Google’s Voice AI accelerator launches 12 startups

Google today announced the first cohort in its Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI, a 10-week program designed to pair startups with experts to help tackle product development, machine learning, and other technical challenges. The 12 companies selected will gain access to resources across Google’s programs and products, Google says, as well as to its […]

Google’s AI lets users search language-agnostic knowledge bases in their native tongue

Entity linking fulfills a key role in grounded language understanding. Given a text mention of an entity (e.g., the word “helpful”), an algorithm identifies the entity’s corresponding entry in a knowledge base (such as a Wikipedia article). To extend its usefulness, researchers at Google propose a new technique where language-specific mentions resolve to a language-agnostic […]

Google’s Smart Fill autocompletes Sheets columns using AI

In June, Google debuted Smart Fill, an AI-powered Google Sheets feature that automatically detects patterns, generates formulas, and autocompletes columns. Now, following a months-long beta, Smart Fill is today launching into general availability for all G Suite users. Smart Fill comes after the launch of Smart Cleanup as Google looks to inject G Suite with more […]

Google’s Epic response: Android 12 will make it easier to install app stores

Google today announced it will make it easier to install and use third-party app stores with the release of Android 12 next year. (Google releases new versions of Android annually and launched Android 11 earlier this month.) Google also reiterated its existing Payments Policy for in-app purchases of digital goods: Android developers who want to […]

Google’s AI can adjust voice emotion, pitch, and speed with 30 minutes of data

In a paper originally published last October and accepted to the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020, researchers affiliated with Google and the University College London propose an AI model that enables control of speech characteristics like pitch, emotion, and speaking rate with as little as 30 minutes of data. The work has obvious […]

Google’s WaveNetEQ fills in speech gaps during Duo calls

Google today detailed an AI system — WaveNetEQ — it recently deployed to Duo, its cross-platform voice and video chat app, that can realistically synthesize short snippets of speech to replace garbled audio caused by an unstable internet connection. It’s fast enough to run on a smartphone while delivering state-of-the-art, natural-sounding audio quality, laying the […]

Google’s AI helps robots navigate around humans in offices

In a study published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org, Google and University of California, Berkely researchers propose a framework that combines learning-based perception with model-based controls to enable wheeled robots to autonomously navigate around obstacles. They say it generalizes well to avoiding unseen buildings and humans in both simulation and real-world environments and […]