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Amazon Works On Better Voice Emotion Detection In AI Systems

Recently, Amazon programmers announced their plan to present a different approach to emotion-classifying AI. The paper will be presented during the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. It seems that their strategy basically is to provide the AI systems with a data set of thousands of utterances from 10 different speakers. The goal is to create a more accurate neural network, making AI Systems pick up emotions in users’ voices more easily.

Listening to someone’s voice can give you many clues on what the person is actually trying to say. The tone’s fluctuations can be used to accentuate ideas and even change the meaning of the pronounced words. Emotions are entirely contained in the sound of someone’s voice. Studying emotion can be used in many ways. For example, it can be used to detect early signs of dementia or heart attack, and it can offer the chance to enhance the responsiveness of AI systems. Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa could soon have the ability to pick up users’ tone of voice, understanding their emotions better.

Amazon Works On Better Voice Emotion Detection In AI Systems

This idea is not new, as Amazon has been working for a long time to give Alexa the ability to determine people’s mood or emotional state. Researchers classified emotions based on three measures: valence, activation, and dominance. The training consists of 3 steps. The first one uses unlabelled data to and the encoder and decoder individually. Next, the encoder is tuned by attempting to distinguish real representations from artificial ones.

Lastly, the encoder is tuned to make sure the latent emotion is represented in such a way that helps the encoder predict emotional labels. After several experiments, researchers say that their AI System gained a 3% rise in the accuracy of assessing valence. Even more, when the system was faced with a sequence of representations of 20 milliseconds each, the accuracy improved by 4%.

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Games News

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Has Become The Best-Selling Video Game Of 2018 On Amazon US

The latest release from Nintendo, Super Smash Bros Ultimate was released last Friday, December 7th, for Nintendo Switch after a long wait for the fans. Just four days later, it’s become Amazon US best-selling video game of this year. The saga is one of the most popular of the Japanese company, and its success was predictable.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Has Become The Best-Selling Video Game Of 2018 On Amazon US

In fact, Nintendo’s success is palpable if you take a look at the list of best-selling video games from Amazon US, where behind the newly released Super Smash Bros Ultimate, there is Super Mario Party for Nintendo Switch.

Just three days after it came out, Super Smash Bros Ultimate has become the best-selling video game of 2018 on Amazon US. Up to position 18, occupied by Red Dead Redemption 2, all games belong to Nintendo.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate for Nintendo Switch Is The Fastest-Selling Games Across the UK

In addition to that, the game has also broken records in the United Kingdom where it has become the fastest-selling game, selling four times more than the first installment for Wii U in just three days.

In its first weekend, the franchise’s new adventure has also sold 62% more than it did for the Nintendo 3DS system, according to Gfk’s latest report.

The Most Recently Released Nintendo Switch Title Shapes Up As A Mass Phenomenon

It’s clear that Super Smash Bros Ultimate has become a mass phenomenon and will probably continue to break records in no time. We’ll have to wait until Christmas to see if it becomes the favorite gift for children and adults, as well.

Also, the game unites all the characters of the other releases of the series and not only, so the Super Smash Bros Ultimate gamers’ enjoyment is secured.

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Tech

Amazon Stepped Up and Donated $1 Million to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the renowned free online encyclopedia owned by Wikimedia that exists thanks to donations, but very few people invest in it. It is an excellent service, and one example for that is the digital assistants which rely on Wikipedia to generate answers to the users’ questions, but the devs, on their part, are not really grateful to Wikipedia. However, Amazon has just stepped up and donated $1 million to Wikipedia.

Over the time, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have made some small efforts to support this free online encyclopedia by making some small investments in Wikipedia. At most, each of the before-mentioned companies gave about $50,000 which, given their profits, seems very low.

Now, Amazon has stepped up and donated $1 million to Wikimedia to thank them for the excellent free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and also to reward them for their Wikipedia API which Amazon uses to improve the quality of its service.

Amazon is committed to supporting Wikimedia and donated $1 million to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the most-known free online encyclopedia and the source used by many sites and digital voice assistants of big companies such as Google, Microsoft, or Apple. However, Wikimedia, the owner of Wikipedia, is not monetizing its site and only operates on donations.

Now, Amazon, the retailing giant behind the smart speakers Amazon Echo, has just made a generous donation of $1 million to the Wikipedia.

In the press release, Amazon acknowledges that the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia has played a “crucial role in the success of his voice assistant.” However, the Amazon’s representative also stated that Wiki is just one of the “hundreds of sources” the company uses to build its assistant’s answers.

This announcement comes just days after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos himself announced the creation of a $2 billion fund to support education. According to Bezos, Amazon is pleased to share the same visions with Wikimedia, to “share knowledge globally.”

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Tech

Amazon Free Dive Would Be The New Free And Ads-Based Video Platform The Company Plans To Offer

Amazon is working to diversify its streaming platform, adding content in some countries where soccer is widely watched with events such as the live English Premier League broadcast in the UK. Now, Amazon prepares a new free ad-based service called Amazon Free Dive.

Free Dive would be the upcoming free but ad-based video service from Amazon

The new Amazon Free Dive service would be available exclusively to those who have a Fire TV device at home. Free Dive would look slightly like Roku Channel, which is also a free, ad-based video platform. These types of channels usually broadcast old content, but have the advantage of being free.

There are currently about 48 million Fire TV devices in the world, including the company’s HDMI stick or 4K compatible dongle, and Fire Cube with Alexa. With the new free service, Amazon seeks to take a share of the traditional ad-based television market, thus diversifying its streaming service and attracting new customers, as well.

Free Dive would have no relation with Amazon Prime Video and would be an app where the user could choose from the available content in exchange for viewing ads. So, Amazon would be working to get licenses for old TV series from big studios, which are cheaper and still very much in demand today, such as Friends, for example.

Amazon plans on placing more ads on all its platforms

The new Amazon Free Dive service is being developed in collaboration with IMDb, a subsidiary of Amazon. What Amazon plans on making its platforms more profitable, as it has already done with IMDb by adding ads.

With its new, free, and ads-based video platform, the Amazon Free Dive, the company intends to increase its revenue, besides adding commercials in its sports broadcasts, including the English Premier League (soccer) in the UK and NFL in the US.

Such measures could lead the company to become the second U.S. company to exceed $1 trillion in market capitalization after Apple did so a month ago. In the last quarter, Amazon grew 132% more to $2.2 billion in the ad segment, and it doesn’t seem to want to stay there.

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Crypto News

Bitrefill Allows Users To Buy Amazon Gift Cards With Bitcoin (BTC) And Other Cryptos Based On Lightning Network

The startup Bitrefill launched this Thursday, July 19th, a new service that will allow any user to purchase gifts cards from Amazon through its platform, using Bitcoin (BTC), as well as other cryptocurrencies through the Lightning Network (LN). Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill, announced that “although this technology is very new, it will become the future of Bitcoin (BTC) payments.”

Through Bitrefill website, the users can choose the amount they want to top up on Amazon. Amounts can range from $5 to $1,000 per refill. Once the value is selected, the system will provide a coupon code with instructions on how to redeem it. It is important to remember that the purchase is only valid for the Amazon store in the United States.

Bitrefill allows users to buy Amazon gift cards with Bitcoin (BTC), as well as other cryptocurrencies, based on Lightning Network

In the top-up process, the users must also provide their email address so that Bitrefill can send updates on the status of the order and give the top-up PIN code. Among the cryptocurrencies that the platform processes are Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dash (DASH), and Dogecoin (DOGE).

Lightning Network offers a clear separation of concerns. The portfolio handles everything related to the blockchain by obtaining confirmed transactions, so that when the payment comes to us, it is already confirmed. That is, the correct amount of BTC is going in the right direction.

Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill

The aim of Bitrefill is to enable people to live with cryptocurrency, first by enabling ways for people to spend their coins and second by offering ways to help people earn an income from it. The company gained attention in the fall of 2017 by being one of the first to join the Lightning Network.

Bitrefill is also known in dozens of countries for its recharging of prepaid telephone lines, internet, and basic telephony.

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