Technology giant Amazon announces the launch of its largest office in Tamil Nadu, located in the state capital Chennai’s World Trade Center building.
The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin, inaugurated the new Amazon office in a recently held opening ceremony. Thiru Mano Thangaraj, Minister of IT, Government of Tamil Nadu, Thiru Neeraj Mittal, Secretary, Department of IT, Government of Tamil Nadu, and other senior government officials were also present at the inauguration event.
Amazon’s new Chennai office is spread across 8.3 lakh square feet occupying eighteen floors, with a capacity of nearly 6000 employees. However, no information was provided by Amazon regarding the current strength of its workforce in the office.
The office building incorporates internationally recognized construction standards, resulting in best-in-class architecture and facilities that will operate at substantially lower costs than any traditional building.
Amazon claims the office to be highly energy efficient as it would offer a nearly 23% reduction in annual energy consumption.
“The infrastructure developments in Tamil Nadu have been a result of our investment-friendly policies and commitment to creating new jobs for the talent pool in the state. We believe that the launch of Amazon’s new office in Chennai will have a multiplier effect on the state economy,” said the Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin.
He further added that the state’s economic and social well-being would be linked to the newest expansion and investment. Stalin also congratulated the Amazon team for launching its new office.
Amazon has established multiple preventative health measures as instructed by the government for its employees, associates, and partners to provide a healthy working environment. The office will function at its full capacity as the COVID-19 situation and restrictions start to relax.
Director of Global Retail Estate & Facilities at Amazon, Vinod Mathews, said, “The new office is a reaffirmation of our growth and commitment to the state, and we will continue to expand and invest in our employee base in the region to serve our customers and enhance their experience.”
Artificial intelligence company Qure.ai raises $40 million in its recently held funding round led by Novo Holdings and HealthQuad. Existing investors like MassMutual Ventures also participated in the funding round.
The company says it plans to use the fresh funds to further accelerate its product development process and expand into other markets, including the United States and Europe.
With powerful technology that reads and interprets medical images like X-rays, CT scans, and ultrasounds in less than a minute, Qure.ai has earned a reputation in the market by providing top-notch technology-enabled healthcare solutions for people across the globe.
The company has also received certifications and approvals from FDA, CE, and the World Health Organization, assuring the quality of Qure.ai’s products. Last year, Qure.ai got its second clearance from the FDA of the United States for its brain CT scan artificial intelligence quantification product qER-Quant.
Head of Novo Holdings Asia, Dr. Amit Kakar, said, “Qure.ai is at the forefront of transforming diagnostics in both acute and chronic ailments, which is fully aligned with our mission of advancing high-quality and accessible healthcare using innovation and digitization. Further, we are excited to connect Qure.ai to our portfolio partners as we see several promising synergies.”
He further added that they are thrilled to join Qure.ai’s amazing team and contribute to their efforts to provide world-class AI solutions in the imaging domain for the benefit of patients worldwide.
Mumbai-based health tech startup Qure.ai was founded by Prashant Warier and Pooja Rao in 2016. The firm specializes in developing deep learning and artificial intelligence solutions to aid physicians with diagnosis and routine treatments of patients. To date, Qure.ai has raised more than $60 million over three funding rounds.
Co-founder and CEO of Qure.ai, Prashant Warier, said, “Every year our technology helps more than four million people across 50 countries. Our goal is to continue being bullish in our market expansion, especially in the US and Europe.”
He also mentioned that they are dedicated to assisting healthcare practitioners in identifying illnesses faster, more accurately, and with greater information while automating the majority of the mundane job.
Business productivity-improving application developing company Otter.ai announces the launch of its new artificial intelligence-powered meeting summary feature named Automatic Outline for multiple platforms.
The new feature will be available on the company’s AI assistant that customers can use to transcribe meetings conducted on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and others.
Automatic Outline uses conversational AI to convert audio-video meetings into actionable workflows.
According to the company, their newly launched feature comes with the capacity to collect, assign, and comment on action items directly from automated notes, along with a live AI-generated meeting outline and summary.
Otter.ai mentioned that it also plans to roll out this update for Android and iOS over the coming weeks. Users will now be able to view, join, and record Zoom meetings directly from Otter.
Co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai, Sam Liang, said, “We all spend too much time in meetings, and I am really excited about the power of AI to make meetings more productive.”
He further added that the updated Otter makes meeting collaboration easier and faster, making it a must-have tool for today’s hybrid, in-person, and virtual meetings.
The Otter Assistant feature is available in the paid plans of Otter subscription, which starts from $8.33 per month billed annually and provides limited trial access to the feature.
United States-based artificial intelligence software developing company Otter.ai was founded by Sam Liang and Yun Fu in 2016. Otter.ai is best known for its award-winning product, Otter Voice Notes, used by business professionals, journalists, and students to generate rich notes that can be shared and searched quickly.
To date, the firm has raised around $63 million from investors like Spectrum Equity, Horizon Ventures, Fusion Fund, Duke Angel Network, and many others over three funding rounds.
Interested users can visit the official website of Otter.ai to check out the product.
Deepfakes have been taking over the internet for the past couple of years. Therefore, it is not surprising to learn about the emergence of new ai-generated deepfake media every now and then. Meanwhile, a recent study found that humans are unable to distinguish between real faces and AI-generated faces, indicating how ‘realistic’ deepfakes have grown.
In the last several years, generic AI algorithms have become quite proficient at creating human faces. Computers can already generate images of human faces that nearly resemble real ones thanks to the use of neural networks and deep learning. On the one hand, this might be beneficial because it allows low-budget businesses to make commercials, thus decentralizing access to important resources. Faces created by AI, on the other hand, can be used for fraud, propaganda, disinformation, and even revenge pornography.
However, in the latest development, more than 1,000 LinkedIn profiles were discovered using facial images that appeared to be AI-generated, according to researchers at Stanford Internet Observatory. One of the main researchers, Renée DiResta, had been approached on Linkedin by someone named Keenan Ramsey with a sales pitch. Apparently, Ramsay had messaged her, “Quick question — have you ever considered or looked into a unified approach to message, video, and phone on any device, anywhere?” Ramsay’s bio said that they had a bachelor’s degree in business administration from New York University.
While DiResta initially thought the LinkedIn message was legitimate, a closed examination of Ramsey’s profile picture caught her off guard. DiResta noticed that Ramsey’s eyes were perfectly aligned in the middle of the picture. The image’s backdrop is frequently severely blurred, with no discernible components such as curtains, bookcases, or other items. Individual strands of hair are also prone to irregularities, with the strand appearing to end in nothing only to resume shortly thereafter. Also, DiResta observed that Ramsay had only one earring which is unusual as women generally wear two earrings, one on each ear. She even claims to hold a bachelor’s degree in business administration from New York University and lists CNN, Unilever, Amazon, and philanthropist Melinda French Gates among her interests.
This motivated her to start looking into the frequency of AI-generated – or deepfake – images on LinkedIn accounts along with her colleague Josh Goldstein.
According to NPR, many of these phony identities are being employed as a marketing tactic to generate interest in legitimate businesses. An actual individual is contacted via a false profile, and if they show interest, a real salesman takes over the conversation. Over 70 businesses were mentioned on these 1,000 fictitious profiles, with several of them informing NPR that they recruited outside marketers to increase sales. It is believed that one of the incentives behind creating false profiles could be to get past LinkedIn’s organic messaging volume constraints.
Most of the fake profiles had job position titles like ‘Business Development Manager’, ‘Sales Development Executive’, ‘Growth Manager’, and ‘Demand Creation Specialist’ for top companies. However, during the investigation, none of the companies mentioned having any record of the said ‘individuals.’ NPR reached out to 28 colleges to inquire about 57 of the profiles. None of the claimed graduates were found in any of the 21 schools that replied.
Fake accounts are a common way to propagate certain messages, dupe individuals, and create attention around specific issues. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia have already been reported to have been resorting to such tactics for various reasons.
In the case of LinkedIn, it appears that fake profiles are being utilized to build attention about certain businesses. AirSales is one of these vendors, and it claims to recruit independent freelancers to perform marketing services, and that these contractors are free to create LinkedIn accounts “at their own discretion.”
According to AirSales CEO Jeremy Camilloni, “to my knowledge, there are no explicit rules for profile pictures or the use of avatars. This is really rather prevalent among LinkedIn’s tech users.”
RingCentral, one of the firms that appeared to be employing the fake accounts (including Ramsay’s), declined to comment on its involvement in the usage of AI-generated deepfakes. However, the company did mention that it has no record of Ramsey as an employee.
The popularity of websites like ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com demonstrates that using GANs (generative adversarial networks) to build deepfakes has become very simple in recent years. These networks function by sifting through massive amounts of data (in this example, a large number of photos of actual people), learning patterns, and then attempting to duplicate what they’ve discovered.
The fact that GANs test themselves is one of the reasons they are so good. Faces are generated by one component of the network (generator), which is then compared to the training data by the other (discriminator). The generator’s task is to convince the discriminator that the pictures are authentic. As the discriminator improves at distinguishing AI-generated images, the generator creates increasingly realistic images to deceive the discriminator. Think of it like a pastry chef attempting to create a new dish and unwilling to give up until the recipe is perfected.
Although users might simply create a LinkedIn account using stock photographs or random social network photos, using an AI to create a deepfake provides an extra degree of security. Because each image is unique, it cannot be traced back to a source for simple refutation via a reverse image search.
These LinkedIn profile pictures created by deepfake software highlight how a technology that has been exploited to spread disinformation and hate online has made its way into the corporate environment. According to a community report on LinkedIn’s transparency page, the company removed more than 15 million fake accounts in the first half of 2021, with automatic defenses stopping the majority of them. Following the Stanford researchers’ warnings, LinkedIn said it investigated and deleted those profiles that violated its regulations, including those with falsified information. LinkedIn did not provide any information regarding the investigation process.
This isn’t the first time an AI-faced bot network has appeared on social media. Multiple identities purportedly belonging to Amazon warehouse employees were removed from Twitter in 2021, with many of their profile images appearing to be generated by deepfake AI tools. Amazon denied any connection to the personas or their tweets, as well as any responsibility for them.
Instead of attempting to make a less-than-direct sale, Twitter bots from Amazon and other sources often spread disinformation and propaganda on behalf of companies and governments.
Though the creation of fake profiles using AI-generated deepfake images does not sound alarming, it is a precursor of the chaos deepfakes can inflict in the future. At the same time, nations like China are already taking measures to regulate the creation and spread of deepfakes over the internet and other mainstream media. In January, China’s internet watchdog the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced new guidelines for content providers that modify face and voice data, in the country’s fight against “deepfakes.”
Wearable and teleoperated industrial robotics developer Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation announces its plans to acquire intelligence mobile manipulation systems developer RE2 in an acquisition deal worth $100 million.
According to the company officials, the acquisition deal will include $30 million in cash and $70 million in Sarcos stock.
RE2’s acquisition will allow Sarcos to leverage the expertise of RE2 to further improve and develop better robotic technologies that will enhance worker safety and productivity.
The merged company will initially offer multiple products, including the GuardianXO, Guardian XT teleoperated dexterous mobile robotic avatar system, Sapien, and several others. The announced products are aimed at a considerably wider range of customer requirements in both the commercial and defense sectors.
Additionally, the companies will merge RE2’s Detect outside computer vision system and Intellect autonomy software with the Sarcos Cybernetic Training for Autonomous Robots (CYTARTM) AI and machine learning program to accelerate robotic autonomy.
President and CEO of Sarcos, Kiva Allgood, said, “This transaction brings an innovative company with a complementary but additive suite of products into the Sarcos family, allowing us to offer a much wider range of solutions to address our customers’ needs.”
He further added that the acquisition would also enable them to expand their services into new fields such as medical and subsea, strengthen their robotics team, and accelerate the development of AI technologies for usage in unstructured environments. The complete transaction is expected to close by the second quarter of this year.
President and CEO of RE2, Jorgen Pedersen, said, “Across the globe, robotic technologies are changing the way workers perform complex, often dangerous tasks, particularly during a time of widespread skilled labor shortages.”
He also mentioned that Sarcos can now provide a wider range of robotic solutions to a bigger customer base as a result of their merger.
America’s fastest-growing pizza brand, Marco’s Pizza, announces that it is testing a new automated voice-to-text ordering system using conversational AI.
Currently, the technology is being tested across 50 Marco’s Pizza stores, and it plans a systemwide rollout of the technology by the end of this year.
In its initial beta testing, the speech-enabled application used conversational artificial intelligence, which resulted in 100 percent order accuracy.
The significant advantage of this AI-powered system is that it drastically improves customer experience and satisfaction by making the ordering process simpler compared to traditional methods.
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Marco’s Pizza, Rick Stanbridge, said, “There are places where AI makes sense within the business – where it creates a better experience for both team members and guests.”
He further added that this technology not only provides franchisees with a cost-effective, practical solution for reducing labor expenses and driving outcomes but it also supports team members while improving the visitor experience.
The company feels that deploying this AI-powered technology will be critical in achieving the brand’s goal of an 85 percent digital presence. Marco’s Pizza started the initial testing of the program back in 2021, intending to provide a seamless interaction experience with its customers.
According to the company, its artificial intelligence solution takes voice orders and automatically converts them to text in the point-of-sale system, which helps employees get started with customer orders quickly. It simulates a human-like interaction using conversational AI and can convert voice across different digital channels and technology platforms.
Additionally, the technology also helps employees significantly reduce their call abandonment rates.
“There are a lot of technologies on our radar, but our strategy is to hotly pursue those that we can bring to the market quickly and will have the biggest impact on customers, team members, and franchisees,” added Stanbridge.
However, not every Marco’s Pizza customer seemed to like the new technology and preferred to stick with the traditional method of ordering food.
Global semiconductor manufacturing giant Intel partners with Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) to launch its new one-of-a-kind artificial intelligence (AI) incubator lab in the Chandler-Gilbert Community College (CGCC).
MCCCD partnered with Intel, Dell, and the state of Arizona to come up with this artificial intelligence incubator lab.
The newly launched AI incubator lab will considerably help students seeking to work in fields such as business, nursing, and healthcare, along with other professions that increasingly use artificial intelligence technology.
In addition to an AI curriculum, technical advice, and faculty training, Intel provided CGCC with a technology grant that allowed the community college to purchase $60 thousand in cutting-edge lab equipment, including state-of-the-art workstations, monitors, and open-source Intel AI software tools to implement new AI technology.
Chancellor of MCCCD, Steven Gonzales, said, “Within the last two years, we have been able to see our students gain new AI skills, and we are proud to have our first graduating class from the AI program this spring.”
He further added that this lab is crucial in providing the resources they need for their education, and they are grateful to Intel, Dell, and the State of Arizona for giving the designated area so that their professors and students may succeed.
The AI incubator lab draws on Intel’s AI for Workforce initiative, which began enrolling kids in schools across the United States in 2020, with the Maricopa district being the first to do so. The novel program allows students to gain skills like data collection, AI model training, coding, and investigating the societal impact of AI technology.
This collaboration and initiative of Intel is a step towards the company’s aim of helping Americans learn new skills, promote diversity and inclusion, and democratize future technologies like artificial intelligence.
According to Intel, it plans to make this unique program available in 50 states across the United States by 2023.
“We are grateful for our partners, including Maricopa County Community College District, Dell, and the State of Arizona, for joining with us to help increase the digital readiness of our future workforces,” said Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group, Michelle Johnston Holthaus.
Google recently mentioned in a blog post that it used artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to remove millions of fake profiles from the platform to help stop scammers from spreading misinformation.
Google’s high-end machine learning algorithms increased the company’s ability to spot bot activity and identify unusual activity patterns, preventing more than 100 million of these fake edits from getting live in 2021.
According to the company, it blocked over 7 million fake business profiles, out of which 630,000 were reported directly to Google. Google stopped fake claimers attempting to construct 12 million fraudulent business profiles, and roughly 8 million attempted to claim business profiles.
In addition to business pages, 190 million photographs and 5 million videos that were blurry, low quality, or violated the company’s content policies were also deleted by Google’s AI algorithms and its capable team.
“As the world reopened throughout 2021, people relied on Google Maps reviews to get the information they needed about places before visiting them — like what health and safety protocols were enforced or if there was outdoor dining and open spaces,” said Google.
The blog further mentioned that individuals and groups have also attempted to use fraudulent reviews to harm local businesses, frequently responding to the public spotlight on differing viewpoints.
These attackers are able to trick users into paying for things online or even capturing their payment credentials by changing phone numbers or addresses of certain businesses.
Google Maps is one of the world’s most popular platforms to search for locations, working hours, contact numbers, and other related information. Hence it becomes crucial that the data available on the platform is reliable, up to date, and accurate.
Google encourages users to constantly update their platform to make it more informative. However, the work of scammers degrades the reputation of the platform and helps spread misinformation, which in the end, troubles users.
Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are now using a novel approach using statistics and artificial intelligence to correct systematic errors in weather models.
The new approach can accurately forecast wind gusts much more reliably when compared to other traditional methods.
According to the researchers, incorporating geographical information along with extra meteorological variables such as temperature enhances forecast quality dramatically.
They were able to achieve the best results while utilizing artificial intelligence methods based on advanced neural networks.
This one-of-a-kind technique can drastically help in raising quick alerts in disastrous conditions like squalls, which have a speed of more than 65 kilometers per hour and have the potential to cause massive damage to the region.
A doctoral researcher at the KIT’s institute of Stochastics, Benedikt Schulz, said, “Wind gusts are difficult to model, as they are driven by small-scale processes and are locally limited.”
He further added that their capacity to anticipate the weather using numerical weather forecast models utilized by weather agencies is limited and unpredictable. Therefore, the new approach can turn out to be of great value in accurately predicting dangerous wind gusts.
The researchers want to use AI to address different systematic flaws, enhance forecasts, and more accurately predict catastrophic weather events. Researchers said that they scrutinized available methods for statistical post-processing of numerical weather forecasts and systematically compared their forecast qualities.
Dr. Sebastian Lerch, head of the junior research group named AI Methods for Probabilistic Weather Forecasts, said, “Yet, AI methods are far superior to classical statistical approaches and produce far better results, as they allow for a better consideration of new information sources, such as geographical conditions or other meteorological variables, such as temperature and solar radiation.”
He also mentioned that, on average, AI approaches to cut the forecasting errors of weather models by 36 percent.
The migration of marketing from the physical world to online spaces is not new. However, since the metaverse buzzword took the world by storm last year, the anticipation is building about having new forms of ads generation and consumption for the users. While it is defined as the blend of virtual reality, augmented reality, and web3 to create a 3D virtual world, with ever-evolving aspects, where brands can create their personalized digital universe for customer interaction, we are still far from achieving it. Nevertheless, companies are already coming up with fresh solutions and perspectives to create digital experiences that boost brand visibility.
The user inhabits a borderless virtual environment in the metaverse. While seamlessly accessing virtual communities, activities, and events, there are no abrupt transitions requiring logging off and signing in. Being platform-independent and offering a seamless experience, are major components of the metaverse that will work in its favor for a user-centric approach. You can visit a virtual shopping mall as a virtual avatar of yourself, go to a cafe to have your macchiato latte, have fun at the bowling alley or walk around at the virtual pet store, waving at adorable puppies. All of these can be done while sitting in the warmth and comfort of your own home, without commuting through congested urban areas.
Metaverse is currently chasing the notion that instead of the unwanted pop-ups and forced commercials that you encounter today, brands will revolutionize the way they promote, creating a memorable experience. In-world ads will be cleverly positioned to draw user attention so that consumers can willingly interact with the ad, making it more compelling and interesting than today’s distracting commercials.
Companies are investing in the metaverse in the hopes of reaching new customers, and Meta is at the forefront. The metaverse has sparked public interest when Mark Zuckerberg, the concept’s most outspoken supporter, renamed Facebook to Meta last year. Meta is now planning to announce three-dimensional (3D) advertisements to help customers get a better picture of the things they’re interested in. Meta is cooperating with an e-commerce technology agency named VNTANA, to make it easier for companies to publish three-dimensional adverts to their Instagram and Facebook accounts.
VNTANA is the world’s first three-dimensional content management system (CMS), which automatically translates, enhances, and distributes three-dimensional content over the internet. This company offers high-resolution images and allows clients to virtually interact with the goods without leaving their house. Some companies utilize this platform to promote their goods and make them available to individuals all around the world.
Brands can now submit their current 3D designs from programs like Browzwear, Clo, Keyshot, and Modo and have them instantly converted for Facebook and Instagram, thanks to Meta and VNTANA’s new alliance. These 3D models may then be instantly uploaded to Meta, allowing firms to speed up the development of 3D advertisements. Prior to this 3D artists had to manually optimize their work for Facebook and Instagram ad requirements. Now, brands can use VNTANA to easily upload and convert the files into ads.
This is the first in a series of anticipated new features and capabilities, according to VNTANA, and both parties intend to enhance the interaction between their two platforms. According to VNTANA Chief Executive Ashley Crowder, this move is a stepping stone towards advertising in the metaverse, which is a futuristic concept of a collection of virtual worlds that can be accessed by devices such as headsets. Meta previously teamed with augmented reality (AR) startups Modiface and PerfectCorp to make 3D and AR advertising more accessible for beauty and cosmetic brands. Users who encounter a 3D ad while surfing on their PC or phone on Facebook or Instagram can interact with an image of a handbag, for example, and move it about to examine it from all angles.
“In a way, this offers a glimpse of what you might expect on future devices like AR glasses,” said Chris Barbour, director of augmented reality partnerships at Meta’s Reality Labs unit.
Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Meta to introduce people to shared virtual worlds and experiences across multiple software and hardware platforms, betting big on the metaverse’s promise to alter immersive experiences and the internet. Since then, Meta has undertaken radical changes on a larger scale to bring the metaverse closer to the fundamental premise being marketed to impress brands. The company is already planning to invest billions of dollars in its development over the next several years, as well as attempting to recruit developers and artists. While technical limits will always exist, questions about accessibility must also be addressed. Interactive 3D commercials, for example, must be built in such a manner that persons with limited mobility and vision impairments can interact with them. Metaverse 3D Ads that rely on offering too much sensory input can be overstimulating for neurodivergent persons.
Meta and other companies should also focus on building 3D ads with basic information about products for users that want a hassle-free non-immersive checkout process. This will be immensely helpful for users who have a poor internet connection and don’t want to wait for an animation to load.
