufacturers from selling chips to China’s Huawei Technologies, that company increased its own chipmaking capacity in its semiconductor company HiSilicon. According to U.S.-based Huawei executive Tim Danks, in Q4 the company shipped more than 50,000 5G base stations embedded with its chips, about 8 percent of all base stations it sold up to February this year. Danks reported that, although Huawei is ramping up HiSilicon efforts, it intends to return to U.S. technology when possible. Continue reading Huawei Increases Use of Its Own Chips in 5G Base Stations

Have you ever been curious about what Los Angeles looked like during the Ice Age, or how animals got stuck in the tar at the #TarPits? Be the first to try Tar AR at Pit 91, a special augmented reality experience running March 2-15. Participation is free for those who RSVP. Participants will receive free #TarPits Museum admission, 10 percent off at the Museum Store during the day of participation, and limited edition Ice Age Animal stickers. Plus, you’ll be helping #TarPits and the University of Southern California in important scientific research about AR. Continue reading MxR Lab: Travel Back in Time 25,000 Years For AR User Study

Researchers at Microsoft Research Asia and the Harbin Institute of Technology have come up with a new technique to use artificial intelligence to generate live video captions. In the past, technologists have used encoder-decoder models, but didn’t model the interaction between videos and comments, resulting in mainly irrelevant comments. The new technique — based on a model that iteratively learns to capture the representations of audio, video and comments — outperforms current methods, according to the research team. Continue reading Researchers Create AI Technique to Generate Video Captions

In August this year, Google’s Chrome ad blocker will expand to include video, per the new set of standards just unveiled by the Coalition for Better Ads. The Coalition based the standards on global research from 45,000 customers. Websites with video, including Google’s, will need to review their ads for compliance with the new rules. Google joined the Coalition for Better Ads two years ago and started blocking ads not compliant with Coalition standards — including those on its own websites — since February 2018. Continue reading Updated Chrome Ad Blocker Will Soon Address Video Ads

Over 50 million people worldwide use Apple’s virtual assistant Siri. Apple, focused on improving Siri’s capabilities, published research on how to improve voice trigger detection, speaker verification and language identification for multiple speakers. Apple researchers suggest that an AI model be trained for automatic speech recognition and speaker recognition. Rather than approach it as two independent tasks, the researchers proved that those tasks might actually help one another to “estimate both properties.” Continue reading Apple Researchers Improving Accuracy of Virtual Assistant

Meet Meena, Google’s new chatbot powered by a neural network. According to the tech giant, Meena was trained on 341 gigabytes of public social-media chatter (8.5 times as much data as OpenAI’s GPT-2) and can talk about anything and even make jokes. With Meena, Google hopes to have made a chatbot that feels more human, always a challenge for AI-enabled media, whether it’s a chatbot or a character in a video game. To do so, Google created the Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA) as a metric for natural conversations. Continue reading Google Debuts Chatbot with Natural Conversational Ability