Communications

Video: Apple dominates smartphone industry profits with iPhone X. A new survey of iPhone X owners has found extremely high levels of satisfaction with every single key feature of the device, but just 20 percent satisfaction with Siri. Although Siri's poor performance in the survey might not be a major surprise, the result for Apple's virtual assistant is a huge deviation from the finding by tech analyst Creative Strategies that overall 97 percent of customers are satisfied with the device. The company also found that 85 percent of iPhone X owners are "very satisfied" with their device, meaning a large portion of the overall satisfied number are not just satisfied but very satisfied. Creative Strategies' principal analyst Ben Bajarin said this result is one of the highest'very satisfied' rankings he's even seen with a tech product.

The vast majority of videos removed from YouTube toward the end of last year for violating the site's content guidelines had first been detected by machines instead of humans, the Google-owned company said on Monday. YouTube said it took down 8.28 million videos during the fourth quarter of 2017, and about 80 percent of those videos had initially been flagged by artificially intelligent computer systems. The new data highlighted the significant role machines -- not just users, government agencies and other organizations -- are taking in policing the service as it faces increased scrutiny over the spread of conspiracy videos, fake news and violent content from extremist organizations. Those videos are sometimes promoted by YouTube's recommendation system and unknowingly financed by advertisers, whose ads are placed next to them through an automated system. This was the first time that YouTube had publicly disclosed the number of videos it removed in a quarter, making it hard to judge how aggressive the platform has previously been in removing content, or the extent to which computers played a part in making those decisions.

Stunning drone footage shows the progress of a £90million'floating' cycle path that will circle Italy's largest lake. The track is currently under construction around Lake Garda, and once finished will stretch for 87 miles. And with parts of the path built off the banks of the lake and in some places even skimming the water, it will make cyclists feel as though they are floating. The stunning footage shows the progress of the cycle track, which is being built around Italy's largest lake The video has been viewed thousands of times with the route already dubbed Europe's most beautiful bike ride Drone footage of the construction of the path has been posted on social media, showing how cyclists will be able to ride near the water's edge. The video has been viewed thousands of times with it already being dubbed Europe's most beautiful bike ride, despite not yet being open yet.

The earnings growth was Alphabet's strongest since the fourth quarter of 2009. Advertising revenue, which accounts for nearly all of the company's top line, soared 24% to $26.6 billion. Revenue from "Other Bets," a segment which includes Waymo self-driving cars, totaled $150 million, an increase of 14% from the same period last year. The results landed while regulators in Washington are considering getting tougher on internet privacy. While most of the attention on the issue has focused on Facebook Inc., many observers believe Google's dominant role online means the firm will also be subject to tougher scrutiny.

Whether you're listening to the newest installment of a daily podcast you're subscribed to or binging the latest true crime series, being able to pause a podcast on one device and pick it back up on another is a useful feature. And according to Pacific Content, it's a feature that Google offers right now. If you start an episode on your Android phone, for example, you can finish it with your Google Home, and Zack Reneau-Wedeen, Google's podcasts product manager, says this "device interoperability" will eventually expand to everything on which you use Google. We asked Google about the feature and were told that it's "not new" but it's unclear how long the ability has been around. Though Apple launched its podcast app in 2012, Google still doesn't have a dedicated app for podcasts.

The EU has launched a formal investigation into Apple's proposed acquisition of UK music-recognition app Shazam. The European commission announced its in-depth investigation into the deal over concerns that it would harm consumer choice and give Apple an unfair advantage through access to user data, which could aid in poaching customers from rivals. Shazam has been downloaded 1bn times and is used 20m times a day. It is the world's leading music recognition system, able to listen to and identify tracks via a smartphone and then link those tracks to multiple music subscription services, which means it could therefore hold commercially sensitive data on Apple's competitors and their consumers. Noting that Apple Music has become the second-largest music streaming service in Europe, the EC said: "Access to such data could allow Apple to directly target its competitors' customers and encourage them to switch to Apple Music.

Mobile apps downloading crossed all the figures to date. App Annie reports a 10% increase in mobile apps download and 22% increase in money spent on app development. In this scenario, imagine Artificial Intelligence being leveraged to accelerate the process. It establishes the idea of rising trend of mobile app development. Today, there will be hardly a B2B company without custom mobile application.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a phenomenon in daily life -- whether it's staying organized with virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, relying on Waze and Google Maps for the fastest commute time to work or tagging photos with Facebook's facial recognition technology. However, AI is driving equally powerful innovation in other ways that may not seem as familiar to average consumers and yet are dramatically improving the experience they have with their mobile devices. That's because one of the earliest and most ardent adopters of AI is the enterprise information technology (IT) operations that manage the networks you and I need to access. For them, AI is rapidly becoming a critical component to provide better visibility into the network environment, reduce costs, simplify operations and fix problems faster. Gartner predicts that by 2020, AI will be one of the five most important investment priorities for more than 30% of chief information officers (CIOs).

Top retailers are adopting AI to address CX challenges the retail industry is facing at large. No wonder, digitally savvy eCommerce retailers are leading the pack. Knowing is not enough, understanding the customer holds the key. How do you develop a thorough understanding of the customer? Is there a way to get a unified view of the customer journey?

Facebook is facing calls to deploy facial recognition technology to block scam adverts featuring celebrities, after consumer campaigner Martin Lewis launched legal proceedings against the social network over fake promotions claiming his endorsement. Damian Collins, the chair of the parliamentary committee investigating online disinformation, told the Guardian he would ask the social network to consider new ways to block fake promotions when the company's chief technology office appears to answer questions in parliament on Thursday. "Martin Lewis's case highlights yet another failure on the part of Facebook to protect its users," said the Tory MP, who leads the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. "The fact that the face of a man who has dedicated himself to aiding consumers to spend their money wisely could be used to defraud those very same people is something that Facebook should be ashamed of," he said. "Facebook is able to develop and roll out technology such as facial recognition to increase revenue," he added.