It's hard to imagine one Death Eater kissing another one on the cheek while more of Voldemort's supporters gather around them and applaud -- unless you're a computer. Botnik Studios, a company that uses algorithms to train computers to behave in certain ways, has produced a brand new chapter from a new Harry Potter book. While a computer can certainly mimic elements of the famous series, though, it can hardly capture J.K. Rowling's magic -- which is why the result, called Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash, is so strange and funny that fans are begging for more. Too funny: Botnik Studios used predictive keyboards to write a new chapter in a new Harry Potter book. It's called Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash Has that computer been Confunded?

Amazon brought multiroom audio support to its Echo speakers a few months ago, but let's face it: unless you're a big fan of Amazon Music Unlimited, it hasn't been very useful for on-demand streaming. As promised, Amazon has added multiroom support for Spotify (oh, and SiriusXM) to let you play the tunes of your choice across more than one Echo at a time, including groups. You won't have to stop listening to an album just because you've moved from the living room to the kitchen. Multi-speaker Spotify streaming is only available in a handful of countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Germany. SiriusXM, unsurprisingly, only gets this option in the US.

In October 2000, Google co-founder Larry Page made a luminary prediction: "Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing.

Google on Wednesday disclosed plans to create a research lab in China dedicated to artificial intelligence.

Even though Google is blocked in the country, it is cementing its position in China by focusing on Artificial Intelligence. This year, the California-based company held a Go tournament in collaboration with the local authorities in eastern China.

WIRE)–Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERI), a leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) insights and cognitive solutions, today announced the general availability of its Veritone Developer application.

One thing "Star Wars" fans have come to realize is that each new film in the franchise brings new characters. The upcoming sequel, "The Last Jedi," in theaters Friday, is no exception. There are quite a few new additions to the franchise this time around and they range from guards to workers to pilots and even to robots. Yes, a new robot is on its way. Without further ado, let's all get acquainted before it's time to head to the theater to see the new flick.

A Chinese technology company has pulled a virtual-reality girlfriend who was depicted as a'flirtatious secretary'. The virtual assistant, named'Vivi' could help users with certain tasks such as choosing a film or video game - but she could also flirt and dance on request. Dressed in revealing clothing, the erotic assistant was in beta testing for a virtual reality headset when she was pulled. Shortly after, the company iQiyi, the streaming unit of Baidu, issued a swift apology for'concerns it might have raised'. A Chinese technology company has pulled a virtual-reality girlfriend called Vivi who was depicted as a'flirtatious secretary' Vivi was initially marketed as a'built-in AI'girlfriend'' back in March.

Artificial Intelligence research advances are transforming technology as we know it. The AI research community is solving some of the most technology problems related to software and hardware infrastructure, theory and algorithms. Interestingly, the field of AI AI research has drawn acolytes from the non-tech field as well. Case in point -- prolific Hollywood actor Kristen Stewart's highly publicized paper on Artificial Intelligence, originally published at Cornell University library's open access site. Stewart co-authored the paper, titled "Bringing Impressionism to Life with Neural Style Transfer in Come Swim" with the American poet and literary critic David Shapiro and Adobe Research Engineer Bhautik Joshi.

Machines could soon be writing the latest Hollywood blockbuster, thanks to a breakthrough in teaching AI about narrative arcs in storytelling. Experts trained machine learning algorithms to recognise positive and negative emotions through thousands of hours of video footage, including Pixar's Up. By the end of the process, the neural networks were able to predict an audience response to a film on a second by second basis. The technique could be used to create AI systems that are capable of generating their own tear-jerkers. Machines could soon be writing the latest Hollywood blockbuster, thanks to a breakthrough in teaching AI about narrative arcs in storytelling. Experts trained algorithms to recognise positive and negative emotions through thousands of hours of footage, including Pixar's Up As part of its training, the AI looked at the famous opening sequence of Up, a 3D computer-animated film that was a critical and popular hit in 2009.