Baidu's research arm announced yesterday that its 2017 text-to-speech (TTS) system Deep Voice has learned how to imitate a person's voice using a mere three seconds of voice sample data. The technique, known as voice cloning, could be used to personalize virtual assistants such as Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa; and Baidu's Mandarin virtual assistant platform DuerOS, which supports 50 million devices in China with human-machine conversational interfaces. In healthcare, voice cloning has helped patients who lost their voices by building a duplicate. Voice cloning may even find traction in the entertainment industry and in social media as a tool for satirists. Baidu researchers implemented two approaches: speaker adaption and speaker encoding.

China aims to implement artificial intelligence technology in at least half of all its new cars by 2020 and cover 90 percent of its big cities and highways with a wireless network that can support smart vehicles, its top state planner said on Friday. These goals are part of a draft for a national smart car strategy that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) wants to seek public feedback for, it said in a statement. China is aiming to become a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2025. Smart cars are a key part of the project. The NDRC said it wanted to build a national team with officials from the State Council to guide smart car innovation and planned to encourage the launch of preferential policies for related businesses which could include tax cuts.

In July 2009, deadly riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, China. Nearly 200 people died, the majority ethnic Han Chinese, and thousands of Chinese troops were brought in to quell the riots. An information battle soon followed, as mobile phone and internet service was cut off in the entire province. For the next 10 months, web access would be almost non-existent in Xinjiang, a vast region larger than Texas with a population of over 20 million. It was one of the most widespread, longest internet shutdowns ever.

Israeli TV to smartphone audio company Tunity has announced a $12 million Series A financing round from existing investors including former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and WeWork founder and CEO Adam Neumann, as well as new investors, including MGM Resorts International. Headquartered in New York and with its development center in Tel Aviv, Tunity has developed deep learning and computer vision based technology to produce an app that allows users to stream and hear live audio from muted televisions directly on their smartphones. Tunity will use the funding to complete the development of its data product, which is already attracting significant interest from television networks and advertisers, as well as to enhance its patented cloud-based Deep Learning and Computer Vision technology. Since its launch, the Tunity app has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times, further proving the company's value proposition to consumers through organic adoption and continued usage. After a user scans a nearby television screen, the Tunity app identifies the live video stream and its exact timing, syncing the audio with the user's mobile device.

The AI (chipsets) market is expected to grow from USD 7.06 Billion in 2018 to USD 59.26 Billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 35.5% from 2018 to 2025. The major drivers for the growth of this market are increasingly large and complex dataset driving the need for AI and the adoption of AI for improving consumer services. Moreover, the increasing number of AI applications, improving computing power, and declining hardware cost are propelling the market growth. In the technology segment, machine learning holds the largest share of the AI (chipsets) market. Moreover, the market for computer vision is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2018 to 2025.

The Treasury Committee is launching an inquiry into digital currencies, which are attracting a great deal of interest after the spectacular rise of bitcoin last year. It will assess the potential risks and benefits bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies could bring to individuals, businesses and the Government. It will also consider the impact regulation could have, and whether or not it could protect people and organisations without stifling innovation. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

When a Google computer program beat the world's best player of an ancient Chinese board game last May, it might have seemed like an incremental milestone. But for some, the success of the program known as AlphaGo marked more than a man vs. machine clash. It set up a broader race between China and the United States over artificial intelligence, a competition that could mold the future of humankind just as the widespread arrival of electricity did in the last century. The Go tournament took place in Wuzhen, a city of canals that is more than 1,300 years old, a fitting venue for a competition involving the strategy board game Go that has been played for several thousand years. Go is renowned for its complexity, and it is said that there are more variations to the game than there are atoms in the universe. Perhaps it was a coincidence of timing, but the AlphaGo competition kicked off events that demonstrated China's resolve to close the gap with -- and quickly surpass -- the United States in deploying artificial intelligence, or AI.

According to the common understanding (and Wikipedia), the technological singularity refers to a point in time when artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. As a marketer first and futurist second, I have always had a slightly different definition of the singularity. I believe it is the time when companies and governments simply can no longer keep up with technological change. I think we have reached that point. Over the long span of human history, technological changes have sped up remarkable. China had an almost 2000 year monopoly on the product of silk before Japanese travelers stole a few worms and abducted a handful of crafty maidens.

Large parts of an upcoming update to Destiny 2 have been delayed to make them better, developers Bungie have said. A range of new features were expected to arrive in the coming weeks, including changes to the multiplayer Crucible mode and new weapons. But many of them have now been delayed so that they can be as good as they can be, according to Bungie. "With today's update we've moved a few items out to later releases – this is because we are trying to ensure each feature we add hits a sufficiently high quality bar," developers said in an update. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.