The Sonos Beam is a new $399 soundbar, but to Sonos, it's a heck of a lot more than just a speaker that sits under your television. It's a fabric-wrapped representation of how Sonos sees the future--one in which all the voice assistants from Apple and Google and Amazon can live next to one another. In this future, hip urban millennials parents will use Beam not just for Netflixing and HBOing, but queuing up the soundtracks to their hip, urban lives and for controlling their hip, urban smart home. And they'll do it all with spoken commands instead of an app or a remote. Development on the Beam has been going on for more than two years (during which time the speaker was referred to internally as "El Rey," Spanish for "The King"). And it's being released at a critical time for Sonos: It's been reported that the 16-year-old audio company will soon file to go public.

This article originally appeared in Vulture. Nothing is ever as it seems when it comes to James Franco. The man makes a lot of baffling "artistic" choices, any of which could conceivably be explained away as one of the performance-art pranks he so enjoys pulling on the public, and in a greater sense, on himself. Is he penning a column of film criticism, or engaging in an Adaptation-style interrogation of a self divorced from the self? Is he challenging the pillars of historical thought, or just putting goo on stuff?

Outside of horror movies, music boxes are pretty cool, but their big flaw is that they can only play a few bars of one song. That's why Taiwanese company Tevofy Technology has sought to update the music box for the modern age, in the form of the Music Robot Box, or Muro Box. Traditional music boxes have a cylinder of pins that, as they turn, pluck the tines of a steel comb that, as they vibrate, make a sound. The principles are similar to that of hammers hitting piano strings, although you're limited by the size of the cylinder and the notes the comb has been cut to play. The difference between that and MuRo, is that the cylinder has been replaced with several computer-controlled rings.

Journalist Ashlee Vance travels to Montreal, Canada to meet the founders of Lyrebird, a startup that is using AI to clone human voices with frightening precision. Join journalist and best-selling author Ashlee Vance on a quest to find the freshest, weirdest tech creations and the beautiful freaks behind them. Bloomberg is the First Word in business news, delivering breaking news & analysis, up-to-the-minute market data, features, profiles and more: http://www.bloomberg.com

San Jose, CA, May 31, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Tech Museum of Innovation is opening a new immersive exhibit which invites visitors to collaborate with AI-powered robots to bring their creations to life. With Animaker, visitors step into a large-scale projection of a jungle temple where robots invite them to form animals out of LEGO/Duplo bricks. Their creations are analyzed by the robots, incorporating cutting edge 3D-scanning technology and an AI-powered search engine that understands 3D content. The animals then come to life in a virtual ancient temple, and can be personalized by changing their look and behavior. This is the first experience in the world where children play and learn about AI by training machines to recognize different interpretations of real world objects.

Will machines take over classical music? In a guest column for Limelight, composer David Stanhope explained how he uses a digital orchestra to bring to life neglected music – without the expense of hiring human musicians – but he's not the only one exploring the role machines can play in the classical music world. At the Meet in Beijing Arts Festival in China, robot pianist TeoTronico struck another blow for the machines, beating out his long-time sparring partner Roberto Prosseda in a piano battle judged by audience applause. TeoTronico – who can play a mean Flight of the Bumble Bee and has collaborated with the likes of Lang Lang – made his debut with the Berlin Philharmoniker under the baton of Michelangelo Galeati in 2012. The robot was built by Italian inventor Matteo Suzzi and has many advantages of his human counterparts, not least his 53 fingers.

How near are we to hear a melody composed by a PC creating it to number 1 in the graphs? On this week's Technology news, we come across the instrumentalist who expects she can create that happen. Taryn Southern has been functioning with artificial brainpower implements for a number of years. Her solo Break Free was composed with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence tools. Obviously, instrumentalists have been implementing all types of equipment for ages, and using processors to produce or improve new melody is not innovative.

Google's decision not to renew a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) contract with the Pentagon has reignited a debate about what Silicon Valley's …

Experts have raised ethical issues surrounding this technology before. The Malicious AI report focused on fake videos to make people believe false information, and could jeopardize political security. The paper doesn't address these concerns too much. But it did say that pushing the limits of this technology and democratising "calls for additional care in ensuring verifiable video authenticity, e.g., through invisible watermarking." Justus Thies, a coauthor of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich, in Germany, told The Register that he recognized the potential dangers of using AI to manipulate fake videos.