November 21, 2024

The Download: AI replicas, and China’s climate role

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI can now create a replica of your personality Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your…

August 2023

Third time’s the charm? Sony makes $200 PlayStation Portal in-home handheld official

August 23, 2023
Sony has twice tested the waters in portable gaming, with the unsuccessful but fondly remembered PSP and Vita. Third time lucky is the hope with PlayStation Portal, a handheld gaming device that — there’s no getting around it — is more or less a supercharged version of Nintendo’s endearingly confusing Wii U. Teased in May, […]

Google plans to bring AI-fueled security enhancements to Google Workspace

August 23, 2023
As companies move to the cloud, keeping data secure is always front of mind. While Google is quick to point out that it has never had an exploit in Google Workspace, it doesn’t mean it isn’t working to continually stay ahead of security issues. Today, the company announced a number of security-related enhancements to Google […]

YouTube tests a search feature where users hum to identify songs

August 23, 2023
YouTube announced a new experiment on Android devices that determines a song via humming—which seems like a major step up from Apple’s music recognition app Shazam. As noted on YouTube’s support page, the video-sharing platform is testing a search-by-song capability on the Android version of the app that allows users to figure out a song on YouTube by […]

Spotify introduces new podcaster tools, including customized pages, analytics, and other controls

August 23, 2023
Following Apple’s announcement of podcast creator tools for subscriptions on Monday, Spotify today also introduced its own latest developments in terms of features aimed at podcasters. Included among the changes are customization tools for podcast show pages, new impression analytics, tools to edit podcast previews, an expansion of automated ads, and a new Spotify Audience […]

Twilio Segment teams with Amazon SageMaker on new customer predictions product

August 23, 2023
The customer data platform provides a central place to collect first party information about customers, but simply having a pile of data is not the point. Companies want to put it to work to improve customer experience and more precisely target certain groups, based on this information they have stockpiled. More and more companies are […]

Brain implants helped create a digital avatar of a stroke survivor’s face

August 23, 2023
“What do you think of my artificial voice?” asks a woman on a computer screen, her green eyes widening slightly. The image is clearly computerized, and the voice is halting, but it’s still a remarkable moment. The image is a digital avatar of a person who lost her ability to speak after a stroke 18…

Automakers now have to comply with MA’s Right to Repair law

August 23, 2023
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Tuesday automakers can comply with a Massachusetts Right to Repair law, reversing a previous directive to ignore the state legislation. Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law was a ballot initiative that passed overwhelmingly in 2020. The law requires auto manufacturers that sell cars in the state to equip […]