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Retailers Spend Big on AI; Funding for Software That Modifies Accented Speech
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Welcome back. Businesses world-wide are expected to more than double their spending on artificial intelligence over the next four years as they look to gain more insight about their customers, increase operational efficiencies and improve their ability to innovate. International Data Corp. forecasts organizations around the world will boost AI spending to more than $204 billion in 2025 from $85.3 billion in 2021. Many industries are investing in AI. But retail, according to the market-research company, is set to overtake banking as the top AI spender this year, with companies such as Home Depot and Gap turning to the technology to improve their operations and boost sales. “Everything you can think of in almost every part of retail is being powered by AI,” said Jeremy King, Pinterest Inc.’s senior vice president of engineering.
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Home Depot is among the retailers boosting their spending on artificial intelligence.
PHOTO: ZACK WITTMAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Retailers Expected to be Biggest AI Spenders
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Retailers are poised to surpass banks as the biggest spenders on artificial intelligence as companies including Home Depot and Wayfair turn to the technology for everything from inventory management to more personalized online search and shopping, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Billion-dollar investments. The global retail sector is expected to spend $11.8 billion on AI this year, up from $9.36 billion in 2020, according to a new forecast from market-research company International Data Corp. Banks, which spent $9.43 billion on AI last year, are expected to spend $11.7 billion on the technology this year, according to IDC.
Helping Home Depot stock shelves. Home-improvement chain Home Depot is rolling out a machine-learning system to spot products that need to be restocked on store shelves. The system uses computer vision, an AI technology that can analyze camera images, to track the stock on the shelves of individual stores. It crunches that information along with past shopper buying patterns around events such as holidays, daily product sales and other data to anticipate when shelves will need to be stocked.
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Gap Deploys AI to Better Allocate Inventory
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Gap Inc., whose brands include Old Navy, Banana Republic and Gap, is using AI and machine-learning tools to better manage its inventory, Katrina O’Connell, the company's chief financial officer, told The Wall Street Journal.
Serving customers. Gap expects the tools to help predict demand for styles, colors and sizes and to allow the company to improve its forecasting before and during seasons, depending on customer behavior. Gap also is looking to use the technology to make recommendations about the number and type of products that an individual store should display.
AI focus. The company declined to provide AI budget numbers, but said the technology is an “increasing area of focus.”
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$11.8 billion
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Projected global retail spending on AI systems this year, according to International Data Corp.
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Some of the early customers for Sanas’s technology are call centers based in India and the Philippines, the company’s CEO said. Here, a call center in the Philippines.
PHOTO: LEAN DAVAL JR./REUTERS
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Startup Behind Software That Modifies Accented Speech Gets Funding
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Sanas.ai Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., startup that developed software designed to make accented speech sound more like Standard American English, has raised $5.5 million in seed funding, the WSJ reports. Human Capital, an early investor in data-warehousing provider Snowflake Inc., led the investment.
Real-time conversion. The company’s machine-learning algorithm can modify the way people pronounce English words in an online video or audio conversation. For example, a person with a Latin American accent can switch to an accent more like Standard American English. The conversion is done in real time without any noticeable lag, according to the company.
Target markets. The company is targeting call centers, education and videogames, as well as functions such as sales.
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Koch VC Arm Invests in Autonomous Truck Startup
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Koch Industries Inc., through its venture arm, led an $85 million financing of Gatik Inc., a self-driving truck startup, the WSJ reports.
Running set routes. Gatik, which has more than 20 trucks operating commercially, has agreements with Walmart Inc. and other companies to run its trucks on set routes between distribution centers and retail locations. Gatik charges businesses a fee to set up a fixed route for its self-driving rigged box trucks and then charges for the service.
Driverless challenges. The autonomous-vehicle sector continues to face obstacles. Most troubling is the technology’s uneven ability to deal with sudden situations in the real world, an issue that keeps drivers employed. While Gatik has done limited commercial runs without a driver, most of its revenue is generated by its trucks running routes with an operator still in the cab.
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“We don’t have a business unless we can take the driver out.”
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— Gatik co-founder and Chief Executive Gautam Narang
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ILLUSTRATION: JOHN W. TOMAC
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Toilets Are Getting a Lot Smarter
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Researchers are designing high-tech toilets to look for signs of gastrointestinal disease, monitor blood pressure or analyze people’s diet, The Wall Street Journal’s Brianna Abbott reports. Physicians for some time have been using fecal and urine samples to check people’s well-being, but scientists are starting to better understand how microbes in our bodies influence health.
Taking a closer look. Stanford School of Medicine researchers have attached cameras to a toilet bowl and developed a machine-learning algorithm to analyze the waste against a diagnostic chart. A urine test strip, meanwhile, spots specific molecules to get insight into a person’s health.
Sensors analyze waste. Duke University has created a prototype smart toilet that also uses cameras and machine learning to analyze waste after it has been flushed. The commode uses additional sensors to capture consistency, presence of blood and specific proteins.
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Technology transforming doctor visits. Rapid advances in digital technology, imaging, gene sequencing and artificial intelligence will likely make the annual physical a more virtual experience. Michael Blum, a cardiologist and chief digital transformation officer at University of California San Francisco, says that in five to 10 years he will be able to perform a physical exam outside the office that matches the quality of an in-office visit. (The Wall Street Journal)
Judge rules only people get patents. A federal judge has ruled that only a person, and not a computer using AI, can be listed as an inventor on patents under U.S. law. (Bloomberg)
Facebook apologizes for ‘primates’ label on video. Facebook apologized for placing a “primates” label on a video of Black men that was posted by a British newspaper. The company said it was “an unacceptable error.” The company is investigating the matter and disabled the artificial-intelligence feature responsible for the message. (The New York Times)
China looks to regulate algos. China is planning to regulate recommendation algorithms. Among the proposed rules: Companies can’t set up algorithms that would lead to a user becoming an addict or to spend excessive amounts of money, and businesses would have to give users the ability to switch off algorithmic recommendation services. (CNBC)
New tool designed to aid fantasy football players. ESPN and IBM have unveiled technology designed to help people who play fantasy football. The tool, called the Trade Assistant with IBM Watson, uses statistical analysis and natural language processing to recommend trades. (ZDNet)
Databricks raises $1.6 billion. Databricks, a data analytics startup that uses artificial intelligence, raised $1.6 billion in a new funding round led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s investment arm Counterpoint Global. The latest funding valued the company at $38 billion. (Reuters)
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Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc. named its first president, paving the way for founder and Chief Executive Richard Liu to step back from day-to-day business to focus on longer-term strategy and mentoring young managers. (The Wall Street Journal)
El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, allowing Salvadorans to use the cryptocurrency to buy a cup of coffee, get a haircut or even pay taxes and home loans. (The Wall Street Journal)
Chinese state investors are looking to take an ownership stake in ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc., months after regulators punished Didi with restrictions and made it one of the highest-profile casualties of China’s toughening stance on tech. (The Wall Street Journal)
Businesses transferring data from the European Union to the U.S. must provide new legal guarantees about data privacy starting this month, although privacy experts say the change won’t solve all the challenges from regulators and courts regarding such transfers. (The Wall Street Journal)
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