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Warner Bros. will use AI to help make decisions on movie releases

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The system is for “low-value, repetitive tasks” that can waste executives’ time, Cinelytic said.

You probably won’t see AI making many more of Hollywood’s decisions at this level. Pride and stigmas may prevent studios from trusting algorithms to approve pitches or scripts (never mind that humans frequently approve hot garbage). Like with many forms of automation, though, it could eliminate much of the drudgery behind a production and let people focus on the creative aspects.

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L’Oreal’s handheld skincare doles out custom formula at each press

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L’Oreal has a more elegant solution in the works called the Perso Smart Skincare system, which is a portable skincare dispenser that spits out a small amount of product that is formulated each time you push its button.

First, you’ll have to use the companion app to set up your profile, take three photos of your face from different angles and clarify your concerns. The system will use L’Oreal’s Modiface system to scan your selfies for issues like wrinkles, sun spots and pore visibility. Based on your location, the AI will then take into consideration environmental factors like temperature, UV and pollen levels. You can set the type of formula you want, too, and make a moisturizer, serum or eye cream.

Then, when you’re ready to get slathering, you can push a button in the app or on the device, and Perso will decide what ingredients are optimal for you at that time. If you triggered it at night, for example, you could get something with more active ingredients since you won’t be exposed to the sun for awhile. In the morning, Perso might include more sunscreen and perhaps even a tint for the moisturizer.

Loreal Perso

The machine contains three cartridges, so you really only have three ingredients to play with at once. You can rotate from a variety of cartridges available though, and swap them out whenever you need something different. For example, if I were using the Perso here at CES, I’d bring the serum and moisturizer cartridges and leave my active vials at home.

After you push the button, the nozzles dispense the calculated amount of each ingredient onto a platform at the top of the device. You’ll use your finger or a stirrer to mix it up and then apply it — L’Oreal said the Perso produces just the right amount for your face each time.

Perso is also available as a lipstick maker, and that version will let you select the color you desire each time. It’ll also generate a selection of shades based on the latest Instagram beauty influencers, so you can always stay on trend. You can also make sure the color suits you before “printing” it by using the augmented reality camera to digitally overlay the lipstick on your face. I was impressed by how the real world color came out exactly how it appeared in the app, which also accurately outlined my lips with pigment.

The Perso is still an early prototype coming out of L’Oreal’s technology incubator, and it’s not going to be ready for retail until at least early 2021. Incubator head Guive Balooch said his team is figuring out details like what the vials would contain, which L’Oreal brands would use such a system and so on. I’m intrigued by the entire concept already though. It could potentially declutter my beauty shelf and make it easier to stay well-stocked when I travel, without needing to lug around a ton of bottles.

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Neon’s ‘artificial human’ avatars could not live up to the CES hype

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According to Neon creator and STAR Labs boss Pranav Mistry: “Neons will integrate with our world and serve as new links to a better future, a world where ‘humans are humans’ and ‘machines are humane.'” That makes them sound like digital conversation partners, where interactions would approximate real humans. The mission seems to be a softer, more empathetic connection with future virtual assistants, which sounds… nice. I guess.

Figuring out how that’s all meant to come together (and work) is complicated, so let’s start with some clarification. Neon is both the company name and what it’s calling these avatars, and the technology behind the concept, at least, is split into two: Core R3 and Spectra.

Core R3 is short for “Reality Realtime Responsive”. This is the process of generating how these avatars look and move, with the aim of creating a “reality that is beyond normal perception”. It combines proprietary technology with neural networks to create these artificial humans, though the starting point was real humans.

The (slightly) interactive Neons demoed at CES were based on real people, but the gestures and expressions are, according to the company, generated independently.

The early Neon videos which wowed everyone last week were fluid and realistic. But that was because they were really just videos of humans. At the booth, Neon caveated their lifesize avatars with little disclaimers at the bottom of each screen. These were just visions of how Neons could look and behave in the future. Sure, the actual Core R3 results looked promising, but they were far from what most people hoped to see.

Core R3 was “extensively trained” on how humans look, behave and interact — this is where the neural networks would come into play. On stage during his debut presentation, Neon’s Mistry showed the incredible pace of improvements between early models and today, roughly four months later. It also offered the best insight into how the technology actually works.

After establishing facial models of one engineer, generating a copycat avatar of him, the team used this with different people. They could then ‘talk’ through this avatar, which sounds very similar to how deepfakes work. The next step is what differentiates it, though. The team then established a system that generates facial expressions and mouth movements on its own. It’s not a combination of people, but something entirely new.

A Neon model will be able to generate facial animations from a multitude (the word “millions” was used during the press conference) of options. If there are countless ways to smile, and a Neon avatar apparently has countless ways to follow a command to smile. We saw the Neon smile in two different ways. Maybe there were countless other smiles available? I didn’t get to find out, but Neon suggests that’s the case in what it’s said in releases and to other journalists. He could even raise the avatar’s eyebrows during these different expressions. It was impressive to see it all happen in real-time, but it was all at a rudimentary level.

What else is a Neon capable of, then, at this point? In part of my demo, one avatar reeled off a few lines in Chinese, Korean and Hindi, all in response to a Neon employee’s voice commands. But the ‘artificial person’ was relatively static and, barring some initial expressions in response to the handler’s requests, the Neons were largely dead behind their eyes. There were Uncanny Valley vibes. The mouth tracking was especially rough, with snaggleteeth undulating as the avatar talked.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment for CES attendees was the low level of interaction, limited to a few light questions from the audience, in addition to repetitive answers we’d seen during Neon’s launch event. The avatar answered when it understood the question, but it was nothing beyond the half-decent responses that you get from online chatbots.

Then there’s Spectra: the platform that represents what would be truly new here. This is the exciting sci-fi part, intended to handle the learning and emotional responses of Neons. Unsurprisingly, it’s the hardest part to understand and get a straight answer about, and is all-but missing from this launch. (It will form the focus for the company this year.)

Despite that, the company has been quick to define what Neons can and can’t do, keen to distance the small company’s ambitions from incumbent tech giants’ similar efforts. Neons are apparently not smart assistants. They won’t spout random facts, or sing a ditty on command. They will, if the company’s Spectra platform is realized, be able to learn from experiences and converse and sympathize with humans.

Mistry mentioned to me that he imagined an old person who “doesn’t want facts read out, they want to have a conversation, a ‘Dear Diary’.” Alas, these early demos seemed like exactly what Neon is trying to avoid: graphically impressive Alexa-esque virtual assistant showcases.

Mistry is keen to see what people think of Neon and what is possible in these early stages. The amount of interest the team has garnered at launch will probably make STAR Lab backer Samsung very happy, but Neon’s avatars need purpose. The company believes its creations could one day be used as banking assistants, actors or hotel concierges, and the press conference was packed with representatives from banks, resorts and retailers, squeezed in alongside rows of skeptical reporters.

By the end of the presentation and the few demos, the words ambitious and naieve came to mind. You can see where this is going if Neon keeps iterating, fixing and polishing. But it’s a victim of everyone’s overexcitement. Neon’s booth is a fair distance away from Samsung’s own imposing area at CES, and while the association of this young company isn’t a hugely strong one, the connection alone was enough to stoke the hype flames. Neon could have kept themselves under the radar until they had a better idea of how to explain it to people, or had better demos that reflected the initial sales pitch.

NEON

The tech press can be unforgiving, but Neon hasn’t done anything particularly wrong. Yes, it had an over-enthusiastic press release (everyone’s guilty of that), teasers that didn’t represent the actual results on the ground and a very excited CEO that truly believes in the tech his team is developing.

Let’s see what Neon has to show at CES 2021.

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E-scooter injuries quadrupled in four years

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The researchers believed the data might even be conservative, since they can’t count cases where the type of scooter wasn’t clear. Also, some riders might have decided against going to the hospital despite their injuries.

While the scientists didn’t give a specific explanation, they argued that oversight was “largely absent” when it came to dictating the use of helmets and where people can ride. We’d add that the very natures of e-scooters and their services increase risks: you’re putting around on two wheels at relatively high speeds in densely-packed urban areas.

E-scooter makers and services have also taken some flak. They have launched safety campaigns, but it’s not clear that they’ve done enough when it’s still all too common to see people riding without helmets or otherwise taking unnecessary risks. If the injury rate is going to decline, it might require the work of everyone involved.

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Sonos CEO will testify at a House antitrust hearing next week

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A day after his company sued Google for allegedly stealing some of its speaker tech, it emerged Sonos CEO Patrick Spence will testify at an antitrust hearing. The House Antitrust Subcommittee, which is broadly investigating the market dominance of tech giants, will hear from more witnesses next week.

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Vote for the Best of CES 2020 People’s Choice Awards!

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We’ve announced our Best of CES finalists so now it’s time for you to cast your vote for your favorite gadget at CES 2020! Just head over here (or below) to pick your three favorite items from our pool of finalists. You have until 6 PM ET tomorrow, January 10th, to get your votes in.

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Julia is a smart kitchen gadget destined for the shopping channel

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I watched Julia (named after Ms. Child) being used to make both cream of mushroom soup and steamed salmon, and it’s clearly perfect for these sort of test-kitchen demos. Throw in your vegetables (pre-peeled and roughly chopped) and you’ll soon be able to use the bowl’s heating element to begin cooking. While this went on, another machine had its bowl filled with water, and the steaming tray attached to the lid.

The really interesting component is the companion tablet, which you can use to control Julia’s functions and which has step-by-step instructions. These will tell you what to do, and when, throwing in each ingredient as the bowl’s blades keep automatically stirring the mix. It’s clear that, should you want to, you could just tote around the tablet and relax between prompts, safe in the knowledge your meal won’t ruin.

There’s other accessories that come in the package, like a broiling basket, a whisk and various other accessories, all of which can be cleaned if you fill the jug with water and set the blades in motion. Again, I’ve seen more than a few wacky products being offered on late-night TV with a lack of washing being touted as a feature. Similarly, the volume of jobs it can do reminds me a lot of those scenes of commercial actors angrily binning all of their other kitchen gadgets in favor of the latest WundaSlicer or whatever.

My issue is that I’m not sure who a product like this is for: Expert cooks probably won’t want to be handheld, and it’s probably too much work for novices. Especially since having just one, very expensive device to do so many things would probably be limiting for people who want to do more. That’s perhaps the issue: it’ll be very good at making soups and sauces and the odd chili, but it can’t replace your kitchen. Is that worth the potentially very high price? Depends if you’re prepared to make several easy payments of $99.99.

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Twitter will give you control over who can reply to tweets

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The new controls should arrive later in 2020.

You can expect a handful of other improvements as well. You’ll see a specific conversation view with threading, and the discussion interface that first popped up in Twitter’s testing app will reach the main app in the months ahead. Lists are getting improvements, too, including customization of the list display as well as screens that help you find useful lists.

This won’t prevent unsolicited mentions, and you may still have to deal with caustic direct messages if you leave your DMs open. Still, this could significantly change how many people interact with Twitter. You may be less likely to abandon the service if you know that you can limit chats about hot-button subjects to those people who can meaningfully contribute. It could also encourage celebrities and officials to post without facing a glut of less-than-helpful responses. Simultaneously, though, there’s a risk this could reinforce social media bubbles where people only hear from like-minded individuals. You may need to expose your tweets to replies if you’re interested in expanding your mind.

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Samsung’s T7 Touch SSD can be locked with a fingerprint

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“Consumers who are constantly on the go between work, play and passion projects want to be able to securely carry their content with them,” said Mike Mang, vice president of Samsung’s Brand Product Biz Team.

In addition to the built-in fingerprint scanner, the T7 Touch includes password protection and AES 256-bit hardware encryption. It comes in a sleek titanium metal case, in black or silver, weighs just 58 grams (about as much as two AA batteries) and holds up to 2TB of data. It also has a “Motion LED” so users can check the status of the device with a glance.

The T7 offers significantly more speed than its predecessor, the T5, which has consistently ranked among the best portable SSDs. The T7 Touch has a read speed of 1,050 MB/s and a write speed of 1,000 MB/s, making it almost twice as fast as the T5.

The T7 Touch will be available beginning this month in over 30 countries. Samsung’s suggested retail prices start at $129.99 for the 500GB. The 1TB version will cost $229.99, and for $399.99 you can get 2TB.

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Facebook and eBay crack down on fake product reviews after UK warning

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According to the CMA, neither company was purposefully allowing such reviews on their platforms, but believed they could do better in preventing such activity. Facebook has since agreed to introduce more robust systems to detect and remove fraudulent content, while eBay has improved its existing filters to better identify and block listings for the sale or trade of online reviews.

A statement from Facebook says that “While we have invested heavily to prevent this kind of activity across our services, we know there is more work to do.” eBay was more upfront in its response: “We maintain zero tolerance for fake or misleading reviews and will continue to take action against any seller that breaches our user polices. We welcome today’s CMA report, as well as their acknowledgement of our ongoing enforcement work on this issue.”

In the US, the FTC has been cracking down on fake reviews appearing on Amazon. Taking steps to prevent this fraudulent activity will benefit shoppers everywhere, regardless of which country they’re in.

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