LoopMe, a digital advertising firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize mobile video advertising, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by Impulse VC and Harbert European Growth Capital, with participation from Holzbrinck Ventures and Open Ocean Capital. Founded out of London in 2012, LoopMe unifies all the popular mobile video ad formats, covering pre-roll, HTML5, and the VAST ad-serving standard. In a nutshell, the platform replaces humans with algorithms that determine the placement of ads in real time, based on metrics such as purchase intent or offline sales. The technology "learns" how viewers are reacting to the ads and changes them based on how a user is responding. The company's platform has been used by a host of well-known brands, including Microsoft, Disney, Airbnb, and Honda.

Do you think you can tell a piece of music composed by artificial intelligence (AI) from one created by a human composer? Before you read any further, let's find out. The following audio consists of two fragments, one written by AI, the other by a human. We're inviting 250 to exhibit at TNW Conference and pitch on stage! If you didn't get it right the first time, no worries--we'll have a couple more mini-quizzes like this below.

Kōshi Nakanishi began his career in video games on the Tenchu series at Acquire. He directed several games there, including Tenchu: Way of the Samurai and Shinobido: Way of the Ninja. He also directed What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord. In 2007 Nakanishi moved to Capcom and began working on the Resident Evil franchise. It was the first time he worked on a sequel, beginning with Resident Evil 5 as a game designer before being promoted halfway through that game's development cycle to direct Resident Evil Revelations on the 3DS. That game earned high marks from critics and gamers alike and led to his role as director of Resident Evil 7 biohazard.

Google Assistant is having a great month. Just last week Google started rolling out its voice-activated aide to all Android phones running Marshmallow and Nougat, and now it's showing off a new trick that will make it much more useful: integration with our messages. For whatever reason, Google Assistant struggled when it came to reading our messages before. Even though it had a second home in Allo and could send messages on command, Assistant balked when asked basic questions about our incoming texts, as it was unable to read and interact with them. As first spotted by 9to5Google, that's changed in the latest update. Now you can ask Assistant to hear the last message you received, dictate the one you just sent, and even read the most recent message from a specific person.

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What if you couldn't fact check the investment data you wanted to buy, but the data was verified by a cryptographically proven, immutable blockchain? One major bank that is solely responsible for managing an estimated 11% of all the world's financial assets is exploring just such a possibility. Following a State Street report published last week on the long-term value of blockchain and other technologies, the bank's executive vice president of global exchange, Lou Maiuri, elaborated on how his group is experimenting with new ways to capitalize on blockchain tech. In conversation with CoinDesk, Maiuri explained how combining artificial intelligence and blockchain could lead to new revenue streams derived from valuable client data. "Anyone who's not looking at these pools of data will be arbitraged, will lose out."

In March 2016 Insilico Medicine initiated a research collaboration with Life Extension to apply advanced bioinformatic methods and deep learning algorithms to screen for naturally occurring compounds that may slow down or even reverse the cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging. Today Life Extension (LE) launched a new line of nutraceuticals called GEROPROTECTTM, and the first product in the series called Ageless CellTM combines some of the natural compounds that were shortlisted by Insilico Medicine's algorithms and are generally recognized as safe (GRAS). "Life Extension's mission is to extend the healthy human lifespan; and as such, we are focused on identifying natural products with critical health and wellness properties," said Andrew G. Swick, PhD, senior vice president of scientific affairs, discovery research and product development for Life Extension. "Our collaboration with Insilico Medicine fostered a novel approach to formulating anti-aging supplements utilizing artificial intelligence and sophisticated biologically-inspired algorithms and resulted in the very first AI formulated supplement," Swick said. The global nutraceuticals market was valued at US$165.62 billion in 2014 by Transparency Market Research and is expected to reach US$278.96 billion by 2021.

A global survey of 4000 consumers reveals that shoppers are being left disappointed with the freshness of their grocery purchases. Set against a backdrop of declining retail profitability and significant changes in consumer lifestyles, grocery retailers are under pressure to deliver the best freshness to their customers, while also turning a profit. McKinsey reports that 40 per cent of grocery revenue is driven by fresh, which puts tremendous pressure on category managers to get it right. Yet category managers in fresh know too well the complexities of delivering the best fresh to their customers: Fresh goods are perishable, demand varies from day to day and supply chain lead-times are difficult to predict. Stock too much and you risk providing a less than satisfactory level of fresh if the stock is not sold in time, or you generate food waste.

Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact with each other. Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of education startup Coursera, and Neil Jacobstein, chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Scott Austin to discuss AI's opportunities and challenges. What is Baidu focused on? NG: For large enterprises like Baidu, AI creates two big pockets of opportunities. One is our core business.

As businesses come to terms with tapping into artificial intelligence (AI) to improve operations, one key concern for B2B marketers is how it will be integrated effectively. In November, Demandbase and Wakefield Research, polled 500 B2B marketers in the US about their thoughts on AI. Findings showed that 60% of respondents said that linking AI with their existing technology could be problematic. Other potential obstacles the marketers cited included educating staff (54%), deciphering results (46%) and a potentially high price tag (42%). Yet, despite these barriers to adoption, most B2B marketers are confident that the technology will be useful. The same survey found that more than 75% of respondents said they were at least confident about adding AI to their marketing and sales efforts.