Katonic.ai, an Australian company leveraging machine learning operations (MLOps), announced that it raised over US$1.6m in a pre-series A funding round led by Artesian, an Asia-Pacific-based venture capitalist. The funding was also supported by Boab AI, an entrepreneur and investment-dedicated organization.
It is a significant milestone for Katonic.ai as a leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning operations. The pre-series A funding will be used to expand its customer base, hire newer talent, expand research and development, and add more offerings to the service portfolio. Additionally, tying up with Artesian and Boab AI will give the company a strategic advantage of global connections in the MLOPs market.
Katonic.ai was founded by Prem Naraindas, who expressed his gratitude upon receiving the fund because the two capitalists would greatly help the company to tread further on its growth trajectory. Katonic.ai’s MLOps platform is designed to break data silos and support organizations to streamline their data science workflows using AI-powered applications.
David Spencer, an Investment Analyst at Artesian, said, “Katonic’s end-to-end MLOps platform allows businesses to quickly and securely deploy AI/ML models into production, ensuring they maximise their return on investment.” He added that via the pre-series A funding, Artesian is also expanding its support to further AI developments globally.
Deep Voodoo, a deep fake startup founded by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, announced that it had raised $20M in seed funding to empower deep fake technology, cost-effective visual effects services, and synthetic media projects. The seed funding round was led by Connect Ventures, an investment partnership between leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
The funding represents the first external capital raised by Deep Voodoo. Prior to this funding round, Parker’s and Stone’s independent entertainment company, Park County, funded Deep Voodoo’s research and development entirely.
Michael Blank of Connect Ventures mentioned that Deep Voodoo had developed a synthetic media technology platform to use AI technology to support production faster and cost-effectively than existing visual effects technology. Connect Ventures is thrilled to lead the funding round, which can provide access to CAA and NEA’s resources and relationships. With the Connect Ventures funding, Deep Voodoo has begun to offer its bests face-swapping visual effects to artists, producers, and creators around the world.
Deep Voodoo began building the world’s leading exclusive deep fake technology in early 2020. The founders, Parker and Stone, assembled a team of the world’s leading deep fake artists for a film they had developed. But due to COVID-19, the film was suspended, and they quickly turned to building the best in class deep fake tools today.
EdTech giant upGrad invested a considerable sum, ₹30cr, in its AI-as-a-Service platform TuringMinds. upGrad founded TuringMinds last year to offer corporate training and upskilling in artificial intelligence and machine learning, AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS), and HR solutions for businesses.
As per upGrad, TuringMinds will enable over 50 prototypes of AI-based products and services each year, including 8/10 portals, within the next eight months. Prof Anuradha Sharma, President of TuringMinds, said, “TuringMinds specialises in taking an idea, quickly building prototypes and accelerators (Apps), testing them with the industry, and picking the cherries among them.”
Currently, TuringMinds operates with over 15 facilities spread across India, USA, Europe, the UK, and the Middle East; with over 250 product engineers. Dr. Dakshinamurthy V Kolluru, the CEO of TuringMinds, said that the company has always had an industry-centric DNA and seeks for opportunities to leverage its expertise.
upGrad also invested heavily in Harappa Education in July this year. The edtech company focuses on developing its LifeLongLearning suite and hiring more doctorate holders to enhance its full-fledged marketable products.
Okta, an authentication service provider, witnessed a major source code theft in the third GitHub breach of the year, compromising Okta’s Workforce Identity Cloud repositories hosted on GitHub.
As per an email notification by Okta, GitHub notified the company of anonymous and suspicious activity in its source code repositories in early December, wherein anonymous actors duplicated some repositories containing Okta’s source code. However, no infrastructural or customer data was reportedly affected.
Nevertheless, Okta source code theft can potentially impact the organization in two ways. It can expose how the organization works internally on software products and web-based platforms. Additionally, it can inadvertently leak passwords or other confidential information within the source code, which Toyota also witnessed in October 2022.
After being notified, Okta restricted its GitHub access and suspended all sorts of integrations with third-party applications. The authorities notified that no customer action or service would be terminated–they are operational and secure.
Okta wrote, “We have taken steps to ensure that this code cannot be used to access company or customer environments.” The company is, unfortunately, an attractive target for source code theft, given its access management products and services with a solid consumer base of over 17,000 people. In fact, there is a phishing campaign called Oktapus, which intends threat actors to try compromising Okta credentials and 2FA (two-factor authentication) code.
Okta has also suffered other cyber attacks in 2022. In January, it was targeted by the Lapsus$ extortion group, compromising over 2.5% of Okta customers. Later in September, the company suffered a break of Auth0 code repositories.
DarwinAI, a company that transforms quality inspection through AI, announced a $6M seed funding round led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund along with new and existing investors.
Located in Ontario, Canada, DarwinAI is using AI to transform the $75B global PCB industry. The company focuses on changing the electronics manufacturing industry by empowering Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) production efficiency through AI. PCBs are embedded in everything from microwaves to cameras and are difficult to inspect due to their different board sizes and complicated geometrics. Also, there’s a requirement for qualified workers to inspect PCBs, which takes a lot of work. Therefore, DarwinAI leverages AI technology to solve such issues.
Thomas Park, the Lead Partner of Deep Tech Venture Fund at BDC Capital, mentioned that he is thrilled to lead the seed funding round. He is also proud of the tremendous Canadian company (DarwinAI) led by a top-tier AI technical and research team that has commercialized its technology in a formidable manner.
Visual inspection powered by AI and the growing need for manufacturers to digitalize their production processes are the two key drivers of the DarwinAI company. Digitalization is a part of DarwinAI’s plan and its VQI product. The seed funding will allow the company to make the system more capable of mass-market deployment and enhance hardware production, as DarwinAI aims to serve more customers in 2023.
Quora, a social question-and-answering website, has launched another AI platform called Poe. Poe (Platform Open for Exploration) will enable users to indulge in proper back-and-forth conversations and receive answers instantly. The service is currently available only for iOS users.
Poe functions like a standard text messaging application for AI–users text and talk with AI chat interfaces, somewhat like ChatGPT. The fundamental difference is that Poe is not designed to cater to technical or knowledgeable question-answering, like poetry, coding, etc. It has been designed for flowy conversations and standard chit-chat so that the parent platform remains out of hot water in case the AI outputs controversial answers, like that in ChatGPT’s case.
To chat with Poe, users can use key phrases like “writing help,” “problem-solving,” “nature,” etc. The idea is to make ordinary people familiar with language models and how they work.
As per a spokesperson, Quora launched Poe after over 12 years of research and experience building consumer internet products. They added, “We believe much of what we’ve learned can be applied to this new domain where people are interfacing with large language models.”
The project is yet in its infancy, and Quora is focusing on its scalability and feedback from users who tested the beta version of Poe.
Google hosted its 8th annual Google For India 2022 event on 19th December in New Delhi. The event was attended by Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, and Ashwini Vaishnav, Union Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India. Both talked about Google’s progress in building AI-enabled and India’s first innovations at the event. From breaking down language barriers to assisting millions of people to access data more naturally to keep them safe at every step, these innovations highlight Google’s commitment to making a digital India into reality. This article covers the important announcements made at the Google For India 2022 event to empower AI technology in its products used in India.
Introducing more natural ways to search
Today, search has moved beyond typing a text, and people are searching for information on the internet with the help of voice assistants and cameras to learn more about the world around them. But in the case of exploring advanced technologies information, you need to interact with it to get a complete understanding, just like you do in the real world. Therefore, to help people explore advanced technologies, Google has announced to focus on building unique search experiences that encourage people to interact with technology and explore information in the Google for India 2022 event.
Search and explore visually
You can often not describe what you are searching for on the web. Google helps you to explore search with your camera or images using Google Lens. Indians are already using Google Lens every month more than any other country worldwide.
To make the visual search even more natural, Google introduced Multisearch. Multisearch is a milestone in visual search that helps people to search with images and texts simultaneously. You need to open the camera in the Google app to take a picture or use an image and then add words to your search. Multisearch is currently available in the English language in India. Google announced in the Google for India 2022 event that Multisearch will be available in Hindi and other Indian languages in the following year.
Besides image searches, Google also talked about video searches at the event. Videos are a rich source of visual information, but finding something within a video requires time. With the search-in video feature, Google will help you quickly find anything you want within a video by entering a term beneath it. In the Google for India 2022 event, Google announced the implementation of a search-in video service in India to search for specific information within videos.
More natural search experience in Indian languages
Searching for information in your native language sounds more natural than searching for it in any formal language. Therefore, Google has announced making search pages bilingual for people who use many languages to search and explore information in the Google For India 2022 event. With advanced machine learning-based translation models and cross-language search technology, Google will serve you high-quality and relevant content in their local language, along with English results they wish to view. This type of innovation will be launched in India for the first time. Google has already started working on the Hindi language and will expand to other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali in the coming year.
Speech recognition technology for Hinglish speakers
Google is addressing India’s dynamic language needs regarding voice. Voice-based technologies have shown a transformational impact in India, which helped people find information by speaking in their language. Google wants to help more people, especially Indians, ask questions in search engines naturally in their voice. Therefore, it announced a new speech recognition model, which can understand people speaking in Hinglish at the Google for India 2022 Event. Google will lead this innovation using a new neural network-inspired speech recognition model that considers the user’s accent, surrounding sound, contexts, and speaking styles.
Help people with non-standard speech
Mostly, when people speak, it is not always necessary that they will be heard and understood. More than 250 billion people globally do not have standard speech or find it hard to communicate with others. Therefore, to solve this problem, speech recognition innovations are made. With years of research, Google has invented the Project Relate app, which is trained to identify unique speech patterns in non-standard speech. Google has been using Project Relate with English language users in India. It announced expanding the app to Hindi users in early 2023 at Google for India 2022 Event.
Easy access to verified official documents from Digilocker on the user’s android phone
Many people store multiple images of essential documents like aadhaar cards, PAN cards, and driver’s licenses on their phones. They often use these images regularly to fill out online passport applications, sign up for citizen benefits schemes, and more. Google announced a collaboration with the National eGovernance Divison (NeGD) to allow people to access their authentic documents directly from the Files by Google app on Android at the Google for India 2022 Event.
This functionality of Google is built on privacy and security, where documents stored in Files by Google will be in an isolated environment on the user’s device, and they can access using a unique lock screen authentication.
Google implements a unique AI model to scan and identify essential documents on a user’s phone and then leverages OCR technology and machine learning models to identify relevant texts and gather this information into a quick and simple view. According to Google, all these models run entirely offline and cannot be accessed by anyone, including Google.
Leveraging deep learning to improve fraud detection in Google Pay
Since Google Pay has completed five years in India, enhancing the extensive impact of digital payments for millions of people who do online transactions is challenging. As Google continues to find ways to streamline paying online, safety continues to strengthen those ways.
Google uses advanced methods in its safety engine to analyze aggregated transaction patterns of millions of users related to a graph of a billion nodes. This method helps identify fraudulent behavior and then uses its intelligent language engine of Google to flash the warning and notify the user in their preferred language. Occasionally, Google generates a quick vibration to get the user’s attention.
Google announced Google pay’s new feature at the Google For India 2022 Event for accessing users’ transaction history in simple language. With the new feature, you can ask Google pay queries in a natural language like ‘Show me how much I spent on coffee last week.’
Collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science on ‘Project Vani’
Google is working on its vision to provide an exclusive internet experience to every user in their choice of language via text or voice. As a part of this vision, Google has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Science on ‘Project Vani’ to collect and compose open-source speech data from the 733 districts of India and made it available through the Government of India’s Bhashini project.
Collaboration with the Government of Telangana to deliver India’s vision of Digital Agriculture
Google supports partnerships to empower AI’s impact on agriculture and share the perks of AI technology across the country. Google is collaborating with the Government of Telangana as it explores AI-based solutions for agriculture innovation for six million farmers in the state. Google is also partnering with Cropin, a global agricultural ecosystem intelligence provider, to improve applications to track land use and bring digital services to farmers.
Collaboration with IIT Madras with a grant of $1 million to a multidisciplinary center for responsible AI
Since India’s digital ecosystem increasingly adopts and uses AI, Google is committed to sharing the best practices it developed in 2018 when Google began campaigning for responsible AI. To build a foundation of interpretability, fairness, privacy, and security, Google supports establishing the multidisciplinary center for Responsible AI through the $1 million fund granted to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The center for responsible AI is a first of its kind in India that aims to bring together legal experts, sociologists, technologists, and policymakers from academia, government, and industry to study all the aspects of responsible AI.
The chairman of Ram investment, Sheikh Rashid Bin Ahmed AI Maktoum, has collaborated with Europe’s AI venture studio and ecosystem, Merantixto, to build an AI city in Dubai.
AI city will be a global hub powered by smart city infrastructure aimed to develop, implement and scale impactful AI solutions. It will connect AI research institutions, universities, and talent with leading startups, corporations, and investors. The project will work closely with universities to attract and encourage talent.
With the AI city, a regulatory sandbox environment can be created to host world-leading computing infrastructures and data centers to enable the testing of wide-scale revolutionary and safety-critical AI concepts. The AI city will host an innovation lab, research centers, and co-working communities to connect and collaborate. It will also be open to the public to raise awareness and show the impact of AI.
Sheikh Rashid Bin Ahmed AI Maktoum mentioned that the AI city would catalyze new products and solutions for global issues developed in Dubai. It will also be a great place to bring AI closer to society. With AI city, AI can be more accessible, and people will be more aware of AI innovations and projects.
The Ministry of Culture and Sports, Spain, has decided to provide 8 million euros for developing video games and metaverse experiences on Tuesday. The 8 million euro fund is a part of the Spanish Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan, which provides funds to incubate projects in the metaverse and video games.
The funds will be delivered as a yearly or multi-year grant to companies seeking modernization and digitalization of all aspects of the Spanish economy. Besides Spain, other countries like South Korea have already provided funds for metaverse investments.
Miquel Iceta, Minister of Cultural and Sports, Spain, stated that the video game industry had been essential in transforming the productive Spanish model. The funding will promote Spain’s projects in small and medium-sized enterprises and self-employed workers.
As per the Ministry, video games and metaverse experiences will now be considered cultural creations in Spain. The National Library of Spain will preserve all the video game and metaverse experiences as Spanish heritage, which can be used for future generations.
Since video games are the most popular audiovisual entertainment option in Spain, the Ministry wants to put Spain in a place where it can compete with other nations in video games and export its games.
Mahindra has unveiled the metaverse platform for Mahindra’s all-electric XUV400 in the virtual world, XUV400verse, powered by Metadome.ai.
The platform will serve as a universe that combines the brand’s virtual spaces to provide a unique customer experience with photorealistic graphics. The XUV400verse will allow Mahindra enthusiasts and customers to socialize and have an immersive product interaction.
The virtual showroom features an LED wall showcasing spatial sound interactive avatars, a futuristic design with guided and free-roam journeys, and zones with brand-led merchandise and accessories.
Visitors in the XUV400verse can create their own avatars and also invite their family and friends for a shared experience. Users can also engage with a realistic 3D car configurator, which enables real-time customization, switching colors, and exploring the SUV’s features.
The XUV400verse also hosts a unique virtual test drive with several modes and camera views, where the user may learn about the salient features of the SUV. The environment also has brand billboards and cinematics.
