Appier, a Taiwanese startup that helps companies harness artificial intelligence to make marketing decisions, announced today that it has raised a $33 million Series C round from an impressive roster of Asian investors. They are SoftBank Group Corp., Line Corp., Naver Corp., EDBI (the Singapore Economic Development Board's corporate investment arm) and Hong Kong-based financial services firm AMTD Group. This brings Appier's total funding so far to $82 million. Lead investors in its previous rounds included Sequoia Capital and Pavilion Capital. Appier co-founder and CEO Chih-Han Yu says its Series C will be used to grow its engineering and research and development teams in countries outside of Taiwan, including Singapore.

AI and ML are often used interchangeably, but they are in fact, not the same. Take a deep dive to learn more about these tech buzzwords! Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are some of the hottest buzzwords in tech these days, and maybe you want in. But first, let's take a moment to distinguish the two because while they may often be used interchangeably, they are in fact, not the same. AI is the concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in ways that humans would consider "smart."

The 100 startups on our list have raised $3.8B in aggregate funding across 263 deals since 2012. CB Insights unveiled the AI 100--a list of 100 of the most promising private companies applying artificial intelligence algorithms across industries, from healthcare to auto to fintech--at the Innovation Summit today. The companies were selected from a pool of nearly 500 applicants and nominees based on several criteria, including data submitted by the companies, responses to interview questions, technology focus, investor profile, team profile, mosaic scores, and funding history. "From financial services to healthcare to transport, incumbent companies in every industry are seeing that AI will reshape their industries. And as so often happens, transformational innovation comes from emerging companies. In the case of AI, a lot of the groundbreaking work is being done by the AI 100. The companies in the AI 100 are accelerating research, improving efficiency, and making many game-changing advancements that will be felt for decades to come," CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal said in a press release.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Tone Analyzer endpoint trained for Customer Engagement scenarios. The new endpoint was trained on customer support conversations on twitter, and the tones included are frustrated, sad, satisfied, excited, polite, impolite and sympathetic. Currently, the new endpoint is Beta functionality in the IBM Watson Tone Analyzer service. Given a textual conversation between a customer and an agent or company representative, the service detects the above mentioned tones both from the customer's and the agent's text. Why Did We Build the Tone Analyzer for Customer Engagement Endpoint?

If you've been hankering for a chance to play with Google Assistant but don't own an Android phone, Google Home or hate the Allo messaging app, we have good news: Google announced today that the standalone Assistant app has begun rolling out for iOS in the UK, Germany and France, following its US debut back in May. The app lets you converse with Google's AI using your voice, which means you'll likely ask it to answer your questions or use it interact with your smart home devices. Assistant can interact with smart lighting and thermostats, as well as handling calls, sending messages, setting reminders and calendar events, playing music (albeit via YouTube) and directing you home. Google says the app is designed to operate on devices running iOS 9.1 and above, which should cover the majority of iPhone and iPad users. As we noted in our recent Google Home breakdown, Assistant utilises Google's search smarts, so it can help you find what you want faster.

Artificial intelligence is making its way into the messy world of account receivables for those corporates processing large volumes of payments, thanks to Bank of America Merrill Lynch and fintech startup, High Radius. The "Intelligent Receivables" solution is designed to streamline the receivables process, using AI technology developed by High Radius to fill in the gaps or allow companies to upload missing remittance information to invoices, the companies announced today. Using this solution, payers are automatically identified, as is remittance data that might have arrived separate to an invoice. Clients can also set up automatic emails to payers, in order to further streamline the process. The solution is presently available for clients in the United States and Canada, but it is expected to roll out to other markets later this year.

Funding for artificial intelligence startups has surged more than eightfold since 2012, and entrepreneurs are rushing to capitalize on the cash that's still sitting on the sidelines. Money is gravitating toward the area as tech giants such as Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. acquire companies and push advancements. Venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates Inc., and Battery Ventures LP announced Tuesday they have injected $140 million into artificial intelligence startup Databricks Inc., raising the company's funding to $247 million. While the sector saw just $559 million in funding in 2012, it surged to almost $5 billion in 2016, according to data compiled by research firm CB Insights. The number of deals has also seen a substantial increase, rising from 150 to 698 in that same time frame.

The acquisition of Apprento by M-Files, along with its recently-announced partnership with ABBYY, a global provider of innovative language-based and artificial intelligence technologies, illustrates the company's focus on automating and simplifying the way business professionals manage information and related processes. "Business leaders, industry analysts and others who follow our industry all agree that traditional approaches and solutions for managing information are inadequate and that a new and more intelligent approach is required," said Miika Mäkitalo, CEO at M-Files. "Our acquisition of Apprento coupled with our recent partnership with ABBYY reinforces our commitment to deliver human-like intelligence to the massive volume of unstructured content that resides within disconnected systems and repositories in the typical enterprise." "By incorporating the Apprento Business Context Engine into the M-Files platform, we're delivering powerful artificial intelligence capabilities to current M-Files users as well as setting the foundation for the introduction of many more AI enhancements and tools in the near future," said Trevor Cookson, CEO at Apprento. "I'm honored to join the forward-thinking M-Files team and I'm looking forward to working with them to simplify and improve how people manage and interact with information."

Now, a UT Dallas researcher is giving the fantasy of robotic friends a practical edge with a robot that teaches social skills to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). "It's not to replace therapy with humans, but you can deliver a social skills lesson in a less threatening way, and the robot can deliver the same lesson multiple times," Rollins said. During a lesson, the robot explains a social situation to the child with ASD. Media Contact: Ben Porter, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2193, [email protected] or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected].

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market Insights, Opportunity Analysis, Market Shares and Forecast, 2017 - 2023" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The rising demand for real time monitoring system and increasing usage of big data in healthcare industry are responsible for the growth of the global Artificial Intelligence in healthcare market. The benefits of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare industry include fast and accurate diagnosis, reduced human errors, cost reduction and it has various applications in image recognition and interpretation, diagnostic assistance etc. However, ambiguous regulatory guidelines for medical software and reluctance among medical practitioners to adopt Artificial Intelligence based technologies are the factors that restrain the growth of the global Artificial Intelligence in healthcare market. Geographically, North America is expected to be the largest and fastest growing market for Artificial Intelligence in healthcare during the forecast period. The regulatory mandates for the use of electronic health records, increasing focus on precision medicine, strong presence of leading companies, large number of cross industry collaborations and growing investments in the field of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare are growing the market in the region.