Tech Digest daily roundup: AI to help ‘fill the gaps’ of dementia patients
Artificially intelligent technology should be used to “fill the gaps” in the brains of people with dementia, the head of the Alzheimer’s Society has said. Kate Lee, the chief executive at the charity, said more use should be made of programmes that recognise faces, speak forgotten words, or help people take care of pets and their homes. There are an estimated 944,000 people living with dementia in Britain, and the figure is expected to increase to more than a million by 2030 and over 1.6 million by 2050. But most dementia technology is used to track people, rather than helping them live their lives. Telegraph
Hellblade developer Ninja Theory has disputed claims that it uses AI technology to replace voice actors in its games, saying it only uses AI-generated voice work for “placeholder content”. Ninja Theory was named by GLHF as a company that utilises the services of Altered AI, a tech firm that supports studios in creating “compelling, professional voice performances” via AI rather than professional – and real – voice actors. The report stopped short of revealing the minutiae of the arrangement, however, stating that “the details of their partnership are under wraps”. Eurogamer
There used to be a time when Google’s Chrome browser had tough competition from Mozilla’s Firefox and, to some degree, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Those two, however, have fizzled out over time as Chrome became the undisputed king of the web space. Now, Mozilla is calling out Google and other companies for anticompetitive practices that have led not only to Firefox’s downfall but for limiting user choice as well. Mozilla has just published a report (via TechCrunch) that attempts to document how Google, Apple, and Microsoft have exerted their influence over their users in an attempt to benefit their own ecosystem of apps, and in turn, their browser. Android Police
Meta (META) is having a rough year. The company’s stock price is down 57% year-to-date, torpedoing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth to the tune of $72 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. While the macroeconomic climate is hammering the entire tech industry, Meta and other tech companies that rely on ad-based revenue face a unique headwind — Apple’s (AAPL) massive privacy shakeup called App Tracking Transparency. The feature, which allows users to determine if they want apps to track them across the web, is expected to cut $10 billion out of Meta’s revenue this year, the company said in February. Now the company is being accused of trying to circumvent the feature and violating state and federal data collection laws in a proposed class action lawsuit in California. Yahoo!
Every day, Mark Zuckerberg wakes up to a flood of bad news. “I look at my phone to get like a million messages,” he says. “It’s usually not good.” The founder of Facebook, now known as Meta, has been forced to grapple with a stream of crises that have beset the technology giant in recent years, raising fundamental questions about its future. Privacy scandals, internal dissent and high-profile departures are just some of the issues weighing on the Silicon Valley prince’s head. In one of the biggest blows, Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg’s chief operating officer and top lieutenant for 14 years, will leave this autumn. Sir Nick Clegg, the company’s most senior communicator, has departed sunny California to live in London again. Telegraph
