Nova Forge lets Amazon's customers train frontier models for different tasks--a potential breakthrough in making AI actually useful for businesses. Amazon has announced a new family of frontier artificial intelligence models--and a new way for customers to build frontier models of their own. The ecommerce giant announced the second generation of its Nova AI models at re:Invent, a company conference held in Las Vegas. The models are nowhere near as popular as those offered by rivals like OpenAI and Google, but Amazon's plan to make them highly customizable could see them gain traction with its cloud users. Amazon detailed two improved large language models, Nova Lite and Nova Pro; a new realtime voice model called Nova Sonic; and a more experimental model called Nova Omni that performs a simulated kind of reasoning using images, audio, and video as well as text.

Over the past decade, the demand for communication devices has increased among individuals with mobility and speech impairments. Eye-gaze tracking has emerged as a promising solution for hands-free communication; however, traditional appearance-based interfaces often face challenges such as accuracy issues, involuntary eye movements, and difficulties with extensive command sets. This work presents a multimodal appearance-based gaze-controlled virtual keyboard that utilises deep learning in conjunction with standard camera hardware, incorporating both synchronous and asynchronous modes for command selection. The virtual keyboard application supports menu-based selection with nine commands, enabling users to spell and type up to 56 English characters, including uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation, and a delete function for corrections. The proposed system was evaluated with twenty able-bodied participants who completed specially designed typing tasks using three input modalities: (i) a mouse, (ii) an eye-tracker, and (iii) an unmodified webcam. Typing performance was measured in terms of speed and information transfer rate (ITR) at both command and letter levels. Average typing speeds were 18.3+-5.31 letters/min (mouse), 12.60+-2.99letters/min (eye-tracker, synchronous), 10.94 +- 1.89 letters/min (webcam, synchronous), 11.15 +- 2.90 letters/min (eye-tracker, asynchronous), and 7.86 +- 1.69 letters/min (webcam, asynchronous). ITRs were approximately 80.29 +- 15.72 bits/min (command level) and 63.56 +- 11 bits/min (letter level) with webcam in synchronous mode. The system demonstrated good usability and low workload with webcam input, highlighting its user-centred design and promise as an accessible communication tool in low-resource settings.

When Amazon launched the Alexa virtual assistant nine years ago, its ability to decode voice commands to set a timer or play a song seemed almost magical. Today, the bar for impressive language skills is much higher, thanks to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Amazon is giving its voice assistant a reboot that takes advantage of the technology behind the new wave of chatbots that can engage in remarkably lifelike conversation. Amazon announced the upgrade to Alexa at an event held at its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The assistant will answer much more complex questions and engage in more flowing, open-ended conversation, dropping the need for users to say "Alexa …" at each turn.

A few months ago, Alexa was declared dead. The company had pulled a plug on its'Amazon Alexa' voice-assisted feature succumbing to huge operating losses. But, now the tide is changing. It looks like the unfaltering wave of AI will revive the almost-lost virtual assistant technology. Recently announced partnership between HuggingFace and AWS gives further confidence that Amazon has something up its sleeve to boost users' conversational experience with Alexa.

If you thought Alexa was only there to tell you the weather or who scored in the football, think again. Amazon now envisions its virtual assistant becoming a'trusted adviser and companion', and'anticipating' what we want to do, according to its chief scientist. Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon yesterday, Rohit Prasad said: 'If I ask Alexa, what hike should I do? Just like a friend, because it knows me, Alexa should tell me: you should do this hike.' The tech giant is envisioning a home with various sensors in each room - from microphones to ultrasound - working in the background, he said.

In the very near future, Amazon's famed voice assistant, Alexa, may sound quite different from the dutiful (and impersonal) voice you've grown accustomed to since it rolled out in 2014. At least, that's what Rohit Prasad, Amazon's senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, announced at Amazon's re:MARS conference, a global artificial intelligence (AI) event that Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos hosted over the summer. With just a one-minute audio sample, the technology could bring a loved one's voice bounding through an Echo device's speakers. Prasad used a short presentation to show the audience how the new speech-synthesizer technology could help us forge lasting memories of our deceased relatives. "Alexa, can grandma finish reading me The Wizard of Oz?" A young boy asked a cute Echo speaker with big Panda eyes.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Many, if not most, AI experts maintain that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is still many decades away, if not longer. And the AGI debate has been heating up over the past couple of months. However, according to Amazon, the route to "generalizable intelligence" begins with ambient intelligence. And it says that future is unfurling now.

Amazon's Alexa might soon replicate the voice of family members - even if they're dead. The capability, unveiled at Amazon's Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, is in development and would allow the virtual assistant to mimic the voice of a specific person based on a less than a minute of provided recording. Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, said at the event Wednesday that the desire behind the feature was to build greater trust in the interactions users have with Alexa by putting more "human attributes of empathy and affect." "These attributes have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love," Prasad said. "While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last."

Onstage at re:Mars this week, Amazon showcased a developing Alexa feature meant to mimic the flow of natural language. Conversation between two humans rarely follows some predefined structure. It goes to strange and unexpected places. One topic segues into another, as participants inject their lived experience. In a demo, a conversation about trees turns to one about hiking and parks. In the context of the company's AI, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, refers to the phenomenon as "conversation exploration."

Do you miss the sound of a dead relative's voice? Well fear not: Amazon unveiled a new feature in the works for its virtual assistant Alexa that can read aloud in a deceased loved one's voice based on a short recording of the person. "While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last," said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, on Wednesday at Amazon's re:MARS conference in Las Vegas. In a video played at the event, an Amazon Echo Dot is asked: "Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me'The Wizard of Oz'?" "Instead of Alexa's voice reading the book, it's the kid's grandma's voice," Prasad said. "We had to learn to produce a high quality voice with less than a minute of recording."