• Friday, Apr. 14, 2023
Amazon's Jassy says AI will be a "big deal" for company
Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, attends the premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" at The Culver Studios on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, in Culver City, Calif. Jassy signaled confidence the company will get costs under control in his annual letter to shareholders, Thursday, April 13, 2023. The company has spent the past few months cutting unprofitable parts of its business, shuttering stores and slashing 29,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy signaled confidence that the company will get costs under control in his annual shareholder letter, where he also noted the tech giant was "spending heavily" on AI tools that have gained popularity in recent months.

In the letter, Jassy described 2022 as "one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory" and detailed the steps Amazon had taken to trim costs, such as shuttering its health care initiative Amazon Care and some stores across the country. The company had also slashed 27,000 corporate roles since the fall, marking the biggest rounds of layoffs in its history.

"There are a number of other changes that we've made over the last several months to streamline our overall costs, and like most leadership teams, we'll continue to evaluate what we're seeing in our business and proceed adaptively," Jassy wrote.

The company's profitable cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services also faces "short-term headwinds right now," despite growing 29% year-over-year in 2022 on a $62 billion revenue base, Jassy wrote. He noted challenges for the unit stem from companies spending more cautiously in the face of challenging current macroeconomic conditions.

Despite the cuts and "turbulent" times, Jassy said he strongly believes Amazon's "best days are in front of us."

The Seattle company will continue to invest in specialized chips most used for machine learning, its advertising business as well as generative AI tools. The tools are part of a new generation of machine-learning systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand and produce novel images and video based on what they've learned from a vast database of digital books and online text.

"Let's just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon," Jassy wrote, using the abbreviated version of Large Language Models, or AI that can mimic human writing styles based on data they've ingested.

On Thursday, Amazon also announced several new services that will allow developers to build their own AI tools on its cloud infrastructure.

 

  • Thursday, Apr. 6, 2023
RED Digital Cinema launches RED Connect Module for 8K live cinematic streaming
RED Connect Module
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. -- 

RED Digital Cinema® has announced the availability of the RED Connect Module for RED’s V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL cameras. The new module allows users to unlock the capabilities of up to 8K live cinematic streaming via the RED Connect solution. RED Connect enables users the ability to real-time stream RAW R3D files direct from the V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL camera systems over IP to a camera control unit (CCU), opening a range of creative applications from live broadcast to virtual production to true 8K VR.

The RED Connect Module is a turn-key solution for customers to access the wide-ranging capabilities of RED Connect. With a compact form-factor and easy connectivity, the module attaches securely to the back of the V-Raptor or V-Raptor XL via the camera’s V-Lock battery mechanism. The high-speed data connection is created by connecting the module to the camera’s CFexpress media slot.

The module allows for live streaming of up to 8K at 120FPS or 4K at 240FPS, as well as all other frame rate and resolution combinations offered by the camera. It also supports simultaneous streaming and recording from the CCU. The module offers Genlock and timecode synchronization of multiple cameras using PTP (SMPTE ST 2059-2) and up to 10 Gbps connection via a single-mode LC connector.

“We are extremely excited to officially launch RED Connect and the new module,” said Jeff Goodman, RED Digital Cinema VP of product management. “Live streaming of full-quality R3Ds over IP at every resolution and framerate, combined with RED’s sensor capabilities, creates an entirely new paradigm for content creation and broadcast. In early release testing, our customers have been blowing us away by what they have been able to produce. We’re excited to see what’s next creatively now that RED Connect’s flexible, open ecosystem is available to take content creation to the next level.”

The RED Connect system extends the camera’s capabilities in virtual productions and new production environments such as live XR. Users can simplify their camera setup by reducing SDI cables, timecode and genlock devices, and other connections to a single ethernet cable to reduce points of failure. In the world of XR, users can stream 8K 60p content straight from the camera to any end device. The increased resolution pushes the visual experience into an entirely new immersive world, especially when viewed in a VR headset environment.

RED’s innovative partners, including COSM, Media.Monks, and NVIDIA, have been deploying and testing RED Connect and the module in real-world applications over the past 18 months.

“The opportunity to leverage uncompressed 8K end-to-end presents a tremendous opportunity for broadcasters, filmmakers and immersive video in particular,” noted Lewis Smithingham, Media.Monks SVP of innovation. “Uncompressed 8K delivers on the promise of VR, and when combined with stereo lensing, produces a sense of presence never experienced before.” 

For varying use cases, the RED Connect Module can be deployed by adapting the CCU design. The flexibility of the CCU allows for real-time AI processing using RED’s SDK and NVIDIA professional GPUs for graphic intensive workflows with complete SMPTE 2110 implementation or options for one to two frames of latency for 8K and 4K IP broadcast and everything in-between.

The RED Connect Module is priced at $14,995, with RED Connect licenses available for one year or as a perpetual license. A one-month option will be available soon. Pricing for the RED Connect feature varies based on the length of licensing agreement. RED will showcase RED Connect with the module at the 2023 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, including demonstrations of live streaming of 8K60P to VR headsets enabled by Microsoft and Meta at the Microsoft booth (#W1529).

  • Monday, Mar. 27, 2023
Former IBM CEO on AI, layoffs, women leaders in tech
This photo provided by Frontier PR shows former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. After retiring from IBM in 2020, Rometty spent two years writing “Good Power," a book she describes as a “memoir with purpose." She recently spoke with The Associated Press about her career and the state of the tech industry now. (Jens Umbach, Frontier PR via AP)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 

The buzz surrounding artificial intelligence and the mass layoffs roiling the technology industry resonates with Ginni Rometty, whose nearly 40-year career at IBM culminated in her becoming CEO in 2012.

Just before Rometty became IBM's first woman CEO, the company's AI-powered computer Watson outwitted two of the most successful contestants in the history of the game show "Jeopardy!"

Rometty, 65, also had to occasionally jettison employees in an extension of cost-cutting layoffs that began in the 1990s as IBM adjusted to waves of technological upheaval that undercut its revenue.

After retiring from IBM in 2020, Rometty spent two years writing "Good Power, " a book she describes as a "memoir with purpose." She recently spoke with The Associated Press about her career and the state of the tech industry now.

Q: In your book, you mentioned you graduated from Northwestern in 1979 with just $4,000 in student debt. What do you think of the current debate about student debt relief?

Rometty: Whether or not we have debt forgiveness, the bigger issue is around the educational institutions. I feel strongly universities should not be the only pathway in this country. Fifty percent of good jobs in this country are over credentialed. They require a degree when you don't really need one. Somewhere at the end of World War II, the American dream got attached to this idea that it's college or bust.

We have to have more accountability for community colleges and colleges so they teach what the market needs. And I don't mean hard skills, I mean the soft skills the market needs. And they don't do that today because even if you get a degree you often can't get a job.

Q: What are your thoughts about the current state of AI, especially with so much attention centered on Microsoft's use of the ChatGPT language tool?

Rometty: I am a bit worried about that, I want to be sure we bring AI safely into the world. One thing I learned in the early days of AI is that this is a people and trust issue. It is not a technology issue. Because of how fast ChatGPT has spread, people almost immediately noticed it wasn't always right yet it acted authoritatively and it did some things that our values didn't appreciate.

You have to manage the upside and downside of the technology in parallel. And that is not what has always happened with technology. We have celebrated all the positives and then all of a sudden said, "Oh, oh, there are some bad things here." I think this is our chance to at least be signaling to the public, "Hey understand, this has got downsides and upsides."

Q: Is it important for governments to impose regulations on AI?

Rometty: In fairness to lawmakers, do you think they really understand this? What we need is something I call "precision regulation" because I am afraid that in an effort to control AI we will completely inhibit the positive side of it. We will lose the upside as we try to manage the downside.

If you go to the doctor and say, "My finger hurts," you don't want to cut your arm off, right? My example of precision regulation is to regulate its use, not the technology. Talk about the areas you think it's OK to use it in and the area where you think it should not be used in. I think it is impossible to regulate the technology itself.

Q: Have you been surprised by the magnitude of layoffs sweeping the tech industry?

Rometty: I think you are seeing everyone reacting to the environment. Those that over hired (during the pandemic) are adjusting. I also think you see a reaction in this economy to what is being valued as not growth at any price. It's profitable growth. You have to be efficient.

And so now I think for the very first time efficiency is entering the picture for some companies. It may be because the environment changed. It may be because someone attacks your business model. So what you are seeing is a recalibration reacting to the external environment.

Q: How do you think Elizabeth Holmes' recent conviction for fraud while she was running Theranos has affected the perception of women leaders in tech?

Rometty: To me, she doesn't define the future of women in tech. I consider that situational. I think there are things to learn from it, but I think it speaks more to the great hope that people have for technology. You don't want to set the expectation so high that you can't make it.

  • Thursday, Mar. 23, 2023
Scandal-plagued Japan tech giant Toshiba gets tender offer
The logo of Toshiba Corp. is seen at a company's building in Kawasaki near Tokyo, on Feb. 19, 2022. Scandal-embattled Japanese electronics and technology manufacturer Toshiba has accepted a 2 trillion yen ($15 billion) tender offer from Japan Industrial Partners, a buyout fund made up of the nation’s major banks and companies. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama, File)
TOKYO (AP) -- 

Scandal-embattled Japanese electronics and technology manufacturer Toshiba has accepted a 2 trillion yen ($15 billion) tender offer from Japan Industrial Partners, a buyout fund made up of major banks and companies.

If the proposal succeeds, it will be a major step in Toshiba's yearslong turnaround effort, allowing it to go private and delist from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. But overseas activist investors own a significant part of Toshiba's shares, and it's unclear if they will be happy with the latest bid.

Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. announced its board accepted the bid at 4,620 yen ($36) a share late Thursday, after trading closed in Tokyo. Toshiba closed at 4,213 yen ($32) a share Thursday, and gained 4.3% to 4,395 yen ($34) on Friday.

The move comes at a time of market jitters over ripple effects from the recent collapse of banks in the U.S.

The buyout would keep Toshiba's business Japanese in an alliance with Japanese partners.

Japan Industrial Partners, set up in 2002 to restructure Japanese companies, lists big names among where it has invested, such as Sony, Hitachi, Olympus and NEC.

The consortium includes about 20 Japanese companies, such as Orix Corp., a financial services company, electronics manufacturer Rohm Co. and the megabanks such as Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., according to Japanese media reports.

The deep troubles at Toshiba began with a sprawling accounting scandal in 2015, involving books being doctored for years. That added to its woes related to its nuclear energy business.

Its U.S. nuclear arm Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017, after years of deep losses as safety costs soared. Toshiba is also involved in the decommissioning effort at the Fukushima nuclear plant heavily damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

Toshiba has gone through several presidents over the years, as the brand once prized for making household appliances, laptops, batteries and computer chips, became the target of overseas activist shareholders.

The latest proposal still needs to go through regulatory reviews in several countries, including the U.S., Vietnam, Germany and Morocco. The process is expected to take several months.

Toshiba has been trying to go private in recent years. Proposals to split Toshiba into three, and then two, companies were rejected by shareholders. Delisting would allow Toshiba to leave behind the activist investors.

Toshiba had its humble beginnings in a telegraph equipment factory in 1875. The brand had been synonymous with the power of modern Japan's manufacturing sector. It has sold parts of its operations, including its flash-memory business, now known as Kioxia, although Toshiba remains a stakeholder in Kioxia.

Whether Toshiba can get back on a solid growth track remains uncertain. Last month, Toshiba lowered its profit forecast for the fiscal year through March to 130 billion yen ($1 billion), down from an earlier projection for a 190 billion yen ($1.5 billion) profit.

  • Thursday, Mar. 23, 2023
Lars Weyer appointed new exec board member & CFO at ARRI
Lars Weyer
MUNICH -- 

Lars Weyer has been appointed as new executive board member and chief financial officer (CFO) of ARRI. In this position, Weyer is responsible for the finance, human resources, IT, and facility management departments.

“The expansion of the executive board to include a CFO underscores the path we have already taken towards a faster and more flexible organization with strong business units,” explains Prof. Dr. Hans-Joerg Bullinger, chairman of ARRI’s supervisory board. 

Weyer added, “I would like to thank the owners and the supervisory board for their trust and am very much looking forward to my new tasks. It is very important to me to create the best possible conditions so that ARRI can continue to be a successful technology company in the future.”

Weyer joined ARRI on March 1, 2019, initially in an advisory capacity as part of the rental U.S. restructuring. In October 2019, he became head of finance for the ARRI Group, responsible for controlling, accounting, treasury, consolidation, and tax. Weyer was instrumental in driving the professionalization of the finance department, managed M&A projects from a finance perspective, and set the course for the realignment of the finance department at ARRI. Prior to ARRI and after completing his business studies, Weyer worked as a consultant for major management consultancies as well as in various management roles, including CEO and CFO, at international companies in different industries.

  • Tuesday, Mar. 21, 2023
Sohonet acquires 5th Kind to create cloud workflow collaboration hub
Chuck Parker
LOS ANGELES -- 

Sohonet has acquired 5th Kind, a cloud-based video collaboration platform for the film and TV production industry. Over the last decade, 5th Kind has helped thousands of creatives streamline their increasingly complex workflows with a cloud-based asset management and discovery platform that enables key stakeholders to securely collaborate at global scale, across the entire content lifecycle.

Sohonet’s real-time remote collaboration technology and world-class media network combined with 5th Kind’s near-time dailies review functionality and powerful asset workflow platform will provide a secure, integrated and scalable collaborative experience for filmmakers. The pairing will unlock significant opportunities for productions to reduce costs and timelines, especially as more creative workflows centralize assets and workflows in the cloud.

“Content creation today is increasingly global, complex and data intensive,” said Chuck Parker, CEO of Sohonet. “As Sohonet becomes a creative-centric asset hub and workflow management platform, we are focused on connecting industry talent with the tools and resources they need, to the many places that they now work--on set, on-prem facilities, at home, private, public or hybrid cloud infrastructure locations.”

On what changes this will bring to the industry, Parker noted, “With more than 60 production facility partners supporting high-speed on-set communications for over 700 soundstages at premium locations across the globe, we believe we will soon deliver on the much-discussed efficiency and effectiveness of cloud-first workflows by enabling the near-time upload of original camera files (OCF) from the production’s video village directly to the cloud.”

Parker added, “Productions will no longer be required to spend time and energy on a bifurcated workflow where proxies created on set for editorial and full resolution video assets are sent to the post partner via hard drives. By delivering the OCF directly into public, private or hybrid cloud repositories, productions can choose to anchor their postproduction workflows in the cloud. This allows their postproduction partners and creatives from around the world to collaborate quickly and cost effectively.”

“Real-time collaboration between often geographically dispersed creative teams is a critical success factor for driving efficiency and generating commercial returns,” said Joe Zaller, founder of Devoncroft Partners, a market research and strategic consulting firm in the M&E Industry. “So, it makes sense that Sohonet would seek to expand its services by adding 5th Kind to its portfolio.”

Parker concluded, “As we integrate 5th Kind capabilities more deeply into Sohonet, we are excited and energized about the opportunity to provide our connected storytellers the power of asset search, identification and workflow orchestration as they navigate and mitigate the complexity of today’s content creation workflows.”

  • Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2023
Silicon Valley Bank's demise disrupts the disruptors in tech
FDIC member Dedra Dorn distributes "frequently asked questions" hand outs to individuals at the Silicon Valley Bank's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, March 13, 2023. The federal government intervened Sunday to secure funds for depositors to withdraw from Silicon Valley Bank after the banks collapse. Dozens of individuals waited in line outside the bank to withdraw funds. (AP Photo/ Benjamin Fanjoy)

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse rattled the technology industry that had been the bank's backbone, leaving shell-shocked entrepreneurs thankful for the government reprieve that saved their money while they mourned the loss of a place that served as a chummy club of innovation.

"They were the gold standard, it almost seemed weird if you were in tech and didn't have a Silicon Valley Bank account," Stefan Kalb, CEO of Seattle startup Shelf Engine, said during a Monday interview as he started the process of transferring millions of dollars to other banks.

The Biden administration's move guaranteeing all Silicon Valley Bank's deposits above the insured limit of $250,000 per account resulted in a "palpable sigh of relief" in Israel, where its booming tech sector is "connected with an umbilical cord to Silicon Valley," said Jon Medved, founder of the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

But the gratitude for the deposit guarantees that will allow thousands of tech startups to continue to pay their workers and other bills was mixed with moments of reflection among entrepreneurs and venture capital partners rattled by Silicon Valley Bank's downfall.

The crisis "has forced every company to reassess their banking arrangements and the companies that they work with," said Rajeeb Dey, CEO of London-based startup Learnerbly, a platform for workplace learning.

Entrepreneurs who had deposited all their startups' money in Silicon Valley Bank are now realizing it makes more sense to spread their funds across several institutions, with the biggest banks considered safer harbors.

Kalb started off Monday by opening an account at the largest in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, which has about $2.4 trillion in deposits. That's 13 times more than the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S.

Bank of America is getting some of the money that Electric Era had deposited at Silicon Valley Bank, and the Seattle startup's CEO, Quincy Lee, expects having no difficulty finding other candidates to keep the rest of his company's money as part of its diversification plan.

"Any bank is happy to take a startup's money," Lee said.

Even so, there are fears it will be more difficult to finance the inherently risky ideas underlying tech startups that became a specialty of Silicon Valley Bank since its founding over a poker game in 1983, just as the advent of the personal computer and faster microprocessors unleashed more innovation.

Silicon Valley quickly established itself as the "go-to" spot for venture capitalists looking for financial partners more open to unconventional business proposals than its bigger, more established peers who still didn't have a good grasp of technology.

"They understood startups, they understood venture capital," said Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, commercializing a process to make low-carbon cement. "They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I'm part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer."

Venture capitalists set up their accounts at Silicon Valley Bank just as the tech industry started its boom and then advised the entrepreneurs that they funded to do the same.

That cozy relationship came to an end when the bank disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on low-yielding bonds that were purchased before interest rates began to spike last year, raising alarms among its financially savvy customer base who used the fruits of technology to spread warnings that turned into a calamitous run on deposits.

Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of venture funder AllegisCyber Capital, likened last week's flood of withdrawal demands from Silicon Valley Bank to a self-inflicted wound by "a circular firing squad" intent on "shooting your best friend."

Many of Silicon Valley Bank's roughly 8,500 employees now find themselves hanging in limbo, too, even though government regulators now overseeing the operations have told them they will be offered jobs at 1.5 times their salaries for 45 days, said Rob McMillan, who had worked there for 32 years.

"We don't know who's going to pay us when," McMillan said. "I think we all missed a paycheck. We don't know if we have benefits."

Even though all of Silicon Valley Bank's depositors are being made whole, its demise is expected to leave a void in the technology sector that may be difficult to fill. In an essay that he posted on his LinkedIn page, prominent venture capitalist Michael Moritz compared Silicon Valley Bank to a "cherished local market where people behind the counters know the names of their customers, have a ready smile but still charge the going price when they sell a cut of meat."

Silicon Valley Bank is fading away at a time when startups were already having a tougher go at raising money, with a downturn in technology stock values and a steady ride in interest rates caused venture capitalists to retrench. The bank often helped fill the financial gaps with one of its specialties — loans known as "venture debt" because it was woven into the funding provided by its venture capitalist customers.

"There's going to be a lot of great ideas, a lot of great teams that don't get funding because the barriers to entry are too high or because there are not enough people who are willing to invest," said William Lin, co-founder of cybersecurity startup Symmetry Systems and a partner at the venture capital firm ForgePoint.

With Silicon Valley Bank gone and venture capitalists pulling in their reins, Lin expects there will be fewer startups getting money to pursue ideas in the same fields of technology. If that happens, he foresees a winnowing of competition that will eventually make the biggest tech companies even stronger than they already are.

"There's a real day of reckoning coming in the startup world," predicted Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable.

That may be true, but entrepreneurs like Lee and Kalb already feel like they had been through an emotional wringer after spending the weekend worrying that all their hard work would go down a drain if they couldn't get their money out of Silicon Valley Bank.

"It was like being stuck inside a doomsday loop," Lee said.

Even as he focuses on growing Shelf Engine's business of helping grocers managing their food orders, he vowed not to forget "a very hard lesson."

"I obviously now know banks aren't as safe as I used to think they were," he said.

Michael Liedtke is an AP technology writer. AP writers Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Ami Bentov in Tel Aviv; Kelvin Chan in London; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; Frank Bajak in Boston and Cathy Bussewitz and Cora Lewis in New York contributed to this story.

  • Wednesday, Mar. 8, 2023
From marketing to design, brands adopt AI tools despite risk
This illustration released by Instacart depicts the grocery delivery company's app which can integrate ChatGPT to answer customers' food questions. (Instacart, Inc. via AP)

Even if you haven't tried artificial intelligence tools that can write essays and poems or conjure new images on command, chances are the companies that make your household products are already starting to do so.

Mattel has put the AI image generator DALL-E to work by having it come up with ideas for new Hot Wheels toy cars. Used vehicle seller CarMax is summarizing thousands of customer reviews with the same "generative" AI technology that powers the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, Snapchat is bringing a chatbot to its messaging service. And the grocery delivery company Instacart is integrating ChatGPT to answer customers' food questions.

Coca-Cola plans to use generative AI to help create new marketing content. And while the company hasn't detailed exactly how it plans to deploy the technology, the move reflects the growing pressure on businesses to harness tools that many of their employees and consumers are already trying on their own.

"We must embrace the risks," said Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey in a recent video announcing a partnership with startup OpenAI — maker of both DALL-E and ChatGPT — through an alliance led by the consulting firm Bain. "We need to embrace those risks intelligently, experiment, build on those experiments, drive scale, but not taking those risks is a hopeless point of view to start from."

Indeed, some AI experts warn that businesses should carefully consider potential harms to customers, society and their own reputations before rushing to embrace ChatGPT and similar products in the workplace.

"I want people to think deeply before deploying this technology," said Claire Leibowicz of The Partnership on AI, a nonprofit group founded and sponsored by the major tech providers that recently released a set of recommendations for companies producing AI-generated synthetic imagery, audio and other media. "They should play around and tinker, but we should also think, what purpose are these tools serving in the first place?"

Some companies have been experimenting with AI for a while. Mattel revealed its use of OpenAI's image generator in October as a client of Microsoft, which has a partnership with OpenAI that enables it to integrate its technology into Microsoft's cloud computing platform.

But it wasn't until the November 30 release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a free public tool, that widespread interest in generative AI tools began seeping into workplaces and executive suites.

"ChatGPT really sort of brought it home how powerful they were," said Eric Boyd, a Microsoft executive who leads its AI platform. "That's changed the conversation in a lot of people's minds where they really get it on a deeper level. My kids use it and my parents use it."

There is reason for caution, however. While text generators like ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing chatbot can make the process of writing emails, presentations and marketing pitches faster and easier, they also have a tendency to confidently present misinformation as fact. Image generators trained on a huge trove of digital art and photography have raised copyright concerns from the original creators of those works.

"For companies that are really in the creative industry, if they want to make sure that they have copyright protection for (the outputs of) those models, that's still an open question," said attorney Anna Gressel of the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, which advises businesses on how to use AI.

A safer use has been thinking of the tools as a brainstorming "thought partner" that won't produce the final product, Gressel said.

"It helps create mock ups that then are going to be turned by a human into something that is more concrete," she said.

And that also helps ensure that humans don't get replaced by AI. Forrester analyst Rowan Curran said the tools should speed up some of the "nitty-gritty" of office tasks — much like previous innovations such as word processors and spell checkers — rather than putting people out of work, as some fear.

"Ultimately it's part of the workflow," Curran said. "It's not like we're talking about having a large language model just generate an entire marketing campaign and have that launch without expert senior marketers and all kinds of other controls."

For consumer-facing chatbots getting integrated into smartphone apps, it gets a little trickier, Curran said, with a need for guardrails around technology that can respond to users' questions in unexpected ways.

Public awareness fueled growing competition between cloud computing providers Microsoft, Amazon and Google, which sell their services to big organizations and have the massive computing power needed to train and operate AI models. Microsoft announced earlier this year it was investing billions more dollars into its partnership with OpenAI, though it also competes with the startup as a direct provider of AI tools.

Google, which pioneered advancements in generative AI but has been cautious about introducing them to the public, is now playing catch up to capture its commercial possibilities including an upcoming Bard chatbot. Facebook parent Meta, another AI research leader, builds similar technology but doesn't sell it to businesses in the same way as its big tech peers.

Amazon has taken a more muted tone, but makes its ambitions clear through its partnerships — most recently an expanded collaboration between its cloud computing division AWS and the startup Hugging Face, maker of a ChatGPT rival called Bloom.

Hugging Face decided to double down on its Amazon partnership after seeing the explosion of demand for generative AI products, said Clement Delangue, the startup's co-founder and CEO. But Delangue contrasted his approach with competitors such as OpenAI, which doesn't disclose its code and datasets.

Hugging Face hosts a platform that allows developers to share open-source AI models for text, image and audio tools, which can lay the foundation for building different products. That transparency is "really important because that's the way for regulators, for example, to understand these models and be able to regulate," he said.

It is also a way for "underrepresented people to understand where the biases can be (and) how the models have been trained," so that the bias can be mitigated, Delangue said.

Matt O'Brien & Haleluya Hadero are AP technology writers

  • Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2023
RED launches Super35 version of V-RAPTOR and V-RAPTOR XL cameras
RED's new V-RAPTOR 8K S35 models
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. -- 

RED Digital Cinema® has officially announced the availability of the V-RAPTOR 8K S35 and V-RAPTOR XL 8K S35 featuring RED’s powerful, new S35 sensor. The new 8K S35 sensor has the same fast cinema-quality sensor scan time as its 8K VV counterpart, which is twice as fast as previous generations while maintaining dynamic range with 16.5+ stops and coverage for Super 35mm lenses.

The V-RAPTOR XL 8K S35 also includes RED’s new integrated electronic ND system, allowing for precise control of density in 1/4, 1/3, and full stop increments, providing never before seen exposure and depth of field control.

“The V-RAPTOR and XL have produced some of the best imagery I’ve seen, and now that performance is available to the filmmakers who prefer the Super35 format,” said RED Digital Cinema president Jarred Land. “Not just from the users who love their vintage S35 lenses and the flexibility of 8K, but the shooters working in areas like wildlife filmmaking and broadcast television. We’re excited to start seeing what they create with the new S35 cameras.”

RED had released a limited-edition beta V-RAPTOR RHINO 8K S35 in November of 2022, to support the wildlife cinematography community who had been asking for a successor to the DSMC2 HELIUM workhorse.

The V-RAPTOR 8K S35 and V-RAPTOR XL 8K S35  are available for order directly via the RED website or through any of RED’s premium or authorized resellers. The standard V-RAPTOR 8K S35 is priced at $17,995 while the XL, which comes in either V-Lock or Gold Mount, is $34,995.

Filmmakers now have even more choices when choosing the Super35mm format. V-RAPTOR 8K VV can capture Super35 in 6K, providing users with the flexibility of seamlessly switching between Large Format and Super35, or the new V-RAPTOR 8K S35 for 8K resolution with all Super35mm glass. By capturing the full 35 megapixels of 8K compared to the 20 megapixels of 6K, filmmakers gain the immense flexibility of 8K image capture while in the Super35mm format.

The new systems serve a variety of productions-–wildlife, live events, and traditional cinema. Wildlife and natural history shooters who often shoot hundreds of feet from their subjects will benefit from the V-RAPTOR 8K S35’s compact and flexible set-up while still allowing for wide-range zoom lenses.

The S35 V-RAPTOR systems are a solution for broadcast productions striving for more cinematic imagery in final delivery. The new 8K S35 sensor provides shallower depth of field, slow-motion playback, and higher resolution in a format that supports the wide range of lenses required for live event coverage. Live 8K workflows using RED Connect--which is compatible with both V-RAPTOR and V-RAPTOR XL, unleashes the power of 8K in these environments, allowing for different framing to be pulled from a single camera position and controlled downstream for a more immersive production.

As with the VV versions of these two cameras, they’ll be available in pre-bundled packs, which allow customers to get shooting right away. The standard V-RAPTOR is available in both a Starter Pack and V-Lock and Gold Mount versions of a Production Pack, while the V-RAPTOR XL is available in both V-Lock and Gold Mount versions of the Production Pack.

  • Wednesday, Mar. 1, 2023
Metaverse in spotlight at MWC tech fair even as doubts arise
Visitors test a SK Telecom VR flight simulator during the Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Feb. 27, 2023. The four-day show kicks off Monday in a vast Barcelona conference center. It's the world's biggest and most influential meeting for the mobile tech industry. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu Parra)
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- 

I climbed into the front seat of the air taxi, buckled the seat belt and braced as the aircraft lifted off. The futuristic cityscape of Busan, South Korea, dropped away, and a digital avatar popped up on the windscreen with a message.

I couldn't answer as a wave of motion sickness hit me. The virtual reality goggles combined with motion-simulating seats pitching back and forth and side to side made it feel like I was actually hovering and maneuvering in the air. They also made me so nauseous I had to close my eyes for the rest of the three-minute journey.

Welcome to the metaverse — sort of.

South Korean company SK Telecom's air taxi mockup was one of the eye-catching demonstrations at MWC, or Mobile World Congress, the world's biggest telecom industry trade show. Tech companies and wireless carriers at this week's expo in Barcelona displayed advancements to connect people and businesses online, increasingly in new virtual reality worlds dubbed the metaverse.

Visitor Mark Varahona also felt woozy after trying the flight experience but is still considering buying a virtual reality headset, the hardware needed to enter any immersive digital universe.

"I was thinking to buy it before coming here. And maybe now I will buy them," he said. "They look quite nice."

The metaverse exploded in popularity after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in late 2021 pronounced it the next big thing for the internet, renaming his social media empire and socking tens of billions into the idea.

He portrayed it as 3D community where people can meet, work and play — doing everything from trying on digital clothes, holding a virtual meeting or taking a trip online.

But doubts about the viability of the metaverse have been creeping in as the initial hype wears off. Sales of virtual reality headsets in the U.S. slipped 2% by December from the previous year, according to NPD Research. Reality Labs, which makes Meta Quest headsets, posted an operating loss of $13.7 billion in 2022.

Meta has said it plans to hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse. When asked for an update, the company said, "Our expansion in Europe was always a long-term one planned over a number of years. We remain committed to Europe."

The "metaverse has not gone away," said Ben Wood, principal analyst at CCS Insight. "But I think there's a lot more skepticism about what role it's going to play, particularly in the consumer domain beyond the obvious areas of things like gaming."

The definition of the metaverse has been hard to pin down, adding to the skepticism. It is not the same as virtual reality and its cousin, augmented reality, said Tuong Nguyen, a Gartner analyst specializing in emerging technologies.

"So AR and VR very closely related to the metaverse in the same way that computers are related to the Internet," he said. "Think of it instead as evolution of the Internet, which changes the way that we interact with the world."

So how should SK Telecom's flight simulator be defined?

"Technically, it's not metaverse, but kind of metaverse," said Ken Wohn, a company manager.

South Korea's biggest telecom provider teamed up last year with California's Joby Aviation to develop an electric air taxi service to the country.

One day the air taxis might operate autonomously, using high-speed 5G wireless connections, Wohn said.

It was a different experience at French wireless company Orange's metaverse demonstration, where users were transported to a futuristic neon-hued technoscape with lightning bolts, giant robots and a falcon carrying a green orb in its talons.

A dancing figure appeared, representing the movements of a real-life dancer wearing motion-capture gear. It was a dazzling display, though what consumer purpose it had was not immediately clear.

Miguel Angel Almonacid, Orange's network strategy director for Spain, said it demonstrates how new 5G networks will eliminate lag for metaverse users watching something happening far away.

The metaverse might be more suited to practical purposes in the workplace, analysts said.

"That's where we'll see traction first because the barriers aren't as high," said Gartner's Nguyen. For example, a worker could use augmented reality glasses to pull up diagnostics or an instruction manual.

Spanish startup La Frontera uses the metaverse to provide virtual meetings with "realistic avatars," Marta Ortiz, a business development executive, said as she guided me through the company's metaverse.

We arrived first on a beach, with boulders, palm trees and a light blue sea. Her avatar appeared, a head and shoulders with disembodied hands hovering in front of her chest. We entered a nearby conference room with a boardroom table, where I used handheld controllers to pick up 3D objects like a toy ray gun and a bottle of Champagne.

Other metaverse applications include training for risky, repetitive or highly detailed procedures, like surgery.

The beach disappeared, replaced by an overturned tanker truck on fire. A fire extinguisher hung in midair. Ortiz told me to grab it with my virtual hand and spray it at the flames, which started to die down.

The virtual world also could be useful for showcasing products too big to move easily, like private jets.

Or they could be too small for humans.

The scene changed to a sci-fi setting, with crimson walls rising up around us, representing the inside of a blood vessel. Reddish-brown doughnut-shaped blood cells floated past, followed by spiky orbs. The blood vessel's wall opened up, exposing pulsing white streaks on a blue background, depicting neurons in a brain.

La Frontera works with pharmaceutical companies to "show how a drug works in the body at a cellular level," Ortiz said. In this case, it was a medicine to treat multiple sclerosis, which attacks brain neurons.

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