From mood tracking to slideshows, it’s AI-everything at CES

Entrepreneur Antony Perzo introduces a small device called the Emobot, which looks like a cross between a speaker and an abstract work of art, and explains: “It’s an emotion thermometer!”

Like hundreds of other exhibitors at CES, the world’s largest technology fair, French engineer Perzo is selling the value of an object dependent on the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence was the buzzword at the epic tech show in Las Vegas, with companies big and small revealing everything from TVs to toothbrushes that depend on big data and connected computers to Impress.

Perzo’s emobot, displayed in a corner of the Venetian hotel in Sin City, is used to detect possible mental disorders in the elderly and can help nursing home caregivers adjust treatment without waiting for a psychiatrist.

The engineer can “analyze microscopic facial expressions” that reflect human emotions, which in themselves are a magnifying glass of our “psychological and mental states”, the engineer said. .

Nufa, another startup, calls itself “a pioneer in body transformation through AI.”

The mobile app allows users to retouch photos to look slim and fit, and motivates themselves to follow a 90-day plan to achieve this result “in real life” .

In Last Vegas, AI-powered conveniences pervade the hallways — with AI bird feeders, baby strollers, or anti-fatigue watches — so much so that some wonder if the phenomenon oversold or not.

But AI “is not just a buzzword for winning CES bingo,” noted technology analyst Avi Greengart.

The technology “is used in smartphone cameras, in factories to detect defective products, in agriculture to identify weeds and spray herbicides on them. AI is here to help. exist,” he said.

Using AI to explore emotions is also the ambition of Emil Jimenez, who founded MindBank Ai with the goal of “seeking immortality… so that my daughter can always question her father.”

His app asks users to record their answers to deeply personal questions (“What does love mean to you?”) to “preserve your mind forever on the cloud” by creating a personal digital twin.

‘A big chance’

AI can also be used to understand crowds. Canadian company Advanced Symbolics developed askpolly, a social media search engine to conduct market research in minutes.

Users ask it questions—for example, “Is this a good time to buy an apartment?” or “Should juvenile offenders go to jail?”—and the program scans social networks like Twitter and Instagram for mass public opinion polls.

The biggest recent AI headlines are about algorithms that enable one-click creation of original content.

California-based company OpenAI impressed with ChatGPT, an easy-to-use software that creates a school poem or essay in seconds, and DALL-E creates visual art.

In a similar way, French startup Imki designed the sound and light show for an ancient Roman theater in the south of France using similar programs.

“This allows us to create content quickly with very low production costs,” says Marie Lathoud, marketing director of Imki.

While seeing AI as a tool for artists, Saket Dandotia, chief executive officer of Magnifi, admits that so-called generalized AI represents a threat to the designers it will displace. , like robots in factories.

Dandotia says AI tools like ChatGBT are “faster, less expensive”.

His team created Strobe, an automated video software. “For us, AI is a huge opportunity that will transform the entire creative design industry,” he said.

© 2023 AFP