IBM and SK Holdings C&C, a South Korean IT services company, are planning to bring IBM's Watson cognitive technology language services to South Korean banking. The alliance, which includes training Watson to understand Korean, is designed to "dramatically accelerate" the adoption of cognitive computing throughout the region, giving South Korea-based developers a set of localised APIs and services they can use to help create their own applications and build new businesses. David Kenny, general manager, IBM Watson, says: "The South Korean marketplace is moving quickly to embrace the disruptive opportunities from next generation technology. Our strategic alliance with SK Holdings C&C will put cognitive services in the hands of more businesses and developers." SK Holdings C&C will run Watson and IBM Bluemix from its Pangyo Cloud Center, in support of universities, developers, and local businesses, across "diverse" industries including banking.

It's no secret that much of the wisdom of the world lies in unstructured data, or the kind that's not necessarily quantifiable and tidy. So it is in cybersecurity, and now IBM is putting Watson to work to make that knowledge more accessible. Towards that end, IBM Security on Tuesday announced a new year-long research project through which it will collaborate with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial intelligence system to tackle cybercrime. Knowledge about threats is often hidden in unstructured sources such as blogs, research reports and documentation, said Kevin Skapinetz, director of strategy for IBM Security. "Let's say tomorrow there's an article about a new type of malware, then a bunch of follow-up blogs," Skapinetz explained.

It's no secret that much of the wisdom of the world lies in unstructured data, or the kind that's not necessarily quantifiable and tidy. So it is in cybersecurity, and now IBM is putting Watson to work to make that knowledge more accessible. Towards that end, IBM Security on Tuesday announced a new year-long research project through which it will collaborate with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial-intelligence system to tackle cybercrime. Knowledge about threats is often hidden in unstructured sources such as blogs, research reports and documentation, said Kevin Skapinetz, director of strategy for IBM Security. "Let's say tomorrow there's an article about a new type of malware, then a bunch of follow-up blogs," Skapinetz explained.

IBM will launch a Korean version of its AI platform Watson next year in cooperation with local IT service vendor SK C&C, the companies have announced. SK announced Monday that it signed a cooperation agreement with Big Blue on May 4 and will together build an integrated system to market Watson in South Korea. They will develop Korean data analysis solutions based on machine learning and natural language semantic analysis technology for Watson within this year, and will commercialise it sometime in the first half of 2017, SK said. IBM and SK will also build a "Watson Cloud Platform" at the Korean company's datacentre in Pangyo -- the local version of Silicon Valley -- that IT developers and managers can access to make their own applications. For example, an open market business can apply the Watson solution to its product search features to make a personalized contents recommendation solution.

The first Monday in May brings one of the marquee fashion events of the year -- the Met Gala. Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as a benefit for the museum's Costume Institute, this year's gala comes with an unexpected high-tech twist. The theme of the evening, and the accompanying museum exhibition, is "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology." In keeping with the theme is a rather unlikely collaboration -- IBM is joining forces with the fashion house Marchesa, known for its whimsical, romantic designs. For Monday's event, Marchesa designers and co-founders Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig teamed up with IBM's cognitive computing system Watson to design a "cognitive dress" that will be worn by a yet-to-be-named model.

IBM Japan has teamed up with Subaru to investigate how its Watson Supercomputer could help improve the automaker's EyeSight driver assist technology. As well as developing a data analytics system, the two companies are keen to integrate cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, which bodes well for the ongoing development of autonomous, networked cars. The benefits of networked autonomous vehicles were recently demonstrated by the European Truck Platooning Challenge, where teams of autonomous trucks made their way from their respective factories to Rotterdam. As well as demonstrating the fact autonomous vehicles can effectively make long trips without causing the end of the world (shocking, we know), the trucks were able to maintain a gap of just 15 m (49 ft) and react to sudden braking manoeuvres in just 0.1 seconds thanks to a WiFi connection keeping them all linked. Daimler has also invested in Car-to-X technology, which features in its latest E-Class.

You may remember how, back in 2011, IBM's supercomputer Watson competed against the world's best "Jeopardy" champions and won. Fast-forward a few years and cognitive computing and machine learning have become the latest tech buzzwords that promise to revolutionize industries such as healthcare by providing real-time, actionable insights and much more. Entire markets, including banking and finance, law, and auditing and accounting, to name a few, are also facing disruption as well as opportunities with ongoing advancements in cognitive technology. The power of IBM Watson is finally being realized now that it can understand, reason and learn from the wealth of big data that most businesses are struggling to make sense of. Early childhood education appears to be next on the agenda.

Officially, fashion's biggest party is a fund-raising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's fashion department, but ever since Anna Wintour, Vogue's high-powered editor, took over as chairwoman in 1999, it has turned into the industry's equivalent of the Oscar's red carpet, bringing together an invite-only list of dressed-up celebrities and bigwigs. This year, as everyone was asked "Who are you wearing?" one attendee--model Karolina Kurkova--got to say IBM Watson, in collaboration with high-fashion label Marchesa. Covered in fabric flowers embedded with LEDs, the "cognitive dress" was light, elegant, and romantic, as is Marchesa's signature. It continually changed color with the help of Watson's powerful analytical technology, tying it perfectly into the theme of this year's fashion exhibit at the Met, called "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology." But while the dress was beautiful, the lights were sometimes overbearing.

At last night's Met Gala, the lavish annual fashion event hosted by Vogue, model Karolina Kurkova wore a dress that was half man-, half machine-made. The "Cognitive Dress"--perhaps one of the least fashion-forward names found on the red carpet--is the product of a partnership between British design studio Marchesa and Watson, IBM's friendly cognitive computer. The gown, a white tulle design embroidered with 150 LED-connected flowers, is an interesting glimpse of how humans and machines can work together to create something that otherwise wouldn't be possible. To design the dress, Marchesa's designers first chose five sentiments they wanted the dress to express: joy, patience, excitement, encouragement, and curiosity. Then they fed two datasets into IBM's Cognitive Color Tool, a program that uses color psychology to match emotion to hues.

IBM and its partners are building solutions that will allow individual patients and larger health populations to benefit as providers share and apply insights in real-time. In this video, learn how the IBM Watson Health Cloud can help an avid runner with a heart condition continue to live an active life. This scenario describes the future of health and where things are going, not necessarily what you'd get when you walk into a doctor's office today. For more information on Watson Health, please visit http://ibm.com/watsonhealth. IBMers -- learn more about Security Intelligence on Think Academy (internal site): https://ibm.biz/IBMThinkAcademy