Electric utility company Tata Power announces the launch of its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart home automation energy solutions.
Tata Power EZ Home, a newly launched product under the company suite of Home Automation Range, comes with a new AI-enabled PIR (Passive Infrared) Motion Sensor to deliver smart energy solutions to assist clients in conserving energy and lowering their power bills.
This newly launched product further strengthens Tata Power’s goal of its #DoGreen mission. According to the company, its Tata Power EZ Home can recognize human motion within a 5-meter radius, causing the PIR Motion Sensor to activate the connected appliance, resulting in enormous power saving.
Reports suggest that the Tata Power EZ Home PIR Motion Sensor has the ability to reduce the consumption of linked home appliances by up to 40%.
A Tata Power spokesperson said, “We’re excited to introduce our AI-Powered PIR Motion Sensor to mark the World Environment Day. Through the use of these AI sensors, our discerning customers will be able to make informed decisions about energy conservation and its optimization and join us in our #DoGreen mission.”
Moreover, the Sensor, along with other existing EZ Home solutions, are in accordance with recent government guidelines for requiring Energy Efficiency code compliance for residential structures.
Apart from being energy-efficient, Tata Power EZ Home also provides a range of Home Automation and IoT-based devices such as modular switches, converters, controllers, and others. Smart devices give end consumers the ease and convenience of being able to manage and control their home appliances from anywhere.
Customers can install the Tata Power EZ Home app or use voice commands with Alexa or Google Assistant to control the devices.
Visual bookmarking tool Pinterest announces that it plans to acquire an artificial intelligence-powered shopping platform for the fashion industry, THE YES. However, no information has been provided yet regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal.
According to Pinterest, THE YES’s mission of being the home of taste-driven shopping will be accelerated by THE YES’s leadership, innovative technology, and skilled staff, which combines shopping knowledge with the fashion industry’s reputation.
Bornstein will report to Silbermann and will oversee Pinterest’s retail vision and strategy, establishing a new and strategic organization dedicated to Pinterest’s taste-driven buying operations, which will assist in the evolution of features for Pinners and merchants on Pinterest.
Co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann, said, “THE YES team are experts in building an end-to-end shopping experience. They share our vision of making it simple to find the right personalized products for you based on your taste and style.”
He further added that they are ecstatic with THE YES’s brilliant staff and technology as they create specialized buying experiences on Pinterest.
According to Pinterest, it is a shopping platform that combines its audience’s distinct commercial motive with the opportunity to visually explore things like one would in a magazine or catalog.
THE YES was founded by Julie Bornstein and Amit Aggarwal in 2018, who currently serve as the company’s CEO and CTO, respectively. THE YES has grown to give a customized daily shopping feed that learns a user’s style as they shop with hundreds of merchants throughout the fashion spectrum, including big names and discovery companies.
CEO of THE YES, Julie, said, “I’ve spent my career at the intersection of shopping, fashion, and technology and have seen first-hand the valuable impact of building technology that enables brands to join a platform with ease while enabling customers to share their preferences.”
Julie also mentioned that joining together with Pinterest to expand their reach through such an inspiring platform is an exciting and natural next step for our team and technology.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued a fresh draft of the National Data Governance Framework Policy (NDGFM). The new NDGFM draft by MeitY has an advanced emphasis on sharing of non-personal data for building an extensive repository of India-specific datasets. MeitY has invited feedback and inputs on the NDGFM draft, and the last submission date is June 11, 2022.
A platform will be developed to provide access to anonymized and non-personal datasets. In the earlier draft by MeitY, a similar policy was issued but retracted after widespread criticism over monetizing data sharing. However, in the current draft, MeitY has made no provision for data monetization.
The Indian government will also launch an India Dataset program in which the data collected by government entities will be made available. The main source of datasets will be the government ministry, departments, and organizations which will have to identify and classify available datasets. Private companies will also be encouraged to create datasets and contribute to the India Datasets program.
The India Data Management Office (IDMO) will be responsible for developing standards, guidelines, and rules for this data framework. IDMO will also be responsible for designing a platform for processing startup and research organizations’ access requests. To ensure proper implementation of the new policy, data management units (DMU) will work closely with IDMO.
There will be limits for data requests to ascertain whether the requesting organization should be allowed full or partial access for their respective use case. There will also be government-to-government data access where each entity is supposed to create a searchable inventory along with detailed and clear metadata.
IDMO will notify the protocols for sharing these datasets while ensuring security and privacy. There will be rules for exclusivity to Indians or India-based organizations. The policy draft also mentions that IDMO might charge users a maintenance fee. You can send the feedback and inputs on the NDGFM draft to Ms. Kavita Bhatia at kbhatia@gov.in or pmu.etech@meity.gov.in.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announces its plans to restructure its artificial intelligence research and development (R&D).
Our new structure for Meta AI will help us not only better pursue open, ground-breaking research, but also improve how we leverage AI in our products. Learn more about how the team at Meta AI is evolving:https://t.co/fXHYSRc571pic.twitter.com/HDwEfImkR7
Meta’s AI Platform, AI for Product, and, more recently, AI4AR teams have developed cutting-edge techniques to leverage AI to improve our products, better protect the people who use them and build innovative new applications, drawing inspiration from their colleagues at FAIR and counterparts across the industry.
Therefore this new development is a step for the company to further expand its AI research and development tasks.
Chief AI Scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, mentioned the significant changes in the organization in a Twitter thread.
Big changes for AI R&D at Meta!
– FAIR remains FAIR: No change in the modus operandi and mission. – FAIR is now part of Reality Labs – Research (RLR) under Michael Abrash. RLR is a wide-ranging research organization that now includes AI. 1/N https://t.co/SiVMySz7wl
Meta announced a new decentralized organizational structure for Meta AI to serve the company’s goal of advancing AI. Meta’s AI teams have incubated several innovative projects, such as Responsible AI, and have established Meta as a leader in the artificial intelligence industry worldwide.
“Jerome Pesenti has been our fearless leader in this work, but over the last several months, he has put in place a plan to change the status quo. Jerome identified that while the centralized nature of the organization gave us leverage in some areas, it also made it a challenge to integrate as deeply as we would hope,” mentioned Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer at Meta.
He announced the following changes in the organization –
The Responsible AI organization will become a member of the Social Impact team.
The AI4AR team will join Meta’s XR team in Reality Labs.
Meta’s product engineering team will take over the AI for Product teams that seek to secure individuals who use the company’s platforms.
FAIR, Meta’s AI research team, will become a new pillar of Reality Labs Research.
According to Meta, FAIR’s leadership will remain with Joelle Pineau, Antoine Bordes, and Yann LeCun. Additionally, Meta will also form a new cross-functional AI leadership team, which will be managed by Joelle.
Advances in AI research have led to a plethora of ML and deep learning models capable of generating images from text prompts. The text-to-image tools represent a tremendous cultural shift because this new and democratized form of expression can amplify the magnitude of imagery produced by humans. Researchers at Google and OpenAI have developed text-to-image models that haven’t been released to the public. However, like other automated systems, they also come with ethical and unfair use risks that these companies are yet to solve. DALL.E by OpenAI and Imagen by Google are two popular models in this industry.
Today, we will discuss which text-to-image model is better and more accurate at creating images.
OpenAI launched DALL.E 2, an AI tool that can create realistic images and art from the text. You can test various variations of text to see the results of DALL.E 2. For example, in this text: An astronaut, playing basketball with cats in space, and as a children’s book illustration, DALL.E 2 produces the following image:
You can use a similar text with variations like in watercolors or a minimalistic style. OpenAI launched this new version with renewed capabilities and restrictions to prevent abuse. It can turn a text prompt into an accurate image. This tool could create an image from text within seconds. The new version is better at its job, and the images are bigger and more detailed. It has become faster and can spin out more variations than the last version. DALL-E 2 has an invite-only test environment where developers can try it out in a controlled way. All the prompts are evaluated for violations.
Days after OpenAI launched DALL.E 2, Google introduced Imagen, a competitor to OpenAI’s DALL.E that creates images and artworks using a similar method. After adding a description, Imagen can generate images based on how it interprets the text. It combines different attributes, concepts, and styles. For example, by giving text like ‘a photo of a dog’, Google’s system can create an idea that looks like a picture of a dog. However, by altering the description to ‘an oil painting of a dog,’ the generated image would look more like an oil painting. Like DALL.E, Imagen has also not been released for public use because of the risk associated with biases in extensive language models.
DALL.E worked on 1.2-billion parameters, and DALL.E 2 works on a 3.5-billion parameter model. It has another 1.5-billion parameter model to enhance the resolution of its images. However, Imagen has surpassed various text-to-image models like DALL.E 2 because of T5-XXL, Google AI’s largest text encoder, which has 4.6 billion parameters.
Imagen can create better images because of high parameters. Scaling the size of the text encoder has been shown to improve text-image alignment to a great extent. On the other hand, scaling the size of the diffusion model improves sample quality, but a bigger text encoder has the highest overall impact. Imagen also uses a diffusion technique called noise conditioning augmentation that helps to higher FID and CLIP scores.
Additionally, images created by DALL.E lacks realism. Here is what Google’s research scientist had to say about it:
From my experience, I feel #Imagen tries very hard to render exactly what is written in the prompt. #Dalle, on the other hand, is like a rebellious assistant who’s a bit disobedient, and sometimes a little high 🌿 pic.twitter.com/ebrIHwxVKo
Thomas Wolf, the cofounder of Hugging Face, has also written in favor of Google’s text-to-image model. However, he also mentioned that not releasing such models for public use has hindered research in this industry. He also wants the datasets to be made public, so there can be a collective effort to improve the models.
Ethical challenges
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice President of Google AI, states that he “sees AI as having the potential to foster creativity in human-computer collaboration.” However, due to the various ethical challenges of preventing misuse of this technology, both Google and OpenAI haven’t released their models for public use. Although it’s unclear how they can safeguard this technology from misuse, so it’s not used for unethical purposes.
This decision has been made as the company makes efforts to develop its robot named Optimus.
Earlier, Tesla announced hosting the second Tesla AI day on August 19, 2022. Musk tweeted, “Tesla AI Day pushed to September 30, as we may have an Optimus prototype working by then.”
According to officials, the scheduled event would reveal “many cool updates” for the customers. Many upcoming products or projects in the pipeline will be revealed to us during Tesla’s AI Day event.
Tesla’s Optimus robot, also known as Tesla Bot, is an artificial intelligence-powered general-purpose robotic humanoid. Tesla revealed that it was working to develop a unique AI-powered robot during its first Tesla AI Day back in 2019.
The first Tesla AI Day event was broadcasted live on YouTube for the common public to watch. Now, the company plans to showcase the prototype of the much-awaited robot at its upcoming event.
Musk said in January, “Optimus could eventually address global shortages of labor, and in the short term might be able to carry items around a factory.”
Besides Tesla Optimus, enthusiasts also believe that the company would reveal many of its plans and projects during the Tesla AI Day. During the event, Tesla fans also expect updates on the company’s self-driving technology.
A digital solution for the financial sector provider Kiya.ai announces the launch of India’s first banking metaverse named Kiyaverse.
The unique platform wants to combine real-world banking with metaverse banking through avatar-based interactions.
Kiya.ai intends to enable clients to transact, access financial information, and obtain various banking products virtually from the comfort of their homes via Kiyaverse, a one-of-a-kind platform.
Kiyaverse will allow banks to expand their Metaverse for clients, partners, and staff in the first phase, including services such as Relationship Manager & Peer Avatars and Robo-advisors. Customers will be able to utilize their customized avatars on digital banking units, mobile devices, computers, VR headsets, and mixed reality settings using Kiyaverse.
“Kiyaverse will interface its open API connectors with Aggregators and Gateways to enable a Super-App and Marketplace on the metaverse,” said the company in a statement.
The official statement further added that Kiyaverse would give near-real-world interaction through the internet of senses with the advent of Haptics equipped Headsets.
According to the company, Kiyaverse intends to use tokens as NFTs and collaborate with CBDC to allow open finance in a Web3.0 context. Moreover, the metaverse platform will integrate its Open API connections with Aggregators and Gateways to enable a metaverse to Super-App and Marketplace.
“Metaverse allows banks to use cutting-edge technology with a human touch which will significantly deepen and personalize customer interaction. Kiyaverse offers meaningful applications in the Metaverse that apply to relevant business use cases in the real world,” CEO and MD of Kiya.ai, Rajesh Mirjankar. He further added that Kiyaverse offers cross-functional multi-experiences using customized avatars in real-world, mixed reality, and virtual reality environments.
Conversational messaging platform providing company Gupshup acquires leading Omnichannel Customer Service Platform for Global Businesses OneDirect. However, no information has been provided by either company regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal.
Gupshup’s service is strengthened by the acquisition, which allows conversational interaction with a robust and adaptable live Agent Assist solution.
The live Agent Assist solution integrates effortlessly with chatbot automation systems to give the most extraordinary customer experience on-demand, 24/7, in the channel and language of the client’s choosing.
Moreover, with customized processes and connections with current CRM and helpdesk systems, the live Agent Assist solution can expand to thousands of agents.
Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, Beerud Seth, said, “Customer support is being transformed with conversational experiences that deliver instant, personalized experiences using both automated and manual solutions across a range of messaging channels. Businesses are using these solutions at scale to dramatically increase customer delight and reduce support cost.”
He further added that OneDirect is a valuable addition to the Gupshup family, with their demonstrated expertise in assisting major businesses in transforming omnichannel customer service.
Bengaluru-based India’s leading CEM platform OneDirect was founded by Ankur Singla, Avinash Vankadaru, Vishal Pal Chaudhary, and Vishrut Chalsani in 2013. The company’s robust platform specializes in assisting enterprises in overcoming Customer Experience Management issues.
For leading brands in BFSI, Retail, Consumer Electronics, Travel, and Hospitality, OneDirect has processed over 1 billion consumer contacts in ten different languages. Many industry-leading organizations such as Indian Railways, Myntra, KFC, Airtel, Indigo Airlines, etc., use OneDirect’s CEM platform.
“We are excited to join the Gupshup family and look forward to building more efficient and personalized conversational experiences. Gupshup’s advanced AI capabilities combined with Onedirect’s robust customer service and engagement platform will provide businesses the ability to reinvent customer experience,” said Co-founder and CEO of OneDirect, Vishrut Chalsani.
The investment arm of crypto giant Binance, Binance Labs, announces that it has closed $500 million worth of investment funds to boost blockchain, Web3, and other related technologies.
Binance Labs’ investment fund is backed by worldwide institutional investors such as DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital.
According to the company, it intends to allocate the fresh $500 million fund to companies at various phases of development, including incubation, early-stage, and late-stage growth. The funds will considerably help in the development of the new technology and support startups operating in the web3 and blockchain industry.
Founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, said, “In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies is essential, and if these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of the blockchain technology and crypto.”
He further added that the newly closed investment fund’s purpose is to identify and assist projects and creators with the potential to establish and lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and other areas.
Binance Labs was founded by Changpeng Zhao and Christy Choi in 2017. Binance Labs specializes in discovering, investing in, and empowering viable blockchain entrepreneurs, startups, and communities, along with giving funding to industry projects that contribute to the growth of the greater blockchain ecosystem.
Binance Labs has invested in and fostered over 100 startups from over 25 countries since 2018. Binance Labs’ fund is the latest in a long line of crypto funds formed by venture capitalists, with Andreessen Horowitz investing $4.5 billion last week to exhibit confidence in the sector despite the current dip.
Telecommunications services providing company Vodafone Idea (Vi) launches its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered AdTech platform named Vi Ads.
According to the company, Vi Ads, a new platform, will provide advertisers with a cutting-edge, ROI-focused programmatic advertising buying platform.
Vi Ads will allow advertisers to connect with the operator’s over 243 million users via various channels, including Vi-owned digital media including Vi App, Vi Movies & TV App, and traditional channels like SMS and IVR calls.
The platform will provide a self-service interface that gives advertisers complete control over their campaigns, from a campaign set up to tracking campaign performance and driving campaign analytics. Vi partnered with TorcAI to develop its Vi Ads platform.
CEO of TorcAI, Rohit Verma, said, “This partnership, and the development of the Vi Ads platform, will enable Vi to connect their vast stores of customer insights with advertisers, and publishers, to deliver the right message at the perfect time.”
He further added that they are looking forward to a long partnership with Vi and are excited about the potential to create world-class products and technology that will continue to redefine the way data is utilized to better interact with customers in an ever-changing digital landscape.
Talking about the nature of the platform, the company mentioned that Vi Ads would be media agnostic, allowing advertisers to interact with Vi users via external media channels and Vi Ads publisher partners. The service provides advertisers with the advantages of unique audience segments, interest groups, and targeting characteristics drawn from Vi’s deep insights into its consumer base.
“With our programmatic platform – Vi Ads, we will address two of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today – authentic insights and enhanced reach,” said the CMO of Vi, Avneesh Khosla. He also mentioned that Vi Ads is a simple, user-friendly, and highly effective option for marketers to reach out to the proper target group with the most relevant messaging at any given time.
