Seek AI, a software development and IT services company, disclosed its pre-seed and seed funding amounting to US$7.5m for its generative AI platform. Guo’s Conviction Partners led the investment rounds that saw participation from many notable industry leaders like Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia, DeepMind Co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, NJP Ventures, and dbt Labs CEO Tristan Handy.
Seek AI leverages itself as an intelligent data layer that uses generative AI like OpenAI’s DALL-E and GPT-3. Based on these models, Seek AI enables code generation for database querying.
Users can access and query data using the company’s natural language interface in a question-and-answer format, which helps free up data teams from tedious coding work and speed up business operations. The interface is accessible via email, Slack, text, and several CRM programs.
Seek AI was founded in September 2021 by Sarah Nagy. She says, “Our vision has been to automate mundane but critical processes and workflows so that data stakeholders can get the data they need fast, and data teams can focus more on strategic efforts.”
With the recent Seek AI pre-seed and seed funding, the company will also tie up with more partners to reduce the complexities of automation and find more efficient use cases of applied AI. The company also plans to utilize the extra funding to make data generally accessible to everyone with its products and NLP services.
A leading tech-marketing agency, Codeword, has announced a first-of-its-kind internship program, where the agency is adding two AI interns to its team of 106 people. The AI interns will be fully embedded into Codeword’s creative team.
The two interns named, Aiden and Aiko, created their own visual presentation. Aiko will work on Codeword’s design team and report to Senior Art Director Emilio Ramos.
Aiden will work with the agency’s editorial team and report to Senior Editor Terrence Doyle. Both interns will receive internal creative assignments, will share their experiences on the company’s blog and social media, and will receive regular performance evaluations over the course of a three-month internship.
The interns are not expected to work on client-facing work. However, they may be asked to perform the kind of creative work that AI is particularly good at handling.
For example, generating large volumes of rough concept thumbnails for news, trend research, and mood boards or voice and tone analysis for the editorial team. Considering the typical hourly intern salary, Codeword will donate the equivalent to the Grace Hopper Celebration.
Banaras Hindu University’s Department of Computer Science has introduced a six-month BHU free AI certification program with specialized training. Under this program, BHU will allocate 100 seats, and admissions will be based on performance on an entrance exam.
The program’s registration period will start on January 12 and ends on January 25, while the academic session begins on February 1 and ends in July. Interested candidates can register for the program at the official website.
Candidates can take the entrance exam if they have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or a related field. The program has no course fees, and everyone who completes the course will receive a certificate and be eligible to work as data scientists and applied scientists in the field.
The BHU free AI certification program will cover many topics like big data, statistical applications, data processing, data structures and algorithms, artificial neural networks, and other related concepts.
The Department of Computer Science at BHU is backed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, to facilitate the BHU AI certification program.
Beautiful.ai, a presentation platform that allows anyone to build beautiful presentations, has announced the launch of DesignerBot, which is a generative AI designed for custom image generation and automatic presentation creation.
Using the cutting-edge AI technology from OpenAI, Beautiful.ai’s DesignerBot creates fully realized presentations based on a single text prompt, including appropriate layouts, photos, icons, text, and design.
The AI automatically creates a huge variety of content and slides for school, business, and personal use, including text, charts, lists, and icons that can be used for marketing presentations, pitch decks, sales proposals, and even abstract concepts.
Once DesignerBot has created a custom presentation, users can use Beautiful.ai’s powerful SmartSlides technology to quickly edit slides by removing or adding content and automatically adapting, resizing, and laying out the slides, all while preserving and maintaining corporate brand guidelines.
The addition of DesignerBot provides a truly automated zero-to-finish experience to Beautiful.ai’s presentation ecosystem – eliminating hours of frustrating effort to design and craft a beautiful presentation narrative
The social media giant Meta has appointed ex-Tata CLiQ CEO Vikas Purohit as India’s Director of Global Business Group. He will help the company in guiding its strategic relationships with brands and ad agencies.
Before Meta, Purohit was associated with Tata Cliq. Purohit had quit Tata CLiQ as CEO last month after spending over six years there. Purohit will report to the director and head of Ads Business for Meta in India, Arun Srinivas.
The key business teams of Meta in India, including agency teams and business solutions teams, will report to Purohit.
Besides Tata Cliq, Purohit has worked at Amazon, Reliance Brands, Aditya Birla Group, and Tommy Hilfiger. He has over 20 years of experience in senior business, sales, and marketing roles and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore.
“India’s largest agencies and businesses are playing a crucial role in the country’s expansion of the digital economy and are building inspiring business models that are surprising marketers globally,” said Srinivas.
1. Writesonic AI Writer has Released ChatSonic, a Conversational AI Chatbot
A renowned AI writing tool called Writesonic has revealed a conversational AI chatbot called ChatSonic, claiming to enhance ChatGPT’s features and surpass its mistakes. The advantage of ChatSonic is that it constantly updates factual content using Google’s Knowledge Graph. With ChatSonic, instead of writing instructions down, users may simply voice them. What’s astonishing is that the AI can also read back the created responses.
2. Personal.ai Raises $7.8 Million in Seed Funding
Leading AI startup Personal.ai has raised $7.8 million in seed funding to develop its unique personal language model. The funding will advance GGT-1 (Generative Grounded Transformer), a model that trains on personal data instead of publicly available data. Many venture capitalists like Beni VC, Village Global, Keshif Ventures, Supernode, and Good Friends back the company.
3. Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, Pune, to be Accessible on BharatVerse Metaverse
The day witnessed the signing of a memorandum of agreement between BharatVerse, India’s first metaverse platform, and Pune’s Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, making it the country’s first museum to choose the metaverse road. Users can access the metaverse experience using head-mounted devices, mobile phones, web browsers, etc.
4. Mental Health App Koko Comes Under Fire for Secretly Switching Counselors with AI Chatbot
Koko, an AI firm focused on mental health, came under fire for secretly replacing counselors with an AI chatbot for mental health support. Over 4,000 recipients were subjected to Koko’s test of GPT-3-generated AI responses without their knowledge. Co-founder Rob Morris describes it as a co-pilot strategy to see the future of health chatbots applied under professional monitoring.
5. US Club Hires ‘A Robotic Bouncer’
Sapphire, a Las Vegas, US club, has hired the world’s largest security guard—a robotic bouncer to welcome tech leaders over a weekend conference. The mechanical bouncer Mech “The Bot” Johnson is a 15-foot-tall and 8,800-pound heavy robot suit controlled by humans. The Bot, too big to fit through any door, was positioned outside the club’s entrance to delight guests waiting in line thoroughly.
6. MG Motors’ MGverse
MGverse, a virtual reality, 3D experience built on metaverse technology and made possible through a collaboration with Metadome.ai, has been announced by MG Motors. Users will be able to access the MG Pavilion, at the Auto Expo2023, from any location in the world using the MGverse. Users can also view their avatars by going to the MG expo pavilion, where they can interact with other avatars using interactive tools.
7. BrainChip in Talks with Accenture’s MD and Global CTO on AI Innovation
BrainChip, the company behind the world’s first low-power, fully digital neuromorphic AI IP, is talking with Jean-Luc Chatelain, MD and Global CTO of Accenture Applied Intelligence, on the “This is our Mission” podcast. The “This is Our Mission” podcast offers consumers, developers, analysts, technical and financial press members, and investors insight into the AI sector. On January 11, 3 p.m. PST, the podcast aired on the BrainChip website and several other podcasting apps.
MG Motors has announced the launch of MGverse, which is a Metaverse-based virtual reality, 3D experience that is being made possible in partnership with Metadome.ai.
The MGverse will enable users to experience the MG Pavilion, which will be at the Auto Expo2023, from anywhere in the world.
The MGverse comes with an integrated explorer and creator’s center, which is a virtual experience zone with an extended experience zone. The Avatar Shop and MG Arena will enable visitors to accessorize, personalize, build and even purchase vehicles in the Metaverse.
Apart from getting a real-time experience of the Auto Expo 2023 through virtual presence, users can also view their avatars by entering the MG’s expo pavilion and experiencing innovative engagement features while conversing with other avatars.
Announced earlier as a platform that will combine multiple virtual spaces, the MGverse is intended to eventually provide five different experience zones, the Explore & Creator’s Center, NFT Gallery, MG Car Club, Gaming Arena, and MG Knowledge Center.
Personal.ai, a leading AI startup, has raised $7.8 million in seed funding to work on its proprietary personal language model.
The AI startup is backed by investors such as Beni VC, Village Global, BBG Ventures, Keshif Ventures, Supernode Global, Differential Ventures, and Good Friends.
The company also has various angel investors and advisors on board, such as Kelvin Beachum of the Arizona Cardinals, Rob Granieri of Jane Street Capital, Anirudh Koul of Pinterest and Microsoft, and Bradley Taylor of Google Moonshot.
Personal.ai has developed a personal language model (PLM) called Generative Grounded Transformer (GGT-1), which, in contrast to OpenAI’s GPT-3, trains on personal data rather than public data.
Personal.ai will leverage GGT-1 to create a chat interface that uses AI to draft personal messages, retain and recall personal information, and unlock the potential of human-to-human chat capabilities.
This offering is designed to learn from every conversation and interaction, growing more efficient as users chat. The platform’s AI ensures that users never forget an important moment, fact, or experience.
Actyv.ai, a Singapore-based category creator in the enterprise SaaS has raised a sum of $12 million during a Pre-Series A funding round.
The round was led by 1Digi Ventures, Singapore, and includes an earlier tranche of $5 million from 1Digi Ventures in 2022, which will fuel global expansion, product enhancement, talent acquisition, and portfolio growth.
Actyv.ai grew considerably in FY 2022. In December 2022 alone, the total BNPL throughput was $100 million. The company provides significant value for large enterprises throughout business verticals and their allied partner ecosystem via its technology platform.
The company has partnered with over 20 leading financial institutions enabling embedded BNPL. More than 25,000 distributors and one lakh retailers have been onboarded on the platform.
Commenting on this, Raghu Subramanian said their AI-powered SaaS platform, with its embedded offerings, is driving substantial operational efficiencies and growth for the entire supply chain ecosystem. “This additional funds infusion validates our being category creators in this particular space and the conviction to augment the capabilities of our platform.”
Health Minister Dr. Sapam Ranjan has revealed a new FDA-approved ECG device, called KardiaMobile 6L, AI and Bluetooth enabled and approved by FDA. the device was revealed at Classic Grande hotel in Imphal.
Dr. Ranjan explained that many people suffer from cardiovascular diseases, and the number has increased in the region. He added that there had been situations where patients could not figure out what was wrong and died even before medical assistance could be provided.
To solve this problem, the state government took an initiative to enhance home screening of non-communicable diseases (NCD) and develop such devices under the CMHA scheme. Dr.Ranjan also said that there is a need to incorporate technology and artificial intelligence to help monitor patients away from medical help.
This is why, AliveCor developed the KardiaMobile 6L ECG device, an AI startup developing machine-learning algorithms for ECG sensors. It can be linked to a mobile phone and provides results within 30 seconds.
Munish Yadav, AliveCor’s sales and marketing director, facilitated the launch along with state mission director NHM Dr. Somorjit Ningombam.
