Oslo, Norway - Latest release of Puzzel cloud contact centre solution provides new bot options including its own Chat bot, multi-channel capabilities and introduces enhanced measures to protect customer data Puzzel has announced new functionality in the latest release of its cloud-based contact centre solution, designed to extend the system's multi-channel capabilities and help organisations to meet important changes in EU data protection legislation. Users are now able to integrate third party or Puzzel's own Chat bots directly into their core contact centre solution to improve first contacts with customers and save valuable live agent time. Furthermore, Puzzel has made several adjustments to its platform in preparation for the advent of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May this year. Christian Thorsrud, Product Manager at Puzzel commented, "Chat bots and GDPR are hot topics in the contact centre world today. On the one hand, innovations based on Artificial Intelligence such as Chat bots are creating new opportunities to expand and improve customer interactions and Puzzel's latest release is designed to make them a reality. On the other hand, the imminent arrival of GDPR is putting pressure on contact centres to review how they collect and store their own and third party data. The latest version of our cloud-based software brings renewed assurance that contact centres can rely on Puzzel to provide them with a secure and auditable framework to help meet critical new legislative requirements."

SoundHound, a voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) and conversational intelligence technologies company, announced news on Thursday (May 3) that it has raised $100 million in new funding from a group of strategic investors. In a press release, the company said investors in the round of funding include Tencent Holdings, Daimler, Hyundai Motor Company, Midea Group and Orange. Those companies join existing investors Samsung, NVIDIA, KT Corporation, HTC, NAVER, LINE, Nomura, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa and Recruit. SoundHound plans to use the funding to drive adoption and distribution of Houndify, its voice AI platform in the automotive, Internet of Things, consumer products and enterprise apps and services markets. The funding will also be used to open new offices in China, France and Germany.

Grocery chain Co-op is delivering shopping to customers in Milton Keynes using cute robots created by Starship Technologies. A Co-op store near Starship's headquarters in Monkston has been using the six-wheeled'ground drones' to deliver around 200 different products over the past four weeks. Customers pay the usual in-store price plus £1 ($1.36) for the delivery which goes to Starship. Earlier this month the company announced it plans to launch 1,000 bots to corporate and academic campuses in Europe and the US within the year. A Co-op member of staff - known as a'picker' - selects the items and puts them in a cooler box compartment inside the robot.

When the "Father of Android" Andy Rubin was betting on the next frontier two years ago by saying: "There is a point in time -- I have no idea when it is -- it won't be in the next 10 years, or 20 years -- where there is some form of AI, for lack of a better term, that will be the next computing platform," he was onto something. Today, the AI-powered innovations like driverless vehicles and personal assistants are already stealing the spotlight on a daily basis and making people more productive with their day-to-day tasks. The ripple –through effect of AI didn't only impact how we interact with the digital world but also it eventually hit the business interactions as well. By narrowing the scope of the digital business world, in this article, we will highlight how AI and machine learning can be applied to content management. When we inject "intelligence" into content management systems, from automating menial tasks to analyzing the tone of each piece of content, the possibilities are endless. As the Salesforce CMO said on the London leg of their World Tour: "Welcome to the age of artificial intelligence, the world will never be the same again and it's going to happen really quickly."

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Loom.ai, the provider of best-in-class mobile solutions for building and animating personalized, 3D avatars at scale, today announced a $3M seed investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. The new funding will be used to fuel recruiting, additional partnerships and the continued development of its fully embedded SDK solution. "We are incredibly proud of our partnership with Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. This strategic investment represents an important step in our growth as a company," said Mahesh Ramasubramanian, co-founder and CEO of Loom.ai. "We will immediately ramp up our recruitment efforts to attract the world's top talent in deep learning and computer vision to join our journey. Augmented Reality experiences built with Loom.ai's personalized 3D avatars will unlock new mediums of communication, entertainment, and e-commerce."

Coast Autonomous, a Pasadena-based self-driving vehicle technology company, announced today that one of the world's leading experts in robot autonomy has joined its Advisory Board to work with the Company to further develop its autonomous vehicle fleet management software and controls. Dr. Marco Pavone is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and the Director of Stanford's Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL). Dr. Pavone's cutting-edge work in robot autonomy has earned him accolades in the scientific, academic and business communities. His seminal work in this area has shaped our understanding of the operation of autonomous systems in space exploration as well as on Earth. Dr. Pavone joins three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti on Coast's Advisory Board.

WASHINGTON – The European Union's executive branch, the European Commission, has announced that it will increase its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) research and development by €1.5 billion and called on member states to invest €20 billion as well. Congressman John K. Delaney (MD-6), the founder of the House AI Caucus, says that the European Union's action should get the attention of U.S. policymakers. "Our economic competitors in Europe and Asia are moving forward on AI, while we stand still. I sincerely hope that today's announcement from the EU gets the attention of Washington and serves as a wake-up call. If we want artificial intelligence technology to benefit our society, our economy and our workers, we've got to make sure that the United States remains the global leader – but make no mistake, we will have competition," said Congressman Delaney.

Google will be holding its annual I/O conference next week and it's already giving its voice Assistant a big push just before the upcoming event. The company announced today that Google Assistant is now able to work with 5,000 smart home devices. "Over the past year, we've made great progress ensuring that the Google Assistant can work with all types of connected devices, and now every major device brand works with the Assistant in the U.S.," the company said in a blog post. "Today, the Google Assistant can connect with more than 5,000 devices for your home--up from 1,500 this January. That includes cameras, dishwashers, doorbells, dryers, lights, plugs, thermostats, security systems, switches, vacuums, washers, fans, locks, sensors, heaters, AC units, air purifiers, refrigerators, ovens … we can keep on going!" The number of smart home devices that can work with Google Assistant is also expected to grow even further in the coming months.

Big data is at the heart of the 4th industrial revolution -- and a new Open Access, rigorously peer-reviewed journal is helping to fuel this. Frontiers in Big Data provides a centralized pool of cutting-edge knowledge in machine learning, cybersecurity, data mining and other data-related disciplines. By making the latest research immediately and freely available through an online platform, the journal empowers researchers, citizens and companies to rapidly and efficiently share and combine knowledge -- and so drive the big data revolution. Two of these sections, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and Medicine and Public Health, will link to the soon-to-be launched Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence journal, which will focus on core AI fields and their various applications. Leveraging the collective intelligence of diverse research communities is critical for fast scientific progress and technological innovation.

Toyota announced today that it will build a gigantic, 60-acre facility in Michigan to test "edge case" driving scenarios with its autonomous vehicles that are too dangerous to perform on public roads. The news comes more than a month after the Japanese auto giant halted its self-driving tests on public roads in the US in the wake of a deadly crash involving a self-driving Uber in Arizona. Construction permits were filed this week to transform an approximately 60-acre site at Michigan Technical Resource Park in Ottawa Lake into a closed-course facility for the Toyota Research Institute, the car company's Silicon Valley arm, to test its vehicles. The site will include congested urban environments, slick surfaces, and a four-lane divided highway with high-speed entrance and exit ramps. When it becomes operational this October, the company will use the site to specifically test scenarios deemed too risky for public roads, most likely involving vehicles without a human driver.