#AI assistants

#AI assistants

The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Meta, setting out its preliminary view that Meta breached EU antitrust rules by excluding third-party Artificial Intelligence ('AI') assistants from accessing and interacting with users on WhatsApp. Meta's conduct risks blocking competitors from entering or expanding in the rapidly growing market for AI assistants.

The EU could take "interim measures" against WhatsApp as it investigates AI providers' access to the app. On Monday, the EU's regulatory arm announced its "preliminary view" that Meta, WhatsApp's parent company, violated antitrust laws by blocking third-party AI assistants from operating on WhatsApp.

In one commercial, a man confiding in his AI about a difficult conversation with his mother is interrupted by a jarring, high-energy pitch for "Golden Encounters," a dating site for "sensitive cubs." In another, a fitness query pivots abruptly into an ad for "StepBoost Max" insoles. Most of the response to the ads online was that they were spot on and brutally funny.

Marketers have spent decades optimising for blue links on a search results page. Now every CMO conversation starts with the same question: 'How do we look in ChatGPT?' People ask an AI assistant and get a short list of recommended options. If your brand isn't in that answer, you're effectively invisible, even if you did everything 'right' in SEO. Kime exists to make that visibility gap measurable and give teams a way to act on it.

I'm a little bit surprised they've moved so early into that, I mean, look, ads, there's nothing wrong with ads...they funded much of the consumer internet. And if done well, they can be useful,

You no longer need an Amazon device to summon Alexa since the AI assistant will be available on the Alexa.com website. Amazon will roll out the web client to its Alexa+ Early Access customers first, still featuring the company's new and improved AI assistant that was announced in February. The web model won't be much different from the existing Alexa+ that's already available on Echo devices, Fire TV and Fire tablets.

Logitech's CEO says that AI-powered devices are a solution looking for a problem, despite being a strong proponent of AI and her firm pushing out exactly the kind of thing she's talking about. In an interview with Bloomberg, Hanneke Faber, head of the Swiss mouse and webcam maker, dismissed efforts of other hardware companies to build AI into their gadgets. "What's out there is a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist," she reportedly told Bloomberg.

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,