When OpenAI announced last week that its art-making AI system DALL-E is now available in beta, the company also gave users lucky enough to get off the waiting list what appeared to be a great gift. "Starting today," the company wrote in a post, "users get full usage rights to commercialize the images they create with DALL-E, including the right to reprint, sell, and merchandise." To be clear, this doesn't mean OpenAI is relinquishing its own right to commercialize images users create using DALL-E. JESSICA RIZZO is is an attorney with the law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads. She writes about art, technology, and the law.

MONTREAL and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 08, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rithmik Solutions, whose mission is building the world's most advanced and reliable analytics for mobile mining equipment, today announced the closing of a US$1.2M investment led by Chrysalix Venture Capital and joined by Fonds Ecofuel. The funding will accelerate the commercialization of the company's flagship product, Rithmik Asset Health Analyzer (AHA), which has been in development for the past three years and is currently undergoing real-time onsite trials in Alberta, Quebec and Zambia. Rithmik AHA applies a multi-tiered machine learning approach to increase mobile equipment uptime while reducing maintenance costs and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Mining companies typically spend anywhere from 20%-50% of their annual operating budgets on equipment maintenance, and lost production from unplanned downtime has an even bigger financial impact. "We were impressed by the Rithmik team's deep technical experience in the space of mobile mining equipment data, across equipment types and OEM brands, and that experience has strongly resonated with their early customers," said Alicia Lenis, Vice President at Chrysalix Venture Capital, an industrial innovation fund.

FiveAI has raised $41 million in venture capital as the startup seeks to turn the self-driving research it has conducted into commercial products and services. The U.K.-based startup has created a technology stack to power autonomous vehicles. The company uses AI and machine learning that would let cars use simpler maps to navigate their surroundings. By reducing the complexity of the technological challenges, the company hopes to accelerate the deployment of autonomous vehicles. "This funding round is validation of the work we are doing and the role our technology is set to contribute to developing and assuring self-driving," said Stan Boland, FiveAI's CEO, in a statement. "We're excited to be able to accelerate development and engagements with partners."

Fuelled by unprecedented international investment, groundbreaking advances in artificial intelligence and inclusive immigration policies, Canada's innovation economy has seen explosive growth. In fact, over the last five years, the Greater Toronto Area's tech sector grew by more than 50 per cent. Now with more than 241,000 employees, the GTA has become an innovation powerhouse on par with cities like New York and Seattle. And VC investment in Canadian startups reached record levels (in the first half of 2019 alone, nearly $3.3 billion investments were made), and the Deutsche Bank ranked Canada as the best country in the world for social entrepreneurship. But while things might be looking up here at home, the world faces unprecedented challenges as we head into the next decade.

Nissan has developed a new way to use robots to make car parts out of sheet steel, a breakthrough that could make replacement parts for discontinued models more widely available for customers. Nissan hopes to commercialize the proprietary technique, known as dual-sided dieless forming. The technique involves two synchronized robots working from opposite sides of a steel sheet, using diamond-coated tools to gradually shape the steel. Thanks to its flexible production, short lead times and minimal upfront costs, the new technique could make it commercially viable to produce and sell a wide variety of after-service and replacement parts in small volumes for cars that Nissan no longer makes. This was previously not possible due to the high upfront costs and long lead times to develop and make--dies for stamped parts.

The Mayo Clinic and health technology vendor Eko are working together to develop and commercialize a machine learning-based algorithm that screens patients for low ejection fraction, which is linked to heart failure. A low ejection fraction number, often measured by an echocardiogram, suggests problems with the heart's pumping function. However, echocardiography is an expensive and time-consuming medical imaging test using ultrasound that is less accessible than a doctor with a stethoscope. "With this collaboration, we hope to transform the stethoscope in the pocket of every physician and nurse from a hand tool to a power tool," said Paul Friedman, MD, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Mayo Clinic. "The community practitioner performing high school sports physicals and the surgeon about to operate may be able to seamlessly tap the knowledge of an experienced cardiologist to determine if a weak heart pump is present simply by putting a stethoscope on a person's chest for a few seconds."

Single-particle tracking involves tracking the motion of individual particles, such as viruses, cells and drug-loaded nanoparticles, within fluids and biological samples. The technique is widely used in both physical and life sciences. The team at UNC-Chapel Hill that developed the new tracking method uses particle tracking to develop new ways to treat and prevent infectious diseases. They examine molecular interactions between antibodies and biopolymers and characterize and design nano-sized drug carriers. Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This year, the chief technical officer of Aptiv APTV 1.21% PLC wants to demonstrate how the technology might actually be deployed in real life. Aptiv, the automotive-technology company formerly known as Delphi Automotive, is partnering with ride-hailing startup Lyft Inc. at this week's show to give free rides in self-driven cars between the convention center and most of the big hotels. The goal is to show how its technology could be deployed in a self-driving car service. "This year is kind of pivoting away from technology demonstrations to really showing the applications," Mr. DeVos said. The convergence of Silicon Valley and the Motor City has helped propel CES, held here every January, into an automotive industry event that rivals the North American International Auto Show, taking place next week in Detroit.

Three businesses in Manitoba received a big boost on Saturday after the Government of Canada handed out a $4.5 million investment. The companies received the financial support under the Western Innovation Initiative, a program providing $100 million in repayable contributions to small- and medium-sized companies in Western Canada. "That's how the good jobs for middle class Canadians and those working hard to join it will be created," said federal Minister of Small Business and Tourism Bardish Chagger at the announcement in Winnipeg on Saturday. Complex Games, which makes online games for mobile devices; Sightline Innovation, a machine-learning company; and GORP, an energy bar company, received the funding to push their products to broader markets. When they told me, I was speechless," said Colleen Dyck, CEO of The Great GORP Project Inc. "I was really honoured that they really saw the potential in my company."

Among the criticisms of current artificial intelligence systems is their inability to handle more than one task such as spatial navigation or object recognition at a time. "Integrating advanced behaviors into a whole brain system for robots and drones represents the future of artificial intelligence" argues Massimiliano Versace, co-founder and CEO of Neurala Inc. The software startup with ties to NASA and the U.S. Air Force announced this week it has received a U.S. patent for its deep learning neural networks platform that, the company claims, integrates "multiple brain areas." The Boston-based startup's "whole brain" approach seeks to mimic the human brain's ability to integrate sights, sounds and other senses to make a decision. The patent award covers Neurala's method for implementing autonomous robotic control.