Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 8
Posts 1 - 8

The end of apps is here. Long live chat bots

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 31.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, texting, threat
Summary | Apps will soon disappear as bots keep rising. Bots are helpful assistant that can chat with you within any app. Thanks to bots, you can book a table at a restaurant, or make an appointment. You just have to write a message (e.g. on Facebook or Skype), and "someone" will text you back. However, bots are not perfect. Microsoft's bot Tay expressed racist and hateful comments.
Image Description | Digital image representing a collage of a lot of apps, screenshot of a computer screen, chart, hand holding a smartphone displaying a conversation, David Marcus's Facebook post, smartphone screen showing how you can add a bot on Skype, and Tay Tweets account
Image Tags | chart, Facebook, hand(s), Skype, smartphone, text, Twitter

Facebook wants to kill off the phone number in 2016: Claims system is from the 'flip phone era' as it reveals Messenger now has more than 800 MILLION users

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 8.1.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, texting
Summary | More than 800 million people use Facebook Messenger. Facebook wants to 'kill off the phone number' and attract even more users thanks to more features. Texting and SMS were flip phone communication styles. Now we can do much more with our smartphones, and new communication styles are appearing. With Messenger, Yes, you can text, send stickers, photos, videos, voice clips, GIFs, and even money to people. You can call people and you don't even need to know people's phone numbers anymore. Facebook also wants to introduce its digital virtual assistant called "M" into Messenger
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Zuckerberg, chart displaying Messenger statistics, illustrations of two smartphones displaying a conversation with "M", and photograph of a finger touching a screen displaying several icons.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone, text

Facebook uses AI to help blind people 'see' the site: Feature uses audio and image recognition to describe scenes in photos

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 5.4.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook
Summary | Facebook introduced Automatic Alternative Text; it uses artificial intelligence to help blind people "see" posts. Automatic Alternative Text uses 'neural network' to recognize specific items in photos using millions of examples.
Image Description | Photograph of three smartphone screens displaying Facebook posts, photograph of two hands holding a smartphone, and screenshot of an iPhone's "accessibility" functions
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), smartphone

Siri, Alexa and Other Virtual Assistants Put to the Test

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, Google
Summary | The five major tech companies now all offer artificial intelligence assistants: Apple with Siri, Microsoft with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, Facebook with M, and Google. They were all put to the test with a few tasks: find out who is playing in the upcoming Super Bowl, play some music, schedule something one's calendar, book a flight, find out about the traffic situation, and find nearby restaurants and order food. None of the AI assistants did perfectly with the highest score of 3.1 out of 4.0 going to Google.
Image Description | Drawing of the five AI assistants as little robots with name tags and their overall score.
Image Tags | Facebook, Google

Blind Facebook users 'see' photos

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 5.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, diversity, Facebook, Instagram
Summary | Facebook has a new function that is meant to make the predominantly visual platforms of Facebook and Instagram more inclusive to people with visual impairments. The new software uses artificial intelligence to tell blind users what is in the images. It is not perfect yet but the image recognition can identify simple things like specific sports, etc.
Image Description | Screenshots of Facebook feeds with the image content captioned.
Image Tags | Facebook

'Chatbots' are coming

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 7.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, research/study, WhatsApp
Summary | The future is artificially intelligent. All major digital companies seem to see the most potential in messenger-based, artificially intelligent chatbots. Studies have shown that people value messaging services most highly on their smartphones so any innovation needs to be accessible through a messaging service. WhatsApp is a very significant one, it has 900 mio users.
Image Description | Getty image of Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Facebook Messenger logo and a screenshot of an Uber chatbot conversation.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s)

Neuronales Netzwerk beschreibt Fotos für Blinde

(Neuron network describes pictures for blind people)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 5.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, diversity, Facebook
Summary | Facebook is testing a new function that tells blind users what is depicted by an image on Facebook. The system does not need human input to recognize the content of images - it has been feed with millions of images to "learn" to recognize certain things like the outdoors and sports. This is a way to include people with visual disabilities better on social media because a lot of the activity there is visual.
Image Description | Facebook feed with photographs explained.
Image Tags | Facebook, female(s), male(s)

Hey, du Mensch!

(Hey, you human! )

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 15.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, texting
Summary | Facebook has recently followed the footsteps of other large companies and implemented a chatbot in its messenger. Chatbots as conversational user interfaces are increasingly popular because smartphone users are reported to grow tired of having to download so many different apps. By enriching a social media service such as Facebook with a chatbot, users can enquire about things (e.g the weather) without changing platforms and using a mode that is familiar and comfortable for users: casual texting. The article however criticizes that chatbot technology is not very advanced and that it does not resemble human interaction yet.
Image Description | Photograph of a man texting in front of the Facebook Messenger logo, and screenshot of a Messenger chat.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone, text

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