In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests; companies that had previously defended their facial recognition products began to reconsider their approach. IBM announced that it would no longer offer facial recognition, Amazon said it would pause selling its facial recognition to police for a year, and Microsoft announced Thursday that it would not sell its facial recognition technology to police "until there is a federal law regulating the technology," the Washington Post reported. The message is now clear: Even tech giants like Amazon, IBM, and Google, which had earlier decided not to offer a facial recognition API, do not think this technology is ready for use by police. It's important to remember, though, that companies like IBM and Amazon are the tip of the facial recognition iceberg. Many U.S. police departments with facial recognition tools didn't buy them from big tech companies but rather from smaller contractors that claim to use "forensic" facial recognition algorithms developed by companies like NEC, Rank One, and Cognitec.

UneeQ Creator with Google Dialogflow unlocks the power of conversational AI to improve customer experience and influence consumer behavior with customizable digital employees. UneeQ, a United States and New Zealand-based digital human company, announces the launch of first-ever conversational AI digital human creator platform, UneeQ Creator. Equipped with native integrations into Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and many others, UneeQ Creator offers ground-breaking machine learning functionality and the ability to easily create and deploy unique digital human employees or brand ambassadors capable of recreating natural human interaction across any industry. "The use case potential for digital employees is immeasurable," said Danny Tomsett, founder and CEO, UneeQ. "For example, imagine if the next time you went to order fast food, instead of using a touch screen, your order was taken by the friendly face of a digital human who could provide recommendations. All of these scenarios are rapidly becoming reality and are in development as we speak, with growing possibilities across many new emerging needs in a post-pandemic world every day."

"The World Economic Forum is spearheading a multistakeholder, evidence-based policy project in partnership with the Government of New Zealand. The project aims at co-designing actionable governance frameworks for AI regulation. It is structured around three focus areas: 1) obtaining of a social licence for the use of AI through an inclusive national conversation; 2) the development of in-house understanding of AI to produce well-informed policies; and 3) the effective mitigation of risks associated with AI systems to maximize their benefits." Reimagining Regulation for the Age of AI – aim to create enabling frameworks that support the operationalization of the ethical use of artificial intelligence. This is all about how do you create transparency and build trust between humans, robots and the companies controling them?

What could your company achieve with the worlds most advanced robot dog working for you? One of New Zealand's leading Artificial Intelligence development companies, AwareGroup has secured a partnership deal with the operations arm of Boston Dynamics. Rocos Robotics Platform and AwareGroup will work together to provide five New Zealand companies with the opportunity to develop and deploy SPOT robots for any number of practical use-cases. Inspect progress on construction sites, create digital twins, and identify hazards. Remotely inspect and identify supporting awareness and operations.