More and more companies are choosing to deploy AI-powered chatbots to deal with basic customer service inquiries. At the ongoing Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, the company has revealed the Gemini-powered chatbots its partners are working on, some of which you could end up interacting with. Best Buy, for instance, is using Google's technology to build virtual assistants that can help you troubleshoot product issues and reschedule order deliveries.
Apple is still on the hunt for the next revolutionary product to help it remain dominant in the market and to serve as new sources of revenue after abandoning its plans to develop an electric vehicle of its own.
The dream of quantum computing has always been exciting: What if we could build a machine working at the quantum level that could tackle complex calculations exponentially faster than a computer limited by classical physics?
Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.
Snapchat has a new AI-powered perk for subscribers: Bitmoji versions of your pet. The feature, which is unfortunately not called “petmoji,” allows users to snap a photo of their four-legged friend to create a cartoon-like avatar to accompany their Bitmoji in the Snap Map.
Amazon just launched an app that lets people sign up for its palm recognition service without having to head to an in-store kiosk. The Amazon One app uses a smartphone’s camera to take a photo of a palm print to set up an account. Once signed up, you can pay for stuff by using just your hand, ending the tyranny of having to carry a smartphone, cash or a burdensome plastic card.
Google just announced that it’s expanding its recently-launched Circle to Search tool to include language translation, as part of an update to various core services.
China has introduced guidelines that bar the the use of US processors from AMD and Intel in government computers and servers, The Financial Times has reported.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that the merger Three and Vodafone announced last year could lead to "substantial lessening of competition" and might conduct an in-depth investigation into the deal.