Researchers from NVIDIA, led by Guilin Liu, introduced a state-of-the-art deep learning method that can edit images or reconstruct a corrupted image, one that has holes or is missing pixels. The method can also be used to edit images by removing content and filling in the resulting holes. The method, which performs a process called "image inpainting", could be implemented in photo editing software to remove unwanted content, while filling it with a realistic computer-generated alternative. "Our model can robustly handle holes of any shape, size location, or distance from the image borders. Previous deep learning approaches have focused on rectangular regions located around the center of the image, and often rely on expensive post-processing," the NVIDIA researchers stated in their research paper.

Adobe is aiming to give marketers more control and transparency over targeting algorithms as it updates Adobe Target tools. The company's Experience Cloud, which encompasses Adobe's Marketing Cloud, is now managing 233T customer transactions a year with more than 150B emails sent through Adobe Campaign. A customer transaction includes a link click, web visit, opens and other items included in a digital footprint. Drew Burns, principal product marketing manager for Adobe's digital marketing unit, said the company's AI platform is absorbing CRM data, industry metrics and individual profiles to give customers more control of the algorithms. "Customers can constrain and customise the algorithms based on what their goals are. We're giving a lot of control to marketers," said Burns.

Supernova, a startup operating out of Prague in the Czech Republic, is on a mission to accelerate the app development workflow of mobile designers and developers. More than three years in the making -- and the brainchild of co-founder Jiří Třečák -- the Supernova Studio macOS app promises to automatically convert mobile app designs created in Sketch, a popular vector design tool, into native UI code, thus bridging the gap between prototyping and design, and front-end development. Presuming your Sketch project is relatively well organised, Supernova Studio takes your designs and converts them into native and production components such as buttons, labels, images, tables and more. However, it is Studio's employment of what Třečák describes as "highly advanced heuristics and analytics" (he is far too straightforward to call it AI) that enables the automatic export of assets, localisations, animations, code and more, without a developer.

AI has a new task: helping to keep the bugs out of video games. At the recent Ubisoft Developer Conference in Montreal, the French gaming company unveiled a new AI assistant for its developers. Dubbed Commit Assistant, the goal of the AI system is to catch bugs before they're ever committed into code, saving developers time and reducing the number of flaws that make it into a game before release. Ubisoft hopes that Commit Assistant will cut down on one of the most expensive and labour-intensive aspects of game design. The company says that eliminating bugs during the development phase requires massive teams and can absorb as much as 70 per cent of costs.

NatWest is testing an artificial intelligence-powered "digital human" called Cora that will converse with customers in branches – raising fears that bank tellers could be replaced by avatars. Cora, described by the bank as "highly lifelike", is the result of a link-up with a New Zealand tech company whose co-founder was involved with creating digital characters in the blockbuster films Avatar, King Kong and Spider-Man 2. Cora is currently able to answer basic verbal questions such as "How do I login to online banking?", "How do I apply for a mortgage?" NatWest said it could help cut down on waiting times because it would be able to deal with simple problems, adding that Cora's AI skills would eventually expand to answering hundreds of different questions, even detecting human emotions and reacting verbally and physically with facial expressions.

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