Neural networks translated a paralyzed man’s brainwaves into conversational phrases. Researchers trained a system to interpret electrical impulses from the brain of a man who had lost the ability to speak 15 years ago, and displayed them as words on a video screen.

An independent test found flaws in AI systems designed to evaluate job applicants. MyInterview and Curious Thing, which automate job interviews, gave a candidate who spoke only in German high marks on English proficiency, according to MIT Technology Review.

IBM’s Watson question-answering system stunned the world in 2011 when it bested human champions of the TV trivia game show Jeopardy! Although the Watson brand has fallen on hard times, the company’s language-processing prowess continues to develop.

A new tool aims to let video gamers control how much vitriol they receive from fellow players. Intel announced a voice recognition tool called Bleep that the company claims can moderate voice chat automatically, allowing users to silence offensive language.

Facebook expanded a system of vision, language, and speech models designed to open the social network to users who are visually impaired. A Facebook service that describes photos in a synthesized voice now recognizes 1,200 visual concepts — 10 times more than the previous version.

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.

Transformer networks are gaining popularity as a high-accuracy alternative to recurrent neural networks. But they can run slowly when they’re applied to long sequences.

A strategy manifesto from one of China’s biggest tech companies declares, amid familiar visions of ubiquitous AI, that deepfakes are more boon than bane.

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.

Conversational agents have a tough job following the zigs and zags of human conversation. They’re getting better at it — thanks to yesterday’s technology. Amazon recently improved the Alexa chatbot’s ability to identify the current topic of conversation.

Doctors are overwhelmed by clerical work. Healthcare-savvy voice assistants are picking up the slack.

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.

Female giant pandas are fertile for only 24 to 36 hours a year: Valentine’s Day on steroids. A new neural network alerts human keepers when a panda couple mates.

AI startups are being scooped up at an accelerating pace, many by companies outside the tech sphere. A report by CB Insights shows that, as of August, 2019 was on track to surpass last year’s record number of AI startup acquisitions.

Models that achieve state-of-the-art performance in automatic speech recognition (ASR) often perform poorly on nonstandard speech. New research offers methods to make ASR more useful to users with heavy accents or speech impairment.