Retouch4me Announced Heal OFX – AI-Powered Plugin to Retouch Skin in a Video

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July 7, 2022

The Estonia-based company Retouch4me launched a new neural network-trained plugin Heal OFX to retouch skin imperfections in a video. The video plugin is based on the technology found in standard photography retouching software. It is a suite of nine plugins that target different retouching tasks simultaneously and automate the process done manually before.

This plugin is different from other editing plugins in that it does not make the skin look fake or plastic-like. The company’s AI-powered tools provide excellent results across all photography and videography principles.

The company also provided a video demonstration of retouching skin in a video.

The tool removes skin imperfections while preserving textures and tones, which helps to produce a final image that looks realistic. Retouch4Me is pricey, but it accomplishes what it promises. PetaPixel, a photography news aggregator, recommended this plugin as the best for AI Portrait Retouching.

Although the technology for still photos was remarkable, it is evident that the company had bigger plans for its AI. Heal OFX for DaVinci Resolve transfers the fundamental effects from its picture tools to video, where retouching has traditionally been more difficult.

Oleg Sharonov, the leading developer of the project, said, “We decided to simplify the task, making the editing convenient and optimizing the work of the neural network for video. We are launching a new plugin that retouches directly in Da Vinci by pressing just one button.”

Videographers can quickly achieve natural-looking effects using Retouch4me’s Heal OFX plugin without investing a lot of time or money in the process.

DeepMind’s AI develops policy for public money distribution

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Sahil Pawar

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July 6, 2022

DeepMind's AI develops public money distribution policy

A new study by a team of researchers at UK-based AI company DeepMind suggests that AI can make better public money decisions than humans. For this purpose, DeepMind has developed more capable problem-solving systems known as artificial general intelligence.

According to the research, AI can devise methods of wealth distribution that are more popular than systems designed by people. It also shows that machine learning systems are good at delivering more open-ended social objectives, such as the goal of realizing a prosperous and fair society.

The team trained an AI system to find a popular public fund distribution policy in a four player online game.The AI learned from more than 4000 people and computer simulations . Players voted on their favorite policies for distributing public money. The AI policy won more votes from human players.

Creating a machine that delivers beneficial results humans actually want is defined as value alignment. One problem with value alignment is that human society admits a plurality of views which makes it unclear to whose preferences artificial intelligence should align. For this, the AI discovered a mechanism that redresses the initial wealth imbalance and sanctions-free riders, thereby successfully winning the majority vote.

This new approach by DeepMind researchers combines artificial intelligence with human democratic deliberation to come up with better solutions to social dilemmas, such as public money distribution.

AI Chipmaker Rebellions Raises US$22.8M Series A Expansion

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Disha Chopra

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July 6, 2022

Rebellions, a South Korean AI chipmaker, raised US$22.8M as an expansion to Series A funding led by KT, a telecommunications giant in the region. The funding round also included participation from Temasek’s Pavilion Capital, Korea Development Bank, SV Investment, Future Asset Capital, and Cacao ventures.

As per a Rebellions spokesperson, the expansion would enable mass-production of the second AI chip prototype ATOM to be used by cloud platforms and data centers.

KT aims to develop AI-powered chips like Neural Processing Units (NPUs) for data centers, self-driving vehicles, fintech services, etc. With the same vision, it is KT’s second investment in an AI chipmaker firm to accelerate its semiconductor business. It aims to expand and innovate to stand out like other semiconductor companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm.

KT Hyeon-MoKu CEO said, “AI semiconductors are one of the next big technologies. We hope that through our partnership with KT, Rebellions will become a global fabless company like NVIDIA and Qualcomm.”

Rebellions founder and CEO Sunghyun Park said, “We look forward to collaborating with KT, a leader in the cloud and Internet data center industry, and the strategic partnership will be the driving force behind Rebel’s new growth and business.”

The company plans to continue its strategic investment in startups rising from stealth in a challenging investment environment.

Huawei GLOBAL AI CHALLENGE 2022 Open for Registration

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Disha Chopra

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July 6, 2022

HUAWEI recently launched the 2022 HUAWEI GLOBAL AI CHALLENGE for students enrolled in higher education and is now open for registration. Jointly held by Huawei Consumer Cloud Service Department, the Jiangsu Association of Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), and Huawei Nanjing Research Center, the challenge aims to invite young developers with a passion for AI and intelligence.

In its interim of three years after commencement in 2019, the challenge has attracted more than 2,500 algorithm proposals from nearly 8,000 teams across 45 countries! Huawei specifically focused on the enrollment of several top universities and colleges from China, given its origin.

Wang Yue, President of Huawei Consumer Cloud Service Application Ecosystem BU, said that the company aims to inspire global campus talent in an era of “ubiquitous intelligence” to explore new AI technologies with a problem-solving approach.

Potential contest proposals were assessed by experts on the following criteria: practical value, risk assessment, technical innovation, popularity, and difficulty. They finally decided on three proposals namely, “knowledge-driven spoken dialogue”, “intelligent quality inspection of lane rendering data”, and “CTR prediction through cross-domain data from ads and news feed”.

The contest will include the preliminary and elite final stages. The preliminary stage will end on August 24. The experts will take another week for preliminary review and then announce the selected teams by September 3. Ultimately, the elite stage commences in mid-September. Seven teams shall be selected via an online competition in the preliminary stage, each of whose proposals would enter the elite final. A total of 21 teams for the three proposals will compete for the prize money of US$210,000 via an online competition and presentation.

The winner will receive US$35,000. The first and second runners-up will each receive US$15,000 and US$10,000, respectively. In addition, four teams will receive honorary mentions and US$2,500 each.

All student developers who are willing to take on new challenges are cordially invited by Huawei to present their best work to a larger audience.

IISC creates design framework to build next-generation analog computing chipset

By

Sahil Pawar

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July 6, 2022

IISC next-generation analog computing chipset

A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has created a design framework to build next-generation analog computing chipsets. These chipsets are expected to be faster and require less power than the digital chips used in most electronic devices.

The team has developed a prototype of an analog chipset, ARYABHAT-1 (Analog Reconfigurable technologY And Bias-scalable Hardware for AI Tasks), using a new design framework.

Such chipsets can be very helpful for artificial intelligence-based applications like object and speech recognition devices or those that require massive parallel computing operations at high speeds. The chipset can provide orders of magnitude of improvement in power and size. In applications not requiring precise calculations, analog computing has the potential to outperform digital computing, as the former is more energy-efficient.

However, there are technological hurdles. Unlike digital chips, the testing and co-design of analog processors are comparatively complex. They must be customized individually when transitioning to a new application or the next generation of technology. Also, their designs are expensive.

To overcome such challenges, the team has designed this new framework that enables the development of analog processors that scale like digital processors. Their chipset can be programmed and reconfigured to port the same analog modules across different applications and generations of process design.

Also, different machine learning architectures can be programmed on ARYABHAT. Similar to digital processors, it can operate robustly across a wide range of temperatures. According to researchers, the architecture is bias-scalable, i.e., its performance remains the same even when the operating conditions like current and voltage are changed.

Indian student’s machine learning software to be sent to space

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Sahil Pawar

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July 6, 2022

A team of five students led by an Indian student Archit Gupta at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), has made a machine learning software, Cremer, which will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for testing. Archit Gupta is a second-year student at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at NTU.

The opportunity to test their software at ISS comes after the team won a competition on developing innovative ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) for space applications, at the start of the year.

During the next three months, the team will install the software into a tiny supercomputer called an artificial intelligence box, after which it will be physically transported to the international space station.

Gupta said the purpose of the international space station is to collect experimental data. If single event upsets – disruptions that tend to afflict sensitive electrical components in space – happen, the sanctity of data gets compromised, making the experiment go to waste.

The software, Cremer, will play a crucial role in predicting hardware disruptions on the international space station or satellites which can cause these space vehicles to go off course or even crash in worst-case scenarios. Cremer was christened after an existing software program called Creme which also predicts single event upsets.

The other team members are third-year mechanical engineering student Deon Lim, third-year business student Sim See Min, and second-year electrical and electronic engineering student Rashna Ahmed.

Indigenous AI-powered Software to Prevent Trespassing on Defence Land

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Disha Chopra

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July 6, 2022

indigenous ai software prevent trespassing

Directorate General Defence Estates (DGDE) has developed an indigenous AI-based software that will detect illegal constructions or trespassing on the defence land using satellite imaging. The software was developed by the Centre of Excellence on Satellite and Unmanned Remote VEhicle Initiative (CoE-SURVEI), along with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), at Meerut Cantonment in Uttar Pradesh.

Currently, the technology employs trained software and Cartosat-3 imagery from the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC). This software can detect any alterations made to the land by comparing satellite images in a time series. It allows the CEOs of Cantonment Boards to keep track of changes being made to the area, whether or not these changes are authorized, and when to take any action if it turns out to be unauthorized.

The software is currently being used in 62 cantonments in the region and has facilitated enhanced accountability of the field staff and aided in reducing malpractices. It has detected around 1,133 unauthorized alterations, out of which 570 cases have been penalized. In the remaining cases, the Cantonment Boards have taken legal action wherever possible.

A. Bharat Bhushan Babu, Principal Spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence, tweeted, “It facilitates better control on unauthorized activities, ensures accountability of field staff, and helps in reducing corrupt practices.”

The CoE-SURVEI has also developed a means to analyze vacant land via 3D still imagery for topologies like hill cantonments. By investing more in AI-powered detecting tools, the centre is trying to ensure that defence land is optimally used and protected via Geographic Information System (GIS)-based management.

The CoE has also collaborated with other organizations for enhanced AI interface and change detection tools. The investments are aimed to benefit DGDE and Services in managing the defence land, especially in inhospitable regions.

Taiwan Hospital Adopts NVIDIA Jetson Real-Time AI Risk Prediction for Kidney Patients

By

Disha Chopra

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July 6, 2022

Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) in Taiwan is working to enhance outcomes for dialysis patients by using the NVIDIA Jetson AI model that helps in real-time heart failure risk prediction for kidney patients during dialysis. Taiwan has the highest prevalence of kidney dialysis patients based on density. To improve the procedure’s outcomes and provide better risk management for heart failure, TVGH hopes to mitigate cardiovascular risk as a leading cause of death in dialysis patients.

It plans to do so via an AI-based risk assessment model that achieves an accuracy of 90% and evaluates up to 200 sets of dynamic physiological and dialysis machine values while also processing medical records, blood test results, and medication data.

TVGH is adopting AI technologies like the NVIDIA Jetson AI Platform will enable TVGH to analyze data in real-time as it combines dialysis machine data with patients’ medical records and test results.

Prof Der-Cherng Tarng, Chief of Department at TVGH, said, “By deploying NVIDIA Jetson next to each dialyzer to perform AI prediction during the procedure, we can achieve real-time insights in a way that’s affordable and effective, even for small-scale dialysis centers.”

While the AI model automatically records and analyzes data generated by the dialyzers, their initial workflow required the healthcare staff to note physiological changes every 30 minutes. To make the model provide real-time inference, TVGH adopted the Aetna Edge AI Starter featuring Jetson Xavier NX, which can process up to 21 trillion operations per second. TVGH’s team also used NVIDIA TensorRT software to optimize predictions for the platform.

The hospital is also working on more AI projects with NVIDIA Parabricks genomics software, NVIDIA FLARE for workflows, and the NeMo Megatron for NLP.

AWS Announces a Machine Learning Scholarship with Udacity

By

Disha Chopra

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July 6, 2022

aws announces machine learning scholarship with udacity

To invite learners interested in honing their machine learning skills and expertise, AWS collaborated with Udacity for its AWS Machine Learning Engineer Scholarship Program.

This program aims to raise the level of machine learning expertise among all participants and to develop the next generation of ML leaders globally, emphasizing underrepresented groups. AWS works with professional groups spearheading efforts to broaden the skill and diversity of technical professions through its We Power Tech Program, including groups like Girls In Tech and the National Society of Black Engineers.

The principles of machine learning, the procedures involved in the process, reinforcement learning, generative AI, software engineering best practices for data science, and how to create your Python package are all covered in this course.

Udacity will offer incentives like badges for completing lessons so students can feel confident about their accomplishments. Developers of all experience levels are encouraged to take the foundations course to grasp the basics of machine learning.

After completing the AWS Machine Learning Foundations Course, students will take an exam from which the best performers will be chosen for a follow-up scholarship from the AWS Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree program, one of Udacity’s most popular and freshly updated Nanodegree programs.

Sunil PP, Lead- Education, Space, and Nonprofits, Amazon Web Services, said, “At AWS, we believe machine learning is among the most disruptive technologies we will encounter in our generation. Building a workforce that is skilled in ML will be crucial for India to leverage the transformational opportunity that ML presents.”

This is not the only opportunity being provided by AWS. It has also launched The Summer Cohort – AWS DeepRacer Student League 2022 with the support of the Ministry of Education and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), along with the similar aim of introducing ML to students.

Indian used cars start-up CarzSo launches showroom in Metaverse

By

Sahil Pawar

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July 6, 2022

Indian start-up CarzSo launches auto showroom Metaverse

CarzSo, virtual reality-based auto tech firm, has launched India’s first used car’s showroom in the metaverse. Users can choose from the assorted makes and models which are meticulously picked by the company.

The company also offers search tools that help users to find the right car in just a few clicks. Users can browse through a vast range of vehicles, using various filters like make, body type, model, price range, etc.

The company has also announced the development of an NFT-based parcel of land to launch an auto industry-focused metaverse. The company added that it is focusing on building a video gaming platform around this concept.

The auto tech startup also aims to facilitate buyers and owners to create virtual assets of their vehicles. This will provide vehicles their own unique digital identity. Additionally, the car owners will also be able to create NFTs of their vehicle’s number plates, which can be traded later.

CarzSo has a web 2.0 presence which leverages virtual reality and virtual showroom technologies to buy and sell cars. Thus, the new advancement will complement the company’s already existing virtual showrooms, allowing customers to skip a visit to the dealership and buy cars virtually.