Samsung Electronics, which currently dominates the market for memory chips used in smartphones and servers (among other devices), is now set on developing what they call “logic chips,” or advanced chip processors. The company stated its plans to invest 133 trillion won ($116 billion) over the next 10 years, putting it on a path to compete with Intel and Qualcomm. In doing so, Samsung is expected to create 15,000 jobs in production and research. The company already designed its own microprocessors for its Galaxy phones. Continue reading Samsung Invests in Logic Chips to Rival Intel and Qualcomm

Google’s artificial intelligence researchers made an unexpected discovery with its new SpecAugment data augmentation model for automatic speech recognition. Rather than augmenting input audio waveforms, SpecAugment applies augmentation directly to the audio spectrogram. Researchers discovered, to their surprise, that models trained with SpecAugment out-performed all other speech recognition methods, even without a language model. Amazon also revealed research on improving Alexa’s speech recognition by 15 percent. Continue reading Google and Amazon Use AI to Improve Speech Recognition

IAC-owned video platform Vimeo, which largely serves small businesses and individual creators, has acquired short-form video specialist Magisto for $200 million. The deal, Vimeo’s fifth in the field, is expected to help the platform grow its presence in social video, and will move Magisto’s employees based in Israel and California to Vimeo’s office in New York. “Magisto’s proprietary technology enables cutting edge mobile apps and AI-powered editing tools which, combined with Vimeo’s scale and unmatched creator community, will empower more people to tell compelling stories through video,” said Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud. Continue reading Vimeo Acquires Magisto, Makes Move Toward Social Video

Facebook is bringing back FMV (full motion video) games, which use pre-recorded video files to display action. With the work of Facebook AI Research scientists, the new FMV games are much improved, with a system that can extract controllable characters from real-world videos and then control their motion, thus generating new image sequences. Facebook AI Research scientists, in collaboration with Tel Aviv University, also unveiled a system that, unsupervised, converts audio of one singer to the voice of another. Continue reading Facebook Uses AI to Improve Games, Swap Singers’ Voices

Gamers have discovered a way to use machine learning to improve the graphics of older games. Called “AI upscaling,” the technique uses an algorithm to take a low-resolution image and, based on training data, generates a version with more pixels. Although upping the resolution of images is not new, machine learning has improved both the speed and the quality of the end result. On the r/GameUpscale subreddit, which is moderated by Norwegian teacher and student Daniel Trolie, users share “tips and tricks” on the practice. Continue reading Machine Learning Is Being Used to Upscale Classic Games

Disney Research and Rutgers University scientists just created an end-to-end model using artificial intelligence to produce a storyboard and video featuring text from movie screenplays. This kind of text-to-animation model is not new, but this research advances the state-of-the-art by producing animations without annotated data or pre-training. The researchers wrote that the system is “capable of handling complex sentences” and is intended to make creatives’ work “more efficient and less tedious.” Continue reading Disney, Rutgers Scientists Use AI to Generate Storyboards

Autocratic countries are moving towards China’s version of the Internet — limited content and controlled data — as a way of ensuring their own continued power and mimicking the success of Chinese corporations such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings. Vietnam, Thailand, India and Russia are among those embracing a government-controlled model. China has also become the first government to intentionally use artificial intelligence for racial profiling, in this case its 11 million Uighurs, a Muslim minority group. Continue reading China’s Internet Model Gains Popularity Among Autocracies

Quantum computing is coming and it’s safe to say that only a handful of people know what it is. At NAB 2019, USC Viterbi School of Engineering Ph.D. candidate Bibek Pokharel did an excellent job of breaking down the basics. First, according to quantum computer scientists, all the computers we have used thus far are “classical computers.” Although IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rigetti and D-Wave have built quantum computers, the task is so incredibly complex that you won’t be able to purchase one at Best Buy. Continue reading Quantum Computing Era Approaches as Moore’s Law Ends

Overcoming the uncanny valley of emotion is the major challenge of AI when creating a virtual human, according to Armando Kirwin, co-founder of Artie. He spoke at the NAB panel titled “AI in Media and Entertainment: Driving the Future, New Content Formats – Immersive.” HP’s Joanna Popper moderated the panel that also included Digital Domain’s John Canning, Lillian Diaz-Przybyl from Butcher Bird Studios, and Baobab Studios’ Kane Lee. The panel discussion ranged from synthetic characters and evolving views on acceptable versus realistic behavior, to what happens when your smart speaker becomes a virtual character. Continue reading Industry Panel on Latest AI Trends in Media & Entertainment

IEEE Ethically Aligned Design outreach committee co-chair Maya Zuckerman presided over an NAB 2019 panel examining the thorny issues surrounding ethics and artificial intelligence. With Augmented Leadership Institute chief executive Sari Stenfors and Corto chief executive Yves Bergquist, who is lead of AI and neuroscience at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, the consensus was there is too much focus on AI creating dystopian outcomes. In fact, Stenfors strongly believes AI can contribute to a utopian society. Continue reading Experts Examine Ethical Implications of Artificial Intelligence

At 30 Ninjas, chief executive Julina Tatlock noted that “the urge for immersion” is one of the chief disruptors that she and her partner, director Doug Liman, see in the M&E industry today. Whether it’s augmented reality, virtual reality or 360-degree imagery, she challenged the members of an NAB 2019 panel on emerging entertainment to pick the one they think will impact production in the next two years. Greenlight Insights VR/AR analyst Alexis Macklin picked all of them — plus cloud computing and AI tools. Continue reading Innovators, Analysts Examine New Entertainment Paradigms

At the NAB 2019’s Broadcast Cybersecurity course, Emblematic Group founder/chief executive Nonny de la Peña introduced deep fakes by showing pairs of images and asking the audience to call out which was fake and which was real. From paired images of Presidents Obama and Trump, among others, audience members were consistently unable to pick the correct “fake” image. University of Washington researchers created a very convincing — but fake — video of Barack Obama, she revealed, by using neural network AI and 14 hours of Obama footage. Continue reading Another Perspective on Deep Fakes: Threat and Opportunity

At a panel during this year’s NAB Show, Unity Technologies head of cinematics Adam Myhill reported that video game revenue has topped movie revenue for the last two years. “The top 25 IPs in the world are games now, and some of them are worth $10 billion, which is staggering,” he said. “On a quarterly basis, more people play Unity games than watch TV. Games reach three billion people, and the world’s population is a little more than twice that.” The point was, with such massive scale, games are bound to influence movies and other entertainment. Continue reading Impact of Multiplayer Games on Entertainment and Cinema

Before an NAB 2019 panel discussion on machine learning and artificial intelligence in filmmaking began, Corto chief executive Yves Bergquist wanted to make one thing clear. “AI and machine learning are used interchangeably,” said Bergquist, who also leads research in AI and neurosciences at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center. “But they are not. Machine learning is a property of AI. The ML app will have opinions about the data, but AI will use ML to have agency over that data and take action.” Bergquist asked the panel how filmmakers can leverage ML and AI to create optimization and efficiencies as well as better artistic content. Continue reading How AI & Machine Learning Tools Could Benefit Filmmaking

Amazon introduced AWS Deep Learning Containers, a collection of Docker images preinstalled with preferred deep learning frameworks, with the aim of making it more seamless to get AI-enabled apps on Amazon Web Services. At AWS, general manager of deep learning Dr. Matt Wood noted that the company has “done all the hard work of building, compiling, and generating, configuring, optimizing all of these frameworks,” taking that burden off of app developers. The container images are all “preconfigured and validated by Amazon.” Continue reading AWS Tool Aims to Simplify the Creation of AI-Powered Apps