10-25-2021
2 min read
Dasha Fomina
Weekly Digest: Shop-To-Text Technology, Virtual Humans and Chatbot From WHO
WHO’s new health chatbot offers messaging on breast cancer
The World Health Organization has launched a new interactive chatbot for women. In time for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, observed in October every year, the first set of messages to be included relates to breast cancer. Powered by the Viber platform the new chatbot delivers health information directly to subscribers’ mobile phones. The new chatbot users will find information on how to reduce the risk of breast cancer, symptoms and treatment options. Initially launched in English, Greek, Hungarian, Russian and Ukrainian, the chatbot will also soon be available in other languages too. Via WHO.
Japanese media giant Nikkei launches virtual human video platform
Part of a Japanese media organization, Nikkei Innovation Lab has introduced a platform for producing videos of virtual humans. Together with AI tech developer Datagrid, Nikkei designed the video platform, which can produce virtual versions of people to do and say whatever the producers need at the moment. Via Voicebot.ai.
Walmart pilots text-to-shop technology
Walmart is beta-testing a shop-to-text technology in select areas. The retailer said it is learning about when and how customers prefer to use a conversational shopping experience and announced plans to make text-to-shop more widely available. Via Talk Business & Politics.
Amazon and Apple embrace spatial audio
Amazon enables its Music Unlimited subscribers to stream songs with spatial audio to their current headphones through the service’s iOS and Android apps along with a handful of new home speaker systems. The company announced its vast expansion of spatial audio support just hours after Apple unveiled spatial audio as a feature in the new AirPods 3 earbuds, marking an escalation in the audio streaming competition among tech giants, particularly when it comes to hearables. Via Voicebot.ai.