The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA), a new initiative to strengthen the governance of our open-source robotics software projects and ensure the health of the Robot Operating System (ROS) Suite community for many years to come. The OSRA will use a mixed membership and meritocratic model, following other successful foundations for open-source projects, including The Linux Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation. The OSRA is extending an open invitation to all community stakeholders to participate in the technical oversight, direction, development, and support of the OSRF's open source projects – ROS, Gazebo, Open-RMF, and their infrastructure. Involvement across the robotics ecosystem is crucial to this initiative. The center of the OSRA will be the Technical Governance Committee (TGC), which will oversee the activities of various Project Management Committees, Technical Committees, Special Interest Groups, and Working Groups.

Microsoft has announced that it's holding an event on March 21 that will focus on its upcoming generative AI devices and features. The event entitled "Advancing the new era of work with Copilot" will start at 9AM Pacific/12PM Eastern time that date. Microsoft promises to unveil "the latest in scaling AI in your environment with Copilot, Windows and Surface," but it has shared no other details on what its announcements could be. As Windows Central had previously reported, the company is expected to launch the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on March 21. They're apparently slated to be Microsoft's first AI PCs that will be equipped with the new Intel Core Ultra or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors.

Apple released its new MacBook Air on Monday, touting the updated device as being twice as fast as previous generations. The'world's most popular laptop' starts at 1,099 and features the tech giant's new M3 chip released in 2023. The upgraded chip increases speeds up to 60 percent faster than its M1 predecessor and makes it 13 times quicker than the Intel-based MacBook Air, Apple has claimed. The 13- and 1,299 15-inch screen options are currently available for pre-order starting today and deliveries are set for Friday, March 8, the company announced. 'MacBook Air is our most popular and loved Mac, with more customers choosing it over any other laptop.

The artificial intelligence boom is pushing demand for Nvidia's products past Wall Street's already lofty expectations. The chipmaker beat analyst expectations on Wednesday by leaps and bounds when it reported fourth-quarter earnings, posting 22.1bn in revenue on an expected 20.55bn and 4.93 in earnings per share against an expected 4.64. Revenue was 22% higher than the previous quarter, up 265% from a year ago. Nvidia's most closely watched earnings figure – revenue from data centers – was up more than 400% from the same period last year, reaching 18.4bn. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said in a press release, "Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations."

Call it a comeback--with consequences not just for Intel but also the US government's hopes of maintaining a lead in artificial intelligence. The troubled chipmaker's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, announced today that Intel is relaunching and expanding its foundry business, which manufactures chip designs for other companies. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also appeared at the Intel event, where he announced that his company will use Intel's relaunched foundry to make future chips. That's a major coup for the chipmaker as it seeks to become relevant again and compete with the world's leading foundry, Taiwan's TSMC, which makes chips for customers that include Apple and Google. "We will need a reliable supply of the most advanced high-performance and high-quality semiconductors," Nadella said.

AI Assistant in Adobe Acrobat, now in beta, is a new generative AI–powered conversational engine deeply integrated into Acrobat workflows, empowering everyone with the information inside their most important documents. As the creator of PDF, the world's most trusted digital document format, Adobe understands document challenges and opportunities well. Our continually evolving Acrobat PDF application, the gold standard for working with PDFs, is already used by more than half a billion customers to open around 400 billion documents each year. Starting immediately, customers will be able to use AI Assistant to work even more productively. All they need to do is open Acrobat on their desktop or the web and start working.

A coalition of 20 tech companies signed an agreement Friday to help prevent AI deepfakes in the critical 2024 elections taking place in more than 40 countries. OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Adobe and X are among the businesses joining the pact to prevent and combat AI-generated content that could influence voters. However, the agreement's vague language and lack of binding enforcement call into question whether it goes far enough. The list of companies signing the "Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections" includes those that create and distribute AI models, as well as social platforms where the deepfakes are most likely to pop up. The signees are Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Arm, ElevenLabs, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, LinkedIn, McAfee, Meta, Microsoft, Nota, OpenAI, Snap Inc., Stability AI, TikTok, Trend Micro, Truepic and X (formerly Twitter).

The groundbreaking artificial intelligence image-generating company Midjourney is considering banning people from using its software to make political images of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as part of an effort to avoid being used to distract from or misinform about the 2024 US presidential election. "I don't know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform," Midjourney's CEO, David Holz, said last week, adding that the company is close to "hammering" – or banning – political images, including those of the leading presidential candidates, "for the next 12 months". In a conversation with Midjourney users in a chatroom on Discord, as reported by Bloomberg, Holz went on to say: "I know it's fun to make Trump pictures – I make Trump pictures. Trump is aesthetically really interesting. However, probably better to just not, better to pull out a little bit during this election.

When OpenAI's ChatGPT opened a new era in tech, the industry's former AI champ, Google, responded by reorganizing its labs and launching a profusion of sometimes overlapping AI services. This included the Bard chatbot, workplace helper Duet AI, and a chatbot-style version of search. Now Google is consolidating many of its generative AI products under the banner of its latest AI model Gemini--and taking direct aim at OpenAI's subscription service ChatGPT Plus. Google announced today that Bard, its experimental chatbot hurriedly launched last March, is now called Gemini--taking the same name of the text, voice, and image capable AI model that started powering the Bard chatbot back in December. Gemini is also getting more prominent positioning among Google's services.

There are mornings when you can tell you're not feeling well just by looking in the mirror -- but a new AI'mirror' debuting this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) promises to tell you a whole lot more. The product (effectively a 21.5-inch vertical tablet with a mounted camera) tracks over 100 health parameters by scanning blood flow under the surface of your face. The device promises to detect signs of everything from high blood pressure, to fever symptoms, to depression or mental health risk, to 10-year stroke risk, to'facial skin age.' But it can also warn you if it thinks you are about to die. One telemedicine expert praised the device as'ideal for clinics, elder care homes.'