Are you secretly yearning to have a My Little Pony character voice your next online presentation? A new web app can make your dreams come true. 15.ai translates short text messages into the voices of popular cartoon and videogame characters.

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.

Bored with your Spotify playlists? Let this robot singer/songwriter take you on a trip “Into Your Mind.” A music-composing, marimba-playing robot named Shimon has learned to write and sing its own lyrics, IEEE Spectrum reports.

How much data do we want? More! How large should the model be? Bigger! How much more and how much bigger? New research estimates the impact of dataset and model sizes on neural network performance.

Women continue to be severely underrepresented in AI. A meta-analysis of research conducted by Synced Review for Women’s History Month found that female participation in various aspects of AI typically hovers between 10 and 20 percent.

Machine learning thrives on data, but information about the novel coronavirus and the illness it produces has been either thin or hard to access. Now researchers are pooling resources to share everything we do know.

Machine learning promises to streamline handling of tomorrow’s bureaucratic drudgery — and, it turns out, that of 2,500 years ago. Computer vision is helping researchers at the University of Chicago translate a massive collection of ancient records inscribed on clay tablets.

Many of this year’s hottest AI companies are taking the spotlight from last year’s darlings.What’s new: CB Insights, which analyzes early-stage companies, published its annual list of the 100 “most promising” startups in AI.

An icon of idealism in AI stands accused of letting its ambition eclipse its principles. Founded in 2015 to develop artificial general intelligence for the good of humankind, OpenAI swapped its ideals for cash.

A digital attorney is helping consumers take telemarketers and phone scammers to court. DoNotPay makes an app billed as the world’s first robot lawyer. Its latest offering, Robo Revenge, automates the process of suing intrusive robocallers.

Chinese tech giants have opened their AI platforms to scientists fighting coronavirus. Alibaba Cloud and Baidu are offering a powerful weapon to life-science researchers working to stop the spread of the illness officially known as Covid-19: free access to their computing horsepower and tools.

Androids may not dream of electric sheep, but some crack jokes about horses and cows. Meena, a 2.6-billion parameter chatbot developed by Google Brain, showed impressive conversational ability, discussing a variety of topics.

A company that analyzes online information to predict epidemics spotted the upsurge in coronavirus at least a week ahead of public-health authorities. Canadian startup BlueDot alerted customers to the outbreak in he Chinese city of Wuhan on New Year’s Eve.

School teachers may not like to hear this, but sometimes you get the best answer by peeking at your neighbor’s paper. A new language model framework peeks at the training data for context when making a prediction.

Can machine learning help address the scourge of opioid addiction? A public health researcher developed a neural network that spots sellers of opioids on social media, Recode reported.