Two of the biggest names in biometrics have issued a joint White Paper detailing the benefits of AI-driven face authentication. The paper, entitled "Enhancing Trust with AI-Driven Biometrics", is jointly presented by FaceTec and Jumio, ID verification and authentication specialists leading the current digital onboarding trend with remote enrollment, face authentication and biometric liveness technology. Artificial Intelligence plays an enormously important role in their solutions, and accordingly, it's a major focus of the paper. Available as an e-book, the paper builds on the idea of the "trust anchor" explored in the previously published White Paper "Trusted Identity From Start to Finish": essentially, the idea is that strong authentication starts with the foundation of an anchor document that provides reliable identity assurance. Establishing a link between the end user's face and this anchor – a passport or a driver's license, for example – allows for the creation of a "trust chain" in which authentication can reliably be performed at any point going forward.

Chooch AI has released a new computer vision service that allows users to detect and categorize events in any kind of local video stream. Dubbed Chooch Edge AI, the technology was unveiled at this week's TechCrunch Disrupt startup event in San Francisco and leverages Chooch AI's object recognition capabilities. "Our clients requested a fast, easy to install, complete embedded AI solution many times over," said Chooch AI CEO Emrah Gultekin. "There are locations where connectivity is an issue, and now we can offer detailed inferencing on the edge, with less stress on the overall network." To that end, Chooch Edge AI can be installed on any camera device that meets the minimum hardware requirements, which include Linux, 1GB RAM, and an ARM 32, ARM 64, or Intel x86-64 chip.

Customers of Alabama's Bank Independent can now access their banking services via an AI-driven virtual assistant based on Amazon's Alexa platform. That includes checking their account balances, performing transactions, and receiving information about loans, bank hours, and more; and the system can even perform biometric authentication using voice recognition. The technology arrives via Enacomm's VPA, or "Virtual Personal Assistant" solution. It's a little late in arriving; plans for the deployment were first announced a year ago, and at the time Enacomm said it expected to complete it "in early 2018". But better late than never: A statement announcing the implementation suggested that customers appreciate the new technology, with Bank Independent VP Kelly Burdette noting that after its launch the company heard from an 89-year-old customer with macular degeneration who said the Alexa chatbot "makes his banking and his life easier." News of the deployment arrives after a string of announcements from Enacomm concerning new distribution partners this year.

Qualcomm and Baidu are deepening their partnership on Artificial Intelligence, announcing that they will essentially combine their Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence and Baidu PaddlePaddle platforms. The latter was first launched as a deep learning platform for internal use at Baidu in 2013, with the company subsequently making it open source in August of 2016. And with Baidu's announcement in February of this year that it would support the Qualcomm AI Engine, bringing Baidu PaddlePaddle into the mix appears to be a logical next step. The companies will combine their technologies through the Open Neural Network Exchange ("ONNX"), an open source platform aimed at allowing developers to easily choose between a number of different tools and models as they build AI technologies. Other partners of the ONNX include Microsoft, Facebook, NVIDIA, and Amazon Web Services.

Voice-controlled AI assistants are quickly becoming the central user interface for a range of devices. Artificial intelligence has been a central concern for tech companies for many years, finding applications ranging from semi-automated temperature controls for high-end cars to semi-automatic-toting gangsters in video games. But it's currently undergoing an arguably unique phase of intensive R&D, with some of the biggest brands in the world intently focused on ensuring that they have the most cutting-edge technology ready for deployment.

Ericsson is looking to artificial intelligence to help manage the profound changes that the Internet of Things and 5G are bringing to networking and connectivity. The company has announced that it is expanding its Support Services platform to better leverage analytics and machine learning technology. One component of the platform, 'Analyze and Change', is available now, and Ericsson says it has already helped some network operators to attain "a near-perfect success rate in handling software changes and drastically reduced emergency recovery time from 4 hours to just 60 minutes," according to a statement from the company. Meanwhile, Entel Chile Head of Network Operations Rodrigo Orozco says Ericsson's data analytics technology has helped the telecom "to prevent approximately 85 percent of critical incidents in the network." The efforts are indicative of bigger-picture changes.