The Tech Landscape #134 š
Article 134 of the USAās military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, is the āgeneral articleā which can be used to prosecute any offence not otherwise specifically mentioned. Common offenses include animal abuse, extramarital sexual conduct, and drunkenness.
Happy New Year to all whose days are ruled by the Gregorian calendar! And welcome back to work to many of you. Hereās the first newsletter of 2020, largely dominated by stories announced ahead of CES this week.
Signals for 2020: Preview
Every year I write an article about the things Iām interested in keeping an eye on in the year ahead. Iād hoped to get this yearās piece written by now, but itās not ready yet. However! If youāre interested Iād like to offer you a preview of the work in progress. If you read it, Iād be very interested in your feedback so hit reply and let me know what you think.
Signals in Consumer Digital Technology for 2020
Assistants & Voice
Samsung teased NEON, an āartificial humanā. Itās not clear if this is software or hardware, but apparently itās not a replacement for its digital assistant, Bixby.
theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2020/1/5/21050288/samsung-neon-artificial-human-digital-avatar-project-leaked-video
Honda will unveil its own in-car voice assistant at CES. The assistant, developed with SoundHound, will use the āOK Hondaā wake word.
engadget.com/2019/12/19/honda-car-ai-assistant-ces-2020/
Deep learning provider Sensory announced a new voice assistant specifically for embedding in home appliances, requiring no cloud services to operate (which is good for user privacy).
finance.yahoo.com/news/sensory-unveils-domain-specific-voice-164500887.html
US manufacturing company, Kohler, is moving further into the smart home space with new products including an Alexa-enabled shower head. Yes, really.
multivu.com/players/English/8669151-kohler-konnect-smart-home-ces-2020/
Social
Tencent added a Product Window feature to its live-streaming tools, letting broadcasters sell products from within WeChat live streams. Live shopping exploded in China last year, and I bet thereās going to be a big push into it from Western social platforms this year.
chinainternetwatch.com/30153/tencent-live-product-window/
Snapchat is launching a new content feature called Bitmoji TV, which will use usersā avatars in scripted fully-animated stories.
techcrunch.com/2019/12/28/bitmoji-tv-snapchat/
Bytedance has built an unreleased ādeepfakeā video creator tool for its Douyin app, and possibly for TikTok in the future. Given the current privacy conversation around TikTok and China, I can see this being a problematic feature to launch here.
techcrunch.com/2020/01/03/tiktok-deepfakes-face-swap/
Everything Else
Google has developed a machine learning model which can detect signs of breast cancer in mammograms with higher accuracy than human experts. Itās a promising breakthrough, although not close to being put into use yet.
blog.google/technology/health/improving-breast-cancer-screening/
Amazon released its now-customary ābest Christmas ever!ā results, claiming tens of millions of Amazon devices sold, with the Echo Dot, Echo Show, and Fire TV Stick among the global best-sellers. It also claimed record levels of Alexa interaction.
press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/customers-shopped-record-levels-holiday-season-billions-items
Tesla updated its in-car software to add more voice commands (including reading and replying to text messages), ācamp modeā to maintain the interior environment when stationary, a preview of self-driving mode visualisations, and a music-making tool (for some reason).
theverge.com/2019/12/25/21037218/teslas-holiday-update-fsd-voice-to-text-camp-mode-trax-music-making-kit
Tencent has bought a 10% stake in Universal Music, with an option to buy a further 10%. Itās part of Tencentās increasing push into Western markets through avenues other than social.
theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/31/universal-music-sells-stake-to-chinese-giant-tencent