A newly developed text-to-speech language model from Microsoft can mimic a person’s speech from as little as three seconds of sample audio – but the tech giant is keeping its tech under wraps for now so it is not misused. One of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) research teams published a paper about its model for text-to-speech… Read more »
Atto, the Melbourne accelerator that helps female founders launch tech companies, has had another busy year assisting more than 115 women build tech-enabled businesses. You can read about Atto’s year in review here. But to round out the year, after its latest cohort of 10 startups emerged from the program, founder Kate Kendell and her… Read more »
Recruitment and talent analysis startup Sapia.ai, formerly known as PredictiveHire, has raised $17 million in Series A. The round was led by Macquarie Capital and W23, the venture capital arm of Woolworths Group. The capital is earmarked for continued overseas expansion, including making the platform available in multiple languages. Sapia’s artificial intelligence-powered automation platform is… Read more »
Sydney robotics and navigation tech scale-up Advanced Navigation has raised US$68 million (A$108m) in a Series B. The round was led by US private equity firm KKR, supported by deep learning venture firm AI Capital as well as existing backers Main Sequence, Malcolm Turnbull , In-Q-Tel, and OIF. The 10-year-old tech business has now raised… Read more »
How would an artificial intelligence (AI) decide what to do? One common approach in AI research is called “reinforcement learning”. Reinforcement learning gives the software a “reward” defined in some way, and lets the software figure out how to maximise the reward. This approach has produced some excellent results, such as building software agents that… Read more »
Nola, a computer vision startup that helps businesses estimate where people will be and when, alongside helping customers find the shortest queues at events, has raised $200,000 from VC and accelerator program Skalata Ventures. Cofounder Victoria Zorin came up with the idea three years ago as her frustration grew while stuck in queues at a… Read more »
Sydney startup ybot, a voice-activated autonomous work assistant, has raised $4.6 million in a Seed round led by US VC Florida Funders, The capital injection is earmarked for product development, as well as sales, marketing and hiring efforts, with plans to double employee headcount in the next year. Around 80% of workers are “deskless” –… Read more »
Early stage investment company Antler Australia recently backed 13 startups as part of its ongoing program to invest in great local tech companies. Over the next six weeks, Startup Daily will share the details of each venture in the “Antler Investor Memos” series. You can also meet the founders on the Startup Daily show on… Read more »
AI-based platform Servicely, a low-code service management platform, has raised $1.2 million in its first external capital round. The round was backed by a combination of high-net worth individuals and a family office. Servicely is a low-code service management platform with a proprietary AI engine that observes and learns how work is being done by… Read more »
What was your first reaction when you heard about Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who announced last month the AI program he was working on had developed consciousness? If, like me, you’re instinctively suspicious, it might have been something like: Is this guy serious? Does he honestly believe what he is saying? Or is this… Read more »
South Australian agtech startup GoMicro is hoping to tackle the $1 trillion problem with an app-based device that costs just $1 to produce and attaches to a smartphone. GoMicro CEO and founder Dr Sivam Krish has developed GoMicro’s Spotcheck App and a phone attachable magnifier designed for accurately assessing the level of ripeness or spoilage… Read more »
In a world rife with opposing views, let’s draw attention to something we can all agree on: if I show you my pen, and then hide it behind my back, my pen still exists – even though you can’t see it anymore. We can all agree it still exists, and probably has the same shape… Read more »
I love writing code to make things: apps, websites, charts, even music. It’s a skill I’ve worked hard at for more than 20 years. So I must confess last week’s news about the release of a new “AI assistant” coding helper called GitHub Copilot gave me complicated feelings. Copilot, which spits out code to order… Read more »
Computer vision software startup Black.ai has raised $5.4 million in a Seed+ round. It was led by Jelix Ventures, with support from Right Click Capital and several angel investors. The six-year-old business has now raised $8.55 million and will use the funds to double its local headcount, expands its industry reach, and build out its… Read more »
Google’s LaMDA software (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is a sophisticated AI chatbot that produces text in response to user input. According to software engineer Blake Lemoine, LaMDA has achieved a long-held dream of AI developers: it has become sentient. Lemoine’s bosses at Google disagree, and have suspended him from work after he published his… Read more »
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