The GSMA — the organization that represents mobile operators around the world — has announced that it will be cancelling its MWC Barcelona 2020 conference this year amid concerns over the spread of the recent coronavirus outbreak. The Barcelona edition of the massive MWC usually attracts more than 100,000 attendees from around the world. This…
Google announced a new tool for its Google Cloud service called Secret Manager that helps users securely store sensitive information like API keys, passwords, certificates and other important data. “Many applications require credentials to connect to a database, API keys to invoke a service, or certificates for authentication,” Google developer advocate Seth Vargo and product…
Amazon, Apple and Google have announced they will be teaming up to develop an open-source standard for connected smart home devices. The partnership, called Project Connected Home over IP, aims to make sure that any supported devices are able to work together with any smartphone or voice assistant, while making the development of new devices…
Sensory Inc., a pioneer in embedded voice and biometric AI technologies, announced an update to its TrulyHandsFree wake word engine giving it support for multiple wake words from a number of leading brands. The new capabilities for TrulyHandsFree also allow for custom-branded wake words, where the user can create their own word or phrase to…
According to a new report published by MarketsandMarkets, the global Speech-to-Text Application Program Interface (API) market is set to grow from $1.6 billion in 2019 to $4.1 billion by 2024, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.6% during the forecasted period. Some major factors fueling this growth have been the growing use of…
Amazon is introducing a pair of new voice commands that will make it easier to delete Alexa recordings. From now on, saying “Alexa, delete everything I said today,” will wipe everything the smart speaker picked up on the day in question. Soon, the command “Alexa, delete what I just said,” will allow users to selectively…
Amazon is now calling for government regulation of facial recognition technology, even as it defends sales of its own such technology to law enforcement authorities. In a new post on the Amazon Web Services Machine Learning blog, the company’s VP of Global Public Policy, Michael Punke, writes, “We support the calls for an appropriate national…
The inaugural MIT AI Policy Congress recently convened in Massachusetts, bringing together leading researchers, industry insiders, and policy experts for a series of discussions about the future of artificial intelligence. Hosted by MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the conversation stressed the importance of collaboration and…
Facial recognition technology has had a big year, in good ways and bad. On the positive side, Apple signaled a more or less definitive switch to 3D facial recognition as the primary mechanism for user authentication on its flagship smartphones: Having made a big splash last year with its introduction of Face ID on the…
Amazon is seeking to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more third party devices with the announcement that it has now opened up the SDK for its Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit. The development platform was first announced near the start of the year, when it was available for select headphone devices from Bose, Jabra, and…
It has been another remarkable year for the biometrics industry, with a lot of activity across a wide range of sectors. Apple, which spearheaded the mobile biometrics revolution with its launch of Touch ID five years ago, went ahead and confirmed its shift to 3D facial recognition with the launch of three new iPhones featuring…
Two Canadian credit unions are now testing a system that lets customers do their banking through Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based virtual assistant. The technology comes by way of Vancouver-based FinTech specialist Central 1, which developed it in collaboration with San Francisco design agency Point One Digital. Essentially, the idea is to make Alexa a customer service…
Samsung will launch a revamped version of its Bixby AI assistant next year, and aims to extend it far beyond smartphones. In a statement announcing “Bixby 2.0”, Samsung Electronics R&D SVP Eui-Suk Chung says it will be “a bold reinvention of the platform” representing “the next major tectonic shift” in consumer technology after the emergence…
Amazon has unveiled two new services that appear to be the tip of the iceberg with respect to the company’s emerging Internet of Things strategy, according to a Fortune article by Stacey Higginbotham. The first is the company’s new Dash Buttons, which are essentially little WiFi-connected buttons that can be used to conveniently and immediately…
