E-commerce site Etsy today launched “Gift Mode,” a new AI-powered feature to match you with tailored gift ideas based on specific preferences.
Gift Mode is essentially an online quiz that asks about who you’re shopping for (sibling, parent, child), the occasion (birthday, anniversary, get well), and the recipient’s interests.
At launch, the feature has 15 interests to choose from, including crafting, fashion, sports, video games, pets, and more.
It then generates a series of gift guides inspired by your choices, pulling options from the over 100 million items listed on the platform.
Etsy hopes Gift Mode will relieve the stress that comes with selecting the perfect present.
Microsoft today made Reading Coach, its AI-powered tool that provides learners with personalized reading practice, available at no cost to anyone with a Microsoft account.
As of this morning, Reading Coach is accessible on the web in preview — a Windows app is forthcoming.
And soon (in late spring), Reading Coach will integrate with learning management systems such as Canva, Microsoft says.
Inspired by the success of Reading Progress (evidently), Microsoft launched Reading Coach in 2022 as a part of Teams for Education and Immersive Reader, the company’s cross-platform assistive service for language and reading comprehension.
“Reading Coach intrinsically motivates learners to continue advancing their skills in several ways,” Microsoft continues.
In addition to a new gesture-powered search feature for Android devices, Google today also introduced an AI-powered addition to its visual search capabilities in Google Lens.
However, Google clarified that while the Lens multisearch feature is offering generative AI insights, it’s not the same product as Google’s experimental genAI search SGE (Search Generative Experience), which remains opt-in only.
The AI-powered overviews for multisearch in Lens are launching for everyone in the U.S. in English, starting today.
Google notes that its genAI products — like its Google Search Generative Experience, for example, will cite their sources, to allow users to fact-check its answers.
The AI overviews for multisearch in Lens arrive today, while the gesture-based Circle to Search arrives on Jan. 31.
In September 2023, Amazon announced to developers that it would be launching new tools to build LLM-powered experiences.
Today, the company revealed three developers delivering new generative AI-powered Alexa experiences, including AI chatbot platform Character.AI, AI music company Splash and Voice AI game developer Volley.
All three experiences are available in the Amazon Alexa Skill Store.
Volley introduced its generative AI-powered “20 Questions” game, giving Alexa users a modern version of the well-known game.
The game uses generative AI to interact with users by asking them questions, providing hints and explaining “yes or no questions” if the human opponent gets stuck.
In September 2023, Amazon announced to developers that it would be launching new tools to build LLM-powered experiences.
Today, the company revealed three developers delivering new generative AI-powered Alexa experiences, including AI chatbot platform Character.AI, AI music company Splash and Voice AI game developer Volley.
All three experiences are available in the Amazon Alexa Skill Store.
Volley introduced its generative AI-powered “20 Questions” game, giving Alexa users a modern version of the well-known game.
The game uses generative AI to interact with users by asking them questions, providing hints and explaining “yes or no questions” if the human opponent gets stuck.
As search engine incumbents — namely Google — amp up their platforms with gen AI tech, startups are looking to reinvent AI-powered search from the ground up.
Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO, previously worked at OpenAI, where he researched language and gen AI models along the lines of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 3.
This reporter is skeptical about the longevity of gen AI search tools for a number of reasons, not least of which AI models are costly to run.
Concerns around misuse and misinformation inevitably crop up around gen AI search tools like Perplexity, as well — as they well should.
Some plaintiffs, like The New York Times, have argued gen AI search experiences siphon off publishers’ content, readers and ad revenue through anticompetitive means.
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