After years of trailing other tech giants in AI, Apple has a new ambition: to become the industry’s leading purveyor of products powered by machine learning. In an interview with Ars Technica, the company’s AI chief argues that its pro-privacy.

A new camera app uses a generative adversarial network to let users look like they’re dressed for success while they videoconference in their jammies. Xpression is an iPhone app that maps facial expressions onto till images in real time, allowing users to look clothed in digital costumes.

In this work-from-home era, who hasn’t spent a video conference wishing they could read an onscreen document without turning their eyes from the person they’re talking with? Or simply hoping the stream wouldn’t stutter or stall? Deep learning can fill in the missing pieces.

Amazon’s digital assistant is using its eyes as well as its ears to figure out who’s talking. At its annual hardware showcase, Amazon introduced an Alexa skill that melds acoustic, linguistic, and visual cues to help the system keep track of individual speakers and topics of conversation.

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.

It’s time to stop flushing valuable data down the toilet. The Precision Health Toilet, a suite of sensors that attach to an ordinary commode, monitors human waste for input for signs of disease. It identifies individual users by scanning where the sun doesn’t shine.

As working from home becomes the new normal, AI may protect you from the sound of coworkers munching while they chat. No more smacking lips and rustling chip bags! Microsoft’s online collaboration platform Teams announced a feature that removes extraneous sounds from videoconferences.

Neural networks revealed both how hard Covid-19 has hit the Chinese economy, and hopeful signs that a renaissance may be underway. Researchers analyzed satellite imagery, GPS signals, and social media to get a multifaceted view of the pandemic’s impact.

Businesses around the world outsource their customer service work to the Philippines. Now the Philippines is preparing its workers to outsource some tasks to AI.

No more sloppy workouts: AI can correct your form. A home exercise system uses neural nets to analyze your motions and tell you when you perform a move properly, reports The Verge.

Every home is different. That makes it difficult for domestic robots to translate skills learned in one household into another. Training in virtual reality, where the robot has access to rich information about three-dimensional objects, can make it easier to generalize skills to the real world.

Theoretical advances can be thrilling, but the excitement can drown out all the ways AI is actually being put to use. DeepIndex provides an up-to-date, well organized, cheeky guide to practical applications culled from news reports.