Author: Art Ryan

Retaining top AI talent is tough amid cutthroat competition between Google, OpenAI, and other heavyweights. Google’s AI division, DeepMind, has resorted to using “aggressive” noncompete agreements for some AI staff in the U.K. that bar them from working for competitors for up to a year, Business Insider reports. Some are paid during this time, in what amounts to a lengthy stretch of PTO. But the practice can make researchers feel left out of the quick pace of AI progress, reported BI. In the U.S., the FTC banned most noncompetes last year, but that doesn’t apply to DeepMind’s London headquarters. Last month, the…

A new editorial was published in Oncotarget, Volume 16, on April 4, 2025, titled “Deep learning-based uncertainty quantification for quality assurance in hepatobiliary imaging-based techniques.”Dr. Yashbir Singh from Mayo Clinic and his colleagues discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve liver imaging by recognizing when it might be wrong. This approach, called “uncertainty quantification,” helps clinicians better detect liver cancer and other diseases by pointing out areas in medical scans that need a second look. The authors explain how these AI tools could make imaging results more accurate and reliable, which is especially important when diagnosing serious conditions like liver tumors.Liver and bile duct…

Vectara, a platform for enterprise Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and AI-powered agents and assistants, today announced the launch of Open RAG Eval, its open-source RAG evaluation framework. The framework, developed in conjunction with researchers from the University of Waterloo, allows enterprise users to evaluate response quality for each componentand configuration of their RAG systems in order to quickly and consistently optimize the accuracy and reliability of their AI agents and other tools. Vectara Founder and CEO Amr Awadallah said, “AI implementations – especially for agentic RAG systems – are growing more complex by the day. Sophisticated workflows, mounting security and observability…

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) software systems are fast becoming the new power users of the internet. These autonomous digital entities, capable of browsing, buying, trading, negotiating and even governing, are at the tip of payments and commerce innovation. Amazon, for example, is testing a feature using agentic AI to help customers buy items from other brands while remaining within Amazon’s platform; while Paid, a startup, emerged from stealth last month to scale its financial infrastructure that helps the builders of AI agents get paid. Yet for blockchain-native ecosystems, the rise of AI agents represents both a critical opportunity and a pivotal challenge. The opportunity is clear: intelligent agents can…

Africa’s Technological Leap Forward Gitex Africa 2025 returns to the vibrant city of Marrakech, Morocco, from April 14 to 16, bringing together the most influential voices in technology, innovation, and policy. As Africa’s largest tech and startup event, it stands at the crossroads of transformation, celebrating the continent’s growing digital economy and tech-savvy youth population. Africa, once considered an emerging player in global tech, is now taking center stage. With booming startup ecosystems in nations like Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt, and a sharp increase in venture capital flowing into African tech companies, Gitex Africa is poised to be the catalyst…

Dubai, UAE – April 2025 – ASISTA Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, a leading-edge AI Agent company, will be showcasing its transformative technologies at the Dubai AI Festival 2025, set to take place on April 23–24 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. Known for redefining intelligent automation and service delivery, ASISTA is empowering organizations to thrive in an era driven by autonomous digital interactions. Redefining Business with AI Agents ASISTA specializes in building intelligent AI Agents that seamlessly integrate across enterprise ecosystems to automate customer support, internal service operations, and routine decision-making. With a powerful combination of natural language understanding (NLU), machine learning,…

Dubai, UAE – April 2025 – Softlabs Group Ainfinite AI India, a rising innovation startup delivering AI-driven solutions for heavy industries and government sectors, will be among the featured exhibitors at the Dubai AI Festival 2025, taking place on April 23–24 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. With a bold vision for transforming large-scale operations through artificial intelligence, Ainfinite AI is poised to demonstrate how cutting-edge technologies are revolutionizing some of the world’s most complex industries. AI-Powered Intelligence for Heavy Industries Ainfinite AI has carved a niche as a trusted innovation partner for sectors traditionally underserved by rapid AI advancements. By tailoring…

Dubai, UAE – April 2025 – Nemko Digital, a leading provider of advisory and assurance services for AI governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), is set to exhibit at the upcoming Dubai AI Festival 2025, taking place April 23–24 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. With growing global demand for responsible and ethical AI deployment, Nemko Digital is stepping forward as a key enabler of trustworthy AI innovation. Navigating the New Era of AI Governance As AI technologies become embedded in everything from consumer products to mission-critical enterprise systems, companies face an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. Nemko Digital provides expert guidance to help…

Dubai, UAE – April 2025 – Codleo Consulting, a global leader in digital transformation through tailored and affordable Salesforce solutions, is proud to announce its participation as an exhibitor at the Dubai AI Festival 2025, taking place on April 23–24 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. With a mission to democratize enterprise-grade digital tools, Codleo is set to spotlight how it’s enabling businesses worldwide to thrive in the age of intelligent automation. Transforming Businesses, One Solution at a Time Codleo Consulting has earned a reputation for delivering customized, agile Salesforce implementations that empower businesses of all sizes—especially startups and SMEs—to streamline operations,…

Dubai, UAE – April 2025 – Partner Tech Middle East, a global leader in POS systems and peripheral technologies, is set to exhibit at the Dubai AI Festival 2025, happening on April 23–24 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. As a trusted provider of intelligent retail and hospitality solutions, Partner Tech is using this international platform to spotlight its innovative approach to AI-driven customer experiences, sustainability, and long-term partnerships. Beyond Point of Sale: A Vision for Smart Retail While Partner Tech is best known for its high-performance point-of-sale (POS) systems, touchscreen terminals, kiosks, and peripherals, its mission extends far beyond hardware. The…

Amazon has upgraded its AI video model, Nova Reel, with the ability to generate videos up to two minutes in length. Nova Reel, announced in December 2024, was Amazon’s first foray into the generative video space. It competes with models from OpenAI, Google, and others in what’s fast becoming a crowded market. The latest Nova Reel, Nova Reel 1.1, can generate “multi-shot” videos with “consistent style” across shots, explained AWS developer advocate Elizabeth Fuentes in a blog post. Users can provide a prompt up to 4,000 characters long to generate up to a two-minute video composed of six-second shots. Nova Reel 1.1 also introduces a…

A Meta exec on Monday denied a rumor that the company trained its new AI models to present well on specific benchmarks while concealing the models’ weaknesses. The executive, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said in a post on X that it’s “simply not true” that Meta trained its Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout models on “test sets.” In AI benchmarks, test sets are collections of data used to evaluate the performance of a model after it’s been trained. Training on a test set could misleadingly inflate a model’s benchmark scores, making the model appear more capable than it…

Google is bringing multimodal search to AI Mode, its Google Search experiment that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups to dig deeper on a topic. Users who have access to AI Mode can now tap the feature to ask questions about photos they’ve uploaded or taken with their camera. The new image-analyzing functionality in AI Mode is powered by Google Lens’ multimodal capabilities, Google said in a blog post on Monday. AI Mode can understand the entire scene in an image, including how objects relate to each other, as well as their materials, colors, shapes, and arrangement, according to…

In a recent memo to employees, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke made a bold policy change: teams must demonstrate why AI can’t perform a job before they’re permitted to ask for more headcount and resources. “Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” Lütke wrote in the memo, which he shared publicly on social media Monday. “What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.” Advancing the notion that AI and so-called agents…

Los Angeles-based startup Moonvalley, which is developing AI tools for video creation, has raised a fresh $43 million in venture capital, according to an SEC filing. The filing lists 11 unnamed investors and comes roughly a week after Moonvalley launched its first AI video-generating model, Marey. Moonvalley previously raised $70 million in seed funding from backers including General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. A spokesperson for Moonvalley told TechCrunch that the filing “does not dictate the total funding number” and that “the actual number will be formalized and announced in the coming weeks.” The wide availability of tools to build video generators has…

Overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the different AI models you can use to make content? A startup called Krea is looking to solve this problem specifically for designers and other visual creatives, and it has now raised $83 million for its platform, which it believes will make working with generative AI a lot smoother. San Francisco-based Krea says its “unified” platform provides tooling from multiple models, along with a custom interface aimed at making queries and subsequent edits sent to those models significantly easier and more customizable. Its user base includes creators at Perplexity AI, Loop Earplugs, Pixar, LEGO, and Samsung. Krea’s funding is being announced…

IBM on Monday said it has acquired Hakkoda, a data and AI consultancy based in New York. The acquisition would “further expand” IBM’s ability to bring consultants and AI to clients, particularly customers in industries like financial services, public sector, and healthcare and life sciences, said Mohamad Ali, SVP and head of IBM’s consulting business, in a statement. “With Hakkoda’s data expertise, deep technology partnerships, and asset-centric delivery model, IBM will be even better-positioned to deliver value faster to clients as they transform with AI,” Ali said. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal comes as IBM continues to…

OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products. Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm called LoveFrom, confirmed that he was working with Altman on the AI hardware startup last year in an interview with The New York Times. io Products has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective and others, according to The Information. The Information’s report notes that OpenAI…

One of the new flagship AI models Meta released on Saturday, Maverick, ranks second on LM Arena, a test that has human raters compare the outputs of models and choose which they prefer. But it seems the version of Maverick that Meta deployed to LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to developers. As several AI researchers pointed out on X, Meta noted in its announcement that the Maverick on LM Arena is an “experimental chat version.” A chart on the official Llama website, meanwhile, discloses that Meta’s LM Arena testing was conducted using “Llama 4 Maverick optimized for conversationality.” As we’ve written about before, for…

Experts who study or work with AI are much more positive and optimistic about how the technology will improve jobs and the economy compared with members of the general public, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. But many acknowledge the technology will lead to some job loss in the future. Overall, a majority, 56%, of AI experts say the technology will have a positive impact on the U.S. in the next 20 years, compared with just 17% of U.S. adults. Experts overwhelmingly believe AI will have a positive impact on how people do their jobs in the next…