Author: TechBrunch
While living in the U.S., the Trivedi family was looking for a customary way to worship at one of India's jyotirlingas, which symbolize the Hindu god Shiva. One Sunday in 2023, after searching YouTube for ways to make ritual offerings of flowers and other items at Indian temples, the family came across a video on an emerging devotional app called Sri Mandir. The app provides customized videos of ritual prayers from over 50 Hindu temples across India and allows users to virtually join in prayers, make donations and access religious content from their iPhone or Android smartphone. It was just…
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform every industry, but perhaps the most dramatic breakthrough in this new era of data-infused machine intelligence will be in drug discovery. By analyzing vast amounts of biological data, AI helps researchers predict how different compounds will interact with specific targets in the body, accelerating the discovery of promising drug candidates. That's why CardiaTec, a University of Cambridge spinout company working to eradicate cardiovascular disease (CVD), today announced it has raised $6.5 million in seed funding to further its efforts. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), CVD is the leading cause of death worldwide,…
Apple announced several AI-powered upgrades to watchOS on Monday at its Apple Event 2024. Most of these were announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, but Apple revealed more details during its keynote this morning. The Translator app will be coming to the latest version of watchOS, watchOS 11. Like other platforms, the Translator app will leverage AI for speech recognition and translation in various languages. On the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra, the translation feature also works without a phone connection, and according to Apple, these are the only…
Amazon's audiobook business, Audible, announced Monday that it will use AI trained on the voices of professional narrators to generate new audiobook recordings. Audible says that starting this week, a select group of US-based audiobook narrators will be invited to train the AI voice, which will then be used to record audio, giving the narrators the opportunity to approve the synthesized voice for a particular piece, as well as edit pronunciation and pacing. According to Audible, narrators who participate in the program will be compensated on a per-title royalty-share basis for audiobooks created using Audible's AI voices. Source link
At its latest iPhone 16 event, Apple announced that iOS 18, the new version of its iPhone operating system, will be officially released on September 16th. As previously announced at WWDC 2024, iOS 18 introduces a host of new features. Among the notable features are a set of customization options, such as the ability to arrange apps and widgets on the home screen and customize buttons. Other features include new text effects, the ability to lock and hide apps, a new way to manage your email inbox, the introduction of iMessages via satellite, and a major redesign of the Photos…
Apple's biggest event of the year has arrived, with the announcement of the iPhone 16 lineup and a slew of AI-related updates in iOS 18. Like WWDC in June, Apple Intelligence was the main focus of this year's Apple event, and Apple's announcement lineup reflected a number of highly anticipated hardware announcements, including new iPhone 16, AirPods 4, and Apple Watch Series 10. Broadcast live from the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Apple's “Glowtime” event began at 10am PST, and you can watch the full recording of the Apple event here. It remains to be seen whether Monday's announcement will spark…
After months of speculation, Apple Intelligence took center stage in June at WWDC 2024. The platform was announced following a flurry of news about generative AI from companies like Google and Open AI, raising concerns that the notoriously tight-lipped tech giant had missed out on the latest tech boom. But contrary to such speculation, Apple has assembled a team to work on a typically Apple approach to artificial intelligence, and while the demo was flashy (Apple always loves a splash), Apple Intelligence is ultimately a very pragmatic approach to the field. Apple Intelligence (yes, that's AI for short) is not…
For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, recent Crunchbase data found. Five of the six venture rounds of more than $1 billion raised in the first half of 2024 were raised by AI companies. Since the end of June, another 10 mega-round deals have occurred, with these companies raising over $3 billion; $1 billion of that total went to one company, the new one launched by OpenAI’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Here are the…
Apple, which is leaning heavily on its AI capabilities to drive a new wave of hardware upgrades, is set to release macOS Sequoia on September 16, marking the company's earliest major desktop operating system release to date. First announced at WWDC 2024, the new OS introduces a suite of AI-powered features called Apple Intelligence, as well as the popular iPhone Mirroring. Industry analysts see the rapid release as an attempt by Apple to boost hardware sales, with Morgan Stanley's Eric Woodring suggesting in a recent report that the AI capabilities could fuel Apple's “multi-year product refresh cycles” and accelerate device…
Apple, which is leaning heavily on its AI capabilities to drive a new wave of hardware upgrades, is set to release macOS Sequoia on September 16, marking the company's earliest major desktop operating system release to date. First announced at WWDC 2024, the new OS introduces a suite of AI-powered features called Apple Intelligence, as well as the popular iPhone Mirroring. Industry analysts see the rapid release as an attempt by Apple to boost hardware sales, with Morgan Stanley's Eric Woodring suggesting in a recent report that the AI capabilities could fuel Apple's “multi-year product refresh cycles” and accelerate device…