Updated: Feb 24, 2023
Audiobooks narrated by a text-to-speech AI are now available via Apple’s Books. This is a move with potentially huge implications for the multi-billion-dollar audiobook industry. Apple has said that their the new “digital narration” feature on its website will help make the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all, by reducing the cost and complexity of producing them for authors and publishers.
This represents a potential paradigm shift from the current audiobook model, which often involves authors narrating their own books in a process that can take weeks and cost thousands for a publisher. Digital narration has the potential to allow smaller publishers and authors to put out an audiobook at a much lower cost.
For now, there are just four different narration voices to start with, two female and two male, which are called ‘Helen’, ‘Madison’, ‘Jackson’, and ‘Mitchell’. Each voice is optimized for specific genres. For example, Jackson is for fiction or romance and so would be a deep and somewhat husky voice. All of them are non-accented American-sounding voices, however, it is likely that Apple will expand the program in the longer-term to English or Australian, and even regional voices such as a New York accent. Other languages like Spanish, French, German, and are also likely on the way.
Only a fraction of books written so far have been converted to an audio version with millions of titles remaining ‘unheard’. This is mainly because of the cost and complicated production process mentioned above, making small and independent authors and publishers hesitant. As a result, Apple will start with those ‘unheard’ longtail books first. Besides, Apple is not only applying this new technology to the existing titles in its library, but it is also reported in The Guardian that in recent months it has been approaching independent publishers as potential partners for future publications.
Updated: Feb 24, 2023
Microsoft is reportedly working on integrating some of OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI-powered functions into its Office apps, which include Word, Outlook and PowerPoint, as well as its search engine Bing. The company has already started testing of the text generating GPT model from OpenAI on Word to enhance its autocomplete feature.
For Outlook, Microsoft is also making use of OpenAI technology to improve search results without requiring the input of specific keywords. The aim is for it to soon to be able to even help suggest entire email replies and recommend necessary changes.
For its search engine called Bing, which has historically struggled to compete with the Google, Microsoft is also working on a new OpenAI enhanced version which is expected to be launched before the end of March 2023. The new vision, which makes use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, will be able to provide more humanlike answers to queries from users, instead of simply links to pages which may potentially have the information the user is looking for. It is also said that Microsoft would like to use this ability as a base to make Bing more competitive against and even challenge Google’s already powerful Knowledge Graph technology to offer better answers to users.
As part of this deal to integrate OpenAI technology into Microsoft’s core programs, it has also been reported that Microsoft plans to invest around USD 10 bln into OpenAI. If this proves to be correct true, that will take Microsoft’s ownership of OpenAI to 49%. Other investors and OpenAI will hold the remaining 49% and 2% stake of the company respectively. That deal would also include a clause that allows Microsoft to receive 75 % of OpenAI profit until it fully recoups the money invested. This news broke in The Verge.
Updated: Feb 24, 2023
based robotics and automation start-up, designing and producing robotic tire changing system, just made another important breakthrough into bricks-and-mortar operations, by forming a partnership with Creamery Tire, a local tire service center operator in Pennsylvania.
RoboTire’s fourth-generation robotic tire-changing system at Creamery Tire begun serving customers in December 2022. Creamery has signed on to install additional RoboTire’s systems at two other locations in Pennsylvania. RoboTire Co-Founder and CEO Victor Darlfi mentioned that they see growing demand for safer and more efficient tire changing practices, which would be mutually beneficial to business owners and customers.
Creamery Tire CEO Joseph Franklin also saw that RoboTire’s systems are truly revolutionizing the way they have been doing. Just a few months ago, in August, 2022, RoboTire just completed the instalment of its first robotic tire-changer at Discount Tire, a nationwide tire and wheel retailer in US. Given issues of labor shortage in US, the development and deployment of robotic tire-changer seems accelerating.
Besides the merit of controlling the headcount, RoboTire’s systems can also help reduce the current hour-long tire changing experience to less than 25 minutes, providing a much better user experience to the driver, while at the same time, allowing the shop to serve more cars in a safe and efficient environment