Microsoft Introduces a More Personalized Copilot with Voice and Vision Features

Microsoft Unveils Major Update to Copilot, Elevating It into a Personalized AI Companion 

A New Era of Personalized AI Assistance 

October 10, 2024–Microsoft recently announced updates to Copilot, transforming the AI assistant into a more personalized, interactive, and intuitive part of daily life. With the introduction of voice and vision capabilities, Copilot is now more integrated than ever, offering a seamless, hands-free experience. 

Imagine beginning your day with Copilot reading the latest news or guiding you through a recipe, step by step. Thanks to its enhanced voice feature, you can now converse with Copilot as naturally as you would with a friend—simply ask a question and receive an instant, conversational response. Whether you’re organizing your day or checking the weather, Copilot is designed to support your every need. 

Store-specific planogram: AI-driven trend that changes retail space planning

In the retail industry, customer expectations are straightforward: they want to easily find the products they need and enjoy a hassle-free shopping experience. If a store falls short in these aspects, it risks losing its place as a preferred shopping destination for customers. That is precisely why the foundation of a great customer experience lies in effective space planning.

Commonly referred to as a planogram, space planning involves optimizing a store's layout and product placement to enhance customer experiences and increase sales. Effective strategies include positioning high-demand and seasonal items near the entrance, ensuring accessibility and visibility in key areas, and adapting layouts based on sales data and customer feedback.

Philippines first to launch Jobstreet by SEEK’s new, innovative AI-powered platform, redefining Filipino’s job and talent search journey

Platform launch is a culmination of three years of work and >A$180M investment  

Philippines is the first in the entire Asia region to launch the new platform, which will roll out to the rest of the markets by early 2024

The new Jobstreet now leverages SEEK’s cutting-edge AI technology to offer better job matches, experiences and insights for Filipino talent and employers

Jobstreet by SEEK redefines the way talent and employers connect following the transformation of its employment platform in the Philippines. The completely new platform now uses its parent company SEEK’s world-class artificial intelligence (AI) technology to offer better job matches, new experiences and deeper insights for both Filipino talent and employers. SEEK is an Australian Securities Exchange listed company (ASX: SEK) with a portfolio of online employment marketplaces operating across Asia Pacific and Latin America.  

Global Alliance’s webinar series draws over 2,000 participants, explores AI’s impact on PR for students and young practitioners

Artificial intelligence’s effect on the future of Public Relations took center stage at the recent “Student and Young Practitioner Month” by the Global Alliance. Engaging diverse panelists across continents — Asia-Pacific, Middle East South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin and North America — the three-day webinar series, held from October 24 to 27, generated thought-provoking discussions from over 2,000 attendees over three days.

Designed to enrich knowledge for students and young practitioners, this series formed part of the Global Alliance’s professional development efforts, aligning with their ongoing “KNow Movement” campaign.

Activities included "Career Day," exploring the impact of technology, particularly AI, and the insights shared in the CIPR report, “Humans needed more than ever.” The report highlighted that AI could complement or substitute 12% of a PR practitioner's skills today, with a projected 38% within the next five years.

Homeqube revolutionizes e-commerce for home value chain with gamified bidding experience

Homeqube, a blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered e-commerce platform for real estate, is pioneering a new frontier in the home value chain by integrating a gamified bidding experience for both buyers and sellers in its platform.

Homeqube CEO Jose Paolo Calma highlights the platform's unique approach: "Our game is centered on bidding. It's a genuine bid for a deal, whether that's for the duration of a stay in a home or for buying specific homebuilding materials. Players can lay out their needs and bid based on their set requirements or specifications."

Bridging the Cybersecurity Skills Gap Through Artificial Intelligence

By Sandra Wheatley, Sr. Vice President, Marketing, Threat Intelligence and Influencer Communications, Fortinet 

Executive Perspectives 

Perhaps the most resource-intensive task required of security teams is the correlation and analysis of the massive volumes of data being produced by security devices and network sensors. This challenge is probably most apparent in the fact that network breaches often remain undetected for months, allowing cybercriminals to plant time-bombs, establish elaborate botnets, and slowly exfiltrate millions of records containing customer information and intellectual property. This challenge is compounded with the growing skills shortage the cybersecurity industry is facing globally, further adding to organizations’ risks. In fact, a recent Fortinet survey found that 73% of organizations had at least one intrusion or breach over the past year that can be partially attributed to a gap in cybersecurity skills. 

Today’s Tools Only Begin to Close the Cybersecurity Skills Gap 

There are steps organizations can take to close the cyber skills gap. The first is to ensure that security tools don’t operate in isolation. If a security tool or sensor detects an anomalous behavior, it needs to be able to share that with other tools so that data can be correlated and compared against other data, as well as be cross-referenced against external threat intelligence feeds. This process is accelerated and suspicious activity can be detected faster when these tools are, by design, tightly integrated together. 

SAS and Microsoft partner to further shape the future of analytics and AI

SAS’ AI and analytics more tightly integrate with Microsoft Azure; Microsoft to bring cloud-based SAS industry solutions to its customers

Microsoft Corp. and SAS today announced an extensive technology and go-to-market strategic partnership. The two companies will enable customers to easily run their SAS® workloads in the cloud, expanding their business solutions and unlocking critical value from their digital transformation initiatives. As part of the partnership, the companies will migrate SAS’ analytical products and industry solutions onto Microsoft Azure as the preferred cloud provider for the SAS Cloud. SAS’ industry solutions and expertise will also bring added value to Microsoft’s customers across health care, financial services and many other industries. This partnership builds on SAS integrations across Microsoft cloud solutions for Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform and supports the companies’ shared vision to further democratize AI and analytics.

Sony launches first Artificial-Intelligence-based video analytics solution

Sony has announced its first Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Edge Analytics solution, the REA-C1000, which allows users to create video content in real time, without the need for professional training, additional staff or equipment.

The compact and lightweight REA-C1000 uses its advanced AI-based video analytics technology to analyse the input received from connecting cameras, automatically extract the object in focus and combine it with other images in real time on a GPU (Graphics Processor Unit). This unique technology uses motion/face detection and colour/shape recognition, effectively making the REA-C1000 the powerful brain to any connecting camera and AV setup to create professional content in a cost-effective manner for education, government and corporate organisations, keeping audiences engaged.