AI Weekly: bots go shopping, robots grab the chores

STORY: From how tech helpers are paying off for retailers, to why robots could be getting real, this is AI Weekly.

:: AI Weekly

Retailers got a boost from the bots over the Black Friday weekend.

Estimates by Salesforce showed stores using AI tools to assist customers saw a 15% higher purchase rate on the Saturday.

Shoppers have also been using Gen AI tools like Amazon’s Rufus chatbot to track prices and find deals.

The week also saw Amazon unveil a slate of new AI models.

Dubbed “Nova”, they are meant to offer text, video and image generation, and be faster and cheaper than previous iterations.

Amazon also promised an AI-enhanced version of its Alexa voice assistant.

A Norway and Silicon Valley-based company wants to win the race to bring robots into homes.

Bernt Bornich is CEO and founder of 1X and says AI is integral to its NEO bot.

“In the long term this will be doing your laundry, cleaning your house, tidying, and generally giving you back a lot of time in life.”

The robots in this demonstration were piloted by humans remotely, but the market-ready version will use AI and will come next year.

1X says it’ll be cost about the same as a mid-priced new car.

Washington has unveiled a third round of curbs on the supply of U.S. parts to Chinese chipmakers.

It’s all part of a bid to stop the country developing AI processors for military use.

But firms hit by the controls said they would just speed up local production in response.

And ChatGPT-maker OpenAI faces new trouble over how it trains its bots.

Five Canadian news media companies have filed suit against the firm, alleging it regularly breached copyright on their content as part of the process.

OpenAI has denied all wrongdoing, saying it only uses publicly available material for training.