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.
This week Devin, Kirsten and I have been running around in Las Vegas for CES to figure out what’s going on in the world of tech.
Siri in particular could do with getting its act together, before it’s completely left in the dust by its competitors.
Biggest news from CESSamsung’s Ballie, the spherical home robot first seen at CES 2020, has rolled back into the spotlight at CES 2024 with some trend-forward AI enhancements.
Kyle reports how AI tools can easily manipulate ID images, creating deepfakes convincing enough to pass KYC tests.
Plus, Alexa’s got a new AI model making it more opinionated and emotional.
Generative AI gets a lot of press, from image-generating tools like Midjourney to Runway to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
To be clear, the execs — who hail from such industries as manufacturing, transportation and industrial goods — still see GenAI as a priority.
Eighty-nine percent responding to the BCG poll ranked the tech as a “top-three” IT initiative for their companies in 2024.
The results, taken in tandem with responses to a BCG survey late last year, put into sharp relief the high degree of enterprise skepticism surrounding AI-powered generative tools of any kind.
“Bad or illegal decision-making” touches on copyright violations — a hot-button topic in GenAI.
In an era where DIY culture and personal manufacturing are rising, Rownd Lathe is an exciting new player.
This compact CNC lathe is a fun gateway to creativity, enabling users to effortlessly shape and form a variety of materials, including wood, aluminum, and plastic.
For amateur machinists, entry-level CNC mills have been around for a hot minute (Bantam is the brand that immediately springs to mind), but CNC lathes have been conspicuously absent from the market.
Ease of use is central to the Rownd Lathe experience.
This touch interface also allows for manual machine control, or you can upload Gcode to run the machine like any other CNC lathe.
OpenAI is launching a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot, aimed at smaller, self-service-oriented teams.
Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management.
ChatGPT Team also lets people within a team build and share GPTs, custom apps based on OpenAI’s text-generating AI models.
ChatGPT Team is priced at $30 per user per month or $25 per user per month billed annually — higher than ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s individual premium ChatGPT plan, which costs $20 per month.
ChatGPT Team seems tailor-made for small- and medium-sized business customers who want team-oriented ChatGPT features without having to pay top dollar for them.
Substack has industry-leading newsletter tools and a platform that independent writers flock to, but its recent content moderation missteps could prove costly.
Earlier last year, Substack CEO Chris Best failed to articulate responses to straightforward questions from the Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel about content moderation.
The interview came as Substack launched its own Twitter (now X)-like microblogging social platform, known as Notes.
Substack authors are at a crossroadsIn the Substack fallout, which is ongoing, another wave of disillusioned authors is contemplating jumping ship from Substack, substantial readerships in tow.
It’s unfortunate that Substack’s writers and readers now have to grapple with yet another form of avoidable precarity in the publishing world.
PhotoRoom — a startup out of Paris, France — has built a popular AI-based image editing app and API targeting e-commerce vendors, media specialists, and others.
Multiple sources say that the startup is raising between $50 million and $60 million on a pre-money valuation of between $500 million and $600 million.
PhotoRoom, and Matthieu Rouif, the CEO who co-founded PhotoRoom with CTO Eliot Andres, declined to comment on any funding-related questions.
Adding all this together, since its last round in 2022, when it raised $19 million, PhotoRoom has been blowing up.
Most categories of apps, she wrote, are still up for grabs; and within the popular area of AI image-based tools, apps like PhotoRoom, in her opinion, have a shot at success.
Clients using Deco.cx see, on average, a 5x increase in PageSpeed score and a 30% increase in conversion rates, Crespo said.
Deco.cx signed over 65 clients, including Brazilian retail brands Grupo Reserva, Osklen and Zee.Dog.
It also amassed a community of more than 2,400 web developers and 36 system integration partner agencies.
He also wants to grow the company by bringing on additional engineers so Deco.cx can go into new markets, particularly the United States.
“We want to be the first choice for the next 10 million web developers who don’t want to spend our time connecting pipes.”
Not uncommonly, KYC authentication involves “ID images,” or cross-checked selfies used to confirm a person is who they say they are.
There’s no evidence that gen AI tools have been used to fool a real KYC system — yet.
But the ease with which relatively convincing deepfaked ID images is cause for alarm.
Feeding deepfaked KYC images to an app is even easier than creating them.
The takeaway is that KYC, which was already hit-or-miss, could soon become effectively useless as a security measure.
He said there are around 350 shows published weekly, with only around “a handful” of creators making multiple shows, meaning it has around 350 creators using the platform today.
The Danish Export and Investment Fund (EIFO) is leading the round, with HighlandX and Augustinus Fabrikker also participating.
Strunge said that prior to this round, the company had raised just over €200 million.
Podimo’s funding and traction are coming at a tricky time for the podcasting industry.
The plan will be to take this model further, Strunge said, with a focus on ever-more “hyper local” content.
