Even as AI assistants delve deeper into consumer hardware, companies still seem a bit reticent to bring them deep into their office software workflows. Jane.ai is aiming to bring natural language processing and intelligence into an employee-facing solution that lets people query a digital assistant to give them information about documents, meetings and general company knowledge. The St. Louis startup announced today that it is raising an $8.4 million Series A from private investors to power this vision. Jane lives inside apps like Slack and Skype for Business (in addition to its own web app) where users are already chatting with co-workers and may need to surface information quickly that they don't have ready access to. With Jane, employees can just message the assistant directly and the system will comb through information and apps that were uploaded and connected to the system in order to find answers.

Influential announced today that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding. The funding came from existing investors Capital Zed, ECA Ventures, Paradigm Talent Agency, ROAR and Tech Coast Angels, as well as from Hollywood agency WME . Just a couple weeks ago, Influential said it was working with (and had raised money from) WME. The agency is the first to try out a new Influential product called Talent Pro, which gives agents access to social data around a broader pool of talent. Influential founder and CEO Ryan Detert said the product will allow WME -- and, in the future, other agencies -- to sweeten endorsement and promotional deals with more data and to "take an A-list celebrity… and now surround that person with 10 lookalike influencers who are not celebrities themselves." One of Influential's big selling points is its use of artificial intelligence (it's a developer partner with IBM Watson) to help brands and marketers find influencers who would be a good fit for their campaigns.

Sorcero, a Washington DC-based AI learning solutions startup, has announced that its co-founder, Dr. Ken Haase has been invited to give the keynote address at the Automation & AI for Good forum on June 12 in San Francisco. Sorcero was one of ten early-stage AI companies selected to participate in the forum. The forum, sponsored by Village Capital and Autodesk Foundation, is showcasing the leading startups using AI, automation, or robotics to benefit society and create new jobs in emerging industries. "Usually, when we hear about automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workforce, it's in negative terms: robots coming for our jobs, millions of displaced workers, and so on," said Ken Haase, Ph.D., Sorcero co-founder and Chief AI Officer. "At Sorcero, we approach AI very differently," said Dr. Haase."Our goal is not to replace people but to empower them for new and emerging opportunities."

The Tender Offer referenced in this press release has not yet commenced. This communication is for information purposes only and is not an offer nor a solicitation of an offer to purchase, sell or exchange securities or a solicitation of a proxy from any stockholder. Subject to future developments, additional documents regarding the proposed transaction, such as a Schedule TO and a registration statement on Form S-4, may be filed with the SEC, which investors should read carefully if and when they become available because they contain important information. Investors may obtain a free copy of the documents filed by Recall Studios, when they are available, from the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Recall Studios, its directors and certain of its executive officers may be deemed to be participants in a solicitation of proxies for the proposed transaction.

DirectView Holdings, Inc (DIRV) provides video surveillance solutions and teleconferencing products and services to businesses and organizations announced today that they are incorporating artificial intelligence into their video surveillance systems. This announcement comes a little over a week after they participated in the LD Micro Invitational. The show was just the start of 5 shareholder events that investors can anticipate in this summer. The remaining 4 events could include additional catalysts that such as more contracts/deals, positive quarterly financials, a website re-launch, and the up listing to the OTCQB. DirectView was one of 230 companies in the small-cap / micro-cap space which were allotted a 30-minute business presentation.

It is undeniable that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain are two of the major technologies that are driving the pace of innovation and introducing radical shifts in rapidly growing list of industries. As Artificial Intelligence advances, the need for enhanced security is becoming apparent and therefore Blockchain is becoming more common in the market. Leaders in tech are more and more infusing the two cutting edge technologies to create innovative products and increase efficiencies. One of the factors driving this trend is the nature of the two technologies as they work well together hand in hand. It's projected that Blockchain and AI will eventually become inseparable as intelligent platforms evolve and become more mainstream.

The report predicts the global humanoid robot market to grow with a CAGR of 51.7% over the period of 2018 - 2024 The report on global humanoid robot market provides qualitative and quantitative analysis for the period of 2016 to 2024 The report on humanoid robot market is a comprehensive study and presentation of drivers, restraints, opportunities, demand factors, market size, forecasts, and trends in the global humanoid robot market over the period of 2016 to 2024. Moreover, the report is collective presentation of primary and secondary research findings. Porter's five forces model in the report provides insights into the competitive rivalry, supplier and buyer positions in the market and opportunities for the new entrants in the global humanoid robot market over the period of 2016 - 2024. Further, the Growth Matrix given in the report brings an insight on the investment areas that existing or new market players can consider.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced a few hours back that it will integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistant Bixby with a wide range of home appliances in order to achieve its vision of establishing an Internet-of-Things (IoT) ecosystem. In case you missed my previous post on CES 2018 and Samsung showcasing smart appliances, click here. Headquartered in South Korea, the global leader held a press conference in Seoul demonstrating how consumers can develop their own at-home IoT ecosystem with its AI voice recognition system being integrated into consumer electronics such as television sets, refrigerators, air conditioners, ovens, vacuum cleaners and washing machines. According to Kim Hyun-suk, head of Samsung's consumer electronics division, the integration of AI into home appliances will increase consumer convenience. "As Samsung already declared its AI vision at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in January, we have been trying to make all Samsung-connected devices intelligent by 2020," Kim said.

If you've ever wondered how a benign calculating machine can produce a superintelligent cyborg with an Austrian accent, a new partnership may help fill in the blanks. SingularityNET, a decentralized AI marketplace for AI services, has just announced a partnership with DeepBrain Chain. Unlike Skynet, however, the new partnership aims to make the future "open and democratic" by allowing public access to artificial intelligence algorithms. "As concerns grow over AI algorithms clenched centrally in the hands of a few tech giants and world governments," the company said in a press release today, SingularityNET was building a "decentralized software network" of AI agents and human developers. SingularityNET, whose Ethereum-based AGI token is currently ranked 138 by market cap, describes itself as a "decentralized market of coordinated AI services."

Embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming an essential capability for edge processing, gives'smart' devices an ability to become'aware' of its surroundings and make decisions on the input received with little or no human intervention. NXP's ML environment enables fast-growing machine learning use-cases in vision, voice, and anomaly detections. The vision-based ML applications utilize cameras as inputs to the various machine learning algorithms of which neural networks are the most popular. These applications span most market segments and perform functions such as object recognition, identification, people-counting and others. Voice Activated Devices (VADs) are driving the need for machine learning at the edge for wake word detection, natural language processing, and for'voice as the user-interface' applications.