#AI assistants

#AI assistants

It's not hard to understand the AI future Microsoft is betting billions on - a world where computers understand what you're saying and do things for you. It's right there in the ads for the latest Copilot PCs, where people cheerfully talk to their laptops and they talk back, answering questions in natural language and even doing things for them. The tagline is straightforward: "The computer you can talk to."

ClickUp has redesigned its productivity platform and released new AI assistant features as it aims to create a one-stop shop for customers. The company said core parts of this release were possible because of its acquisition of Qatalog, the enterprise search startup that had raised more than $29.5 million from backers like Salesforce Ventures, Atomico, Prototype Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Tiny VC, and Possible Ventures.

Generate Speech is the first time Adobe has added text-to-speech capabilities to Firefly, leveraging its own Firefly models, as well as models from ElevenLabs. At launch, Adobe says it'll support 15 languages with Generate Speech, and you'll be able to add emotion tags. These tags aren't universal, so you can add different tags to different parts of a line to change the inflection. Generate Soundtrack and Generate Speech are rolling out shortly to Firefly.

The company said the launch of Red Hat Developer Lightspeed, a portfolio of AI solutions, will equip developer teams with "intelligent, context-aware assistance" through virtual assistants. Available on the Red Hat Developer Hub, the first of these AI tools is accessible through the hub's chat interface. The company said this will help speed up non-coding-related tasks, including development of test plans, troubleshooting applications, and creating documentation. This AI assistant can be used via both publicly available and self-hosted large language models (LLMs).

The rise of generative AI in recent years has caused a massive strategic reorientation across the tech industry, as companies have scrambled to launch their own AI-powered products and services. Perhaps most memorably, Meta -- which three years ago changed its name from Facebook to signal its shift toward the metaverse (remember that thing?) -- announced that 2023 would be its "year of productivity," focused in large part on a pivot toward AI.

Cluely's AI assistant grew famous this April with a viral claim that its undetectable windows could "help you cheat on anything" - a claim that was quickly disproven when a string of proctoring services showed they could, in fact, detect use of the AI assistant. But in a matter of months, the company had raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz, becoming one of the most visible products in the crowded AI assistant space.

For most of its short life, my Tesla Model 3 has aged beautifully. Since I bought the car, in 2019, it has received a number of new features simply by updating its software. My navigation system no longer just directs me to EV chargers along my route-it also shows me, in real time, how many plugs are free. With the push of a button, I can activate "Car Wash Mode," and the Tesla will put itself in neutral and disable the windshield wipers.

Slack users can now start a private conversation with Claude, or add it to a group thread, simply by tagging @Claude, or by clicking a devoted icon at the top-right corner of their screen. Integrating Claude with Slack gives the chatbot permission to access threads in a user's workspace channels, as well as their direct messages and shared files -- but only those that they have direct access to.

Today, running on underpowered hardware and with what feels like a surface-level integration into my smart home, Alexa Plus often leaves me frustrated,

"Atlassian Rovo is an AI-powered work assistant designed to enhance productivity by connecting information across Jira, Confluence, and other tools inside the Atlassian ecosystem."