AI accelerated the search for a coronavirus vaccine, detected Covid-19 cases, and otherwise softened the pandemic’s blow. Machine learning researchers worldwide scrambled to harness the technology against the coronavirus.

Covid Moonshot, an open-source project to vet potential medicines using machine learning, is closing in on compounds that might help curb Covid-19. Four new antiviral drugs identified by the project are ready to advance to animal trials.

Covid-19 wreaked havoc with models that predict retail sales — but China’s biggest annual e-commerce event showed that they’re back in business.

Covid shut down the tennis tournament at Wimbledon this year, but a new model simulates showdowns between the sport’s greatest players. Stanford researchers developed Vid2Player, a system that simulates the footwork, positioning, and strokes of tennis pros like Roger Federer.

Neural networks are famously bad at interpreting input that falls outside the training set’s distribution, so it’s not surprising that some models are certain that cat pictures show symptoms of Covid-19. A new approach won’t mistakenly condemn your feline to a quarantine.

A new report details the role of AI in China’s effort to fight the coronavirus. Researchers at Synced, a China-based AI publication, describe how nearly 90 machine learning products have contributed to the country’s pandemic response.

Computer vision is helping sushi lovers enjoy top-quality maguro. Japanese restaurant chain Kura Sushi is using a smartphone app called Tuna Scope to grade its suppliers’ offerings, according to the news outlet The Asahi Shimbun.

The same technology that has bedeviled Hollywood stars and roiled politics is easing corporate communications. Synthesia generates training and sales videos featuring photorealistic, synthetic talking heads that read personalized scripts in any of 34 languages.

Some tech companies boast that their AI will change the world. Apple’s latest just aims to make your life a little easier. Apple unveiled a flock of modest conveniences powered by machine learning at its annual developer conference.

Vendors of face recognition are updating their tech as people don masks to protect against Covid-19. Police are bound to take notice. Companies that provide computer vision systems, including at least one that supplies law enforcement agencies, are training models to recognize obscured faces.

The pandemic has forced self-driving car companies off the road. Now they’re moving forward by refining their mountains of training data. Self-driving cars typically collect real-world training data with two human operators onboard, but Covid-19 makes that unsafe at any speed.

Covid-19 has cost many workers their livelihood, but it has provided a lucky few on the lowest rungs of Africa’s machine learning industry with luxury suites.

The pandemic has radically altered online shopping behavior, throwing a wrench into many AI systems. AI inventory trackers, recommendation algorithms, and fraud detection systems trained on pre-pandemic consumer behavior have been flummoxed by the different ways people now browse, binge, and buy.

Researchers are drawing up blueprints for drugs to fight Covid-19. Machine learning is identifying those most likely to be effective. Covid Moonshot, an international group of scientists in academia and industry, is crowdsourcing designs for molecules with potential to thwart the coronavirus.

Music that features a “singing” koala bear took the prize in one of Europe’s highest-profile AI competitions yet. A team of Australian programmers, designers, and musicians won the inaugural AI Song Contest with a koala-tinged track called “Beautiful the World.”