🤩Swiss AI Hearing Surprise!

Swiss firm Sonova launches the world’s first hearing aid with real-time AI

Key Points 

• Swiss firm Sonova has launched Sphere Infinio—the first hearing aid with real-time AI for speech clarity enhancement.

• It uses a DEEPSONIC chip that is 53 times more powerful than current hearing aid technology.

🦻🏻News - On Tuesday, Swiss firm Sonova unveiled an AI-powered hearing aid called Sphere Infinio. This device is the first globally to use real-time artificial intelligence to boost speech clarity in noisy environments. 

According to Sonova, the Sphere Infinio hearing aid boasts a new DEEPSONIC chip that is 53 times more powerful than what is currently used in the hearing aid industry.

🔍What's more? Along with the hearing aid, Sonova also launched a new platform called Infinio. The company sees both Infinio and its existing Lumity platform as key drivers for future growth in its hearing aid business, which accounts for about half of its total sales.

Zoom to rival Google and Microsoft with new AI-powered docs

Key Points 

• Zoom now lets users create and share documents directly from video calls, with generative AI for writing and editing.

• The tool uses Zoom’s AI Companion to turn meeting transcripts into organized templates, tables, and checklists, which can be easily integrated into Zoom meetings.

• Zoom aims to stand out by offering the AI Companion at no extra cost with its Workplace plans, in contrast to higher-priced competitors such as Microsoft and Google.

👨🏻‍💻News - Zoom now lets users open a document tool right from their video calls, allowing them to create and share files based on their meetings. It also incorporates generative AI for writing and editing. 

🤹🏻‍♂️Features - The new document tool includes Zoom’s AI Companion, which uses LLM models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Zoom’s own models. It can take meeting transcripts and turn them into organized templates, tables, checklists, and trackers. Users can then integrate these docs into Zoom meetings for easy sharing and editing.

This new feature, similar to Google Docs, is part of their latest effort to compete with Microsoft and Google and become the go-to platform for businesses.

🕵🏻‍♂️So what's their strategy for standing out? Price. Zoom includes the AI Companion with its Workplace plans at no extra charge (with a subscription ranging from $14 to $19 per user per month for smaller companies). In comparison, Microsoft’s Copilot for 365 costs $30 per user per month, and Google’s Gemini for business ranges from $20 to $30 per user per month, on top of the base service costs.

OpenAI-backed Figure debuts its latest humanoid robot—Figure 02

Key Points 

• Figure 02 features a sleek exoskeleton, hidden wiring, and hands with 16 degrees of freedom, allowing it to handle objects up to 44 pounds.

• It is equipped with six RGB cameras and an onboard visual language model, which helps the robot understand and quickly make sense of what it sees.

• The robot has three times the computational power of Figure 01, with a 2.25 KWh battery offering up to 20 hours of operation daily.

♨️News - Figure has unveiled its newest humanoid robot, the Figure 02, which, as its name implies, is the successor to the Figure 01, which was revealed in 2023.

🤖So what’s new in Figure 02? 

• Figure's new robot, Figure 02, improves on the earlier Figure 01 prototype with a sleek, exoskeleton design, hidden wiring, and more advanced human-scale hands.

• The robot is 5 '6 " tall, weighs 132 pounds, and its hands have 16 degrees of freedom, allowing it to handle objects up to 44 pounds with greater dexterity. 

• It uses an AI-driven vision system with six RGB cameras on its head, front torso, and back torso. The data from these cameras is processed by an onboard visual language model, which helps the robot understand and quickly make sense of what it sees.

• Like its predecessor, Figure 02 uses speech-to-speech interactions with advanced AI models developed with OpenAI. You can give it tasks verbally, and it will combine the speech with visual data to respond and act accordingly. It can even correct itself as needed.

• The company claims that Figure 02 has three times the computational power of Figure 01, performs tasks autonomously and faster, and features a 2.25 KWh battery for 50% more power and up to 20 hours of operation daily.

😁See also - There's no specific timeline for the wider release of Figure 02, but the company has hinted that it could eventually be used in more places than just warehouses and factories, like in commercial settings and even homes.