AI Biweekly: 10 Bits from September W2 — W3
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Google, Adobe, Biweekly, Intel

September 13 — Grammarly Deploys Grammar Checking Tool for Google Docs

Grammarly announces a new tool that provides better grammar checking services for users. The tool is based on Grammarly’s AI system, which uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques. The service will be available on Chrome as an extension, and is expected to launch on Google Docs later this year.

Sep 12 — IBM Watson Media Teams Up with IRIS.TV to Enhance Video Recommendations

IBM Watson Media partners with IRIS.TV to launch an AI system to increase audience engagement for publishers. The system is a highly personalized content recommendation engine that publishers hope will increase profits by offering viewers a more contextually relevant experience while reducing bounce rates. The program works by extracting metadata from videos and correlating it with audience patterns.

September 12 — Zoox Offers Autonomous Transportation Service

Self-driving car startup Zoox will provide autonomous rides at the Global Climate Action Summit. Zoox is partnering with the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco, and will be transporting summit guests between the hotel and the Moscone Center in a Toyota Highlander equipped with its autonomous driving technology. Company President and CTO Jesse Levinson says “Zoox was born to improve safety, congestion, and pollution in our increasingly dense cities.”

September 11 — Japanese Startup Ground Uses Robot to Help Logistics

Tokyo-based AI startup Ground has developed a robot, “Butler” that can help optimize the logistics process. The automatic transfer robot can lift from floor level and transfer products to a target location on its dedicated portable shelf. Like Amazon Robotics’ Kiva system, Butler does not fully automate the logistics system, but helps human workers improve efficiency.

September 11 — Google Launches What-If Tool for ML Model Analysis

The What-If Tool is a new component in Google’s TensorBoard for analyzing the results of a machine learning model. The tool provides the capacity for visualizing datasets, finding counterfactual data-points, analyzing fairness in algorithms, and plotting dependence between a model’s predictions and variables in the input dataset. It is part of the Google AI PAIR initiative dedicated to “making it easier for broad set of people to examine, evaluate, and debug ML systems.”

September 10 — Autogrid Receives US$32 Million Investment On Its Energy Management AI

AI-driven energy industry optimization company AutoGrid announces it has closed a US$32 million Series D investment round, the highest so far in the domain of AI-focused pure-play software platforms for flexible energy resources. The funds will help AutoGrid expand in North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

September 10 — Deloitte Acquires AI Company Magnetic Media

UK-based professional services network Deloitte announces the acquisition of Magnetic Media to help improve audience data analytics for its clients in Digital Experiences Services. Magnetic Media uses machine learning to drive insights from data and this capability will be used along with Deloitte’s creative solutions and implementation experience to provide real-growth solutions to clients.

September 10 — Adobe Adds AI to Enhance Its Marketing Products

Adobe unveils new intelligent capabilities for its Adobe Target and Adobe Experience Manager. Adobe’s machine learning arm Sensei has added an Auto-Target tool that can help marketers choose the best algorithm for their personalized marketing strategy. Adobe also released Smart Layouts, which automatically tailors web page layouts for different visitors. Adobe is working on tools to help merchants do A/B testing on different voice channels such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

September 4 — Intel Deepens Partnership With Baidu

At the Baidu 2018 ABC Summit in Shanghai, Intel and Baidu highlight their new AI collaboration and demonstrate applications across financial service, shipping, video content detection, etc. With support from Intel, Baidu is now providing AI solutions to help banks and video service providers in China.

September 4 — OpenEight Uses AI To Create Animations

Japanese tech startup OpenEight releases its AI-powered automatic video production tool “Video Brain,” which uses text mining, image analysis, and automatic editing techniques to create original videos from user-submitted photos and texts. The model also performs scale and size adjustments of the animations, texts and so on.