Google has introduced a new feature to its search that enables it to identify a song that a user hums or whistles.

What’s This Song?

Serving the same basic purpose a the Shazam app, for example, users can now ask the Google app, Google Search widget (by tapping the mic icon) or Google Assistant the question “Hey Google, what’s this song?” followed by 10-15 seconds of humming or whistling the melody.

The way that Google’s service adds value in relation to simply identifying a song (like Shazam) is that it only needs the input as a hum rather than actually being played the original tune.  Also, it adds value by delivering what it judges to be the strongest (percentage) song matches, and the user can then select the best match, explore more information about the song and artist, view music videos by the artist, find lyrics and or listen to the song on their favourite music app. Users are also given information about other recordings of the song.

20 Languages on Android

Although the new feature only works in English on iOS, it is available in 20 languages on Android.  Google says that it hopes to expand this to even more languages in future.

Builds On Previous AI Research

Google says that the new feature builds on the work of their AI Research team’s music recognition technology that was launched on the Pixel 2 in 2017 that uses deep neural networks to bring low-power recognition of music to mobile devices. In 2018 this same technology was used in the Google app’s SoundSearch feature which was linked to a catalogue of millions of songs.

New

This latest version is able to identify melodies that are hummed or whistled because it uses machine learning models that have been trained to identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings.  These models transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody.

Algorithms are used to take away any other details, such as accompanying instruments and characteristics of a voice thereby simply leaving a song’s number-based sequence – a kind of song fingerprint.  It is this sequence that the software is able to recognise when a person simply hums a tune.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For Google, this is another way that it is expanding its use of machine learning and AI to make features that are clever and engaging, thereby helping Google compete for how much time and attention we give its platform compared to competitors like the social media giants and in its traditional fight against the other search engines.  Google has been adding more of these engaging features in recent times, such as a new spelling algorithm for search queries,  using AI to enable in-video searches, introducing data sources to Google search as well as new ways to use its Lens and augmented reality (AR) features.  Outside of search, Google has also been competing for our attention and time by agreeing to pay publishers to create and curate news for its ‘Google News Showcase’, updating its Android OS and releasing an updated Nest Audio smart speaker.  Businesses of all kinds use google search, both to be found in and for research so the addition of many new features using new technologies will make a positive contribution to this.  The ‘humming a song’ feature is, of course, likely to benefit music artists and publishers but may also be a way for Google, in the wake of the running down of Google Play music, to further promote its YouTube service.

Microsoft has announced that in tests, its new, AI-based, automatic image captioning technology is better than humans at describing photos and images.

Part of Azure AI

The new automatic image captioning model is available via Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services Computer Vision offering, which is part of Azure AI. Azure Cognitive Services provides developers with AI services and cognitive APIs to enable them to build intelligent apps without the need for machine-learning expertise.

Test

The test of the new automatic image captioning software, led by Lijuan Wang, a principal research manager in Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond, involved pre-training a large AI model with a rich dataset of images paired with word tags, with each tag mapped to a specific object in an image. This ‘visual vocabulary’ approach is similar to helping children to read e.g. by using a picture book associating single words with images, such as a picture of an apple with the word “apple” beneath it. Using this visual vocabulary system, the machine learning model learned how to compose a sentence and then was able to leverage this ability and fine-tune it when given more novel objects in images.

The Result

The Cornell University research paper based on this test, and published online, concluded that the model could generate fluent image captions that describe novel objects and identify the locations of the objects. The report also concluded that the machine learning model “achieved new state-of-the-art results on nocaps and surpassed the human CIDEr score.”  This means that the model achieved and beat human parity on the novel object captioning at scale (nocaps) benchmark i.e. how well the model generated captions for objects in images that were not in the dataset used to train them.

Twice As Good As Existing System

Microsoft’s Lijuan Wang has also concluded that the new AI-powered automatic image captioning system is two times better than the image captioning model that has been used in Microsoft products and services since 2015.

Five Major Human Parities

Lijuan Wang highlights how this latest AI breakthrough in automatic captioning adds to Microsoft’s existing theme of creating “human parity achievement across cognitive AI systems”.  According to her, in the last five years, Microsoft has “achieved five major human parities: in speech recognition, in machine translation, in conversational question answering, in machine reading comprehension, and in 2020, in spite of COVID-19, we got the image captioning human parity.”

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Microsoft sees this as a ‘breakthrough’ that is essentially an extra technology tool to be added to its Azure platform so that developers can use it to serve a broad set of customers.  As highlighted by Lijuan Wang, it also sends a message to other big tech companies that are expanding their use of AI/machine learning and features at the moment e.g. Google and Amazon, that Microsoft is also making major strides in the kinds of technologies than can have multiple business and other applications, as well as being able to make existing digital search and tools more effective. Microsoft’s own chromium-based search engine, Edge, will, no doubt, be a beneficiary of this technology. This development also shows that we are now entering a stage where AI/machine learning can create tools that are at least on a par with human ability for some tasks.

With domestic abuse on the rise, particularly since the pandemic lockdowns, we look at some of the chilling ways that smart devices and other technology are being used as a tool by abusers.

Rise In Reports

A BBC Panorama and Women’s Aid joint investigation obtained UK police figures showing that there was one domestic abuse call every 30 seconds in the first seven weeks of the UK’s lockdown. Also, the UK ‘Dead Women’ project, that records the killing of women by men, revealed that there had been at least 16 killings between 23 March and 12 April 2020 (including children). In June, domestic violence helpline calls reported a massive 80 per cent increase.  Although domestic abuse can also affect men, the vast majority of victims are women and it estimated that one in four women will experience some form of abuse at some point in their lives.

Power and Control

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, domestic abuse and violence is a learned behaviour e.g. from growing up or from friends, is used to gain and maintain power and control and is used by those who believe they have the authority to control and restrict an intimate partner/ex-partner’s life, thereby dismantling any equality in a relationship. It should be remembered that as well as the emotional and mental trauma suffered by victims, abuse can often involve physical injuries and death.

Technology in Abuse

Perhaps surprisingly to many people, the charity Refuge (which has a tech abuse service) has reported that 70 per cent of its service users have received tech-related abuse within their relationship.

What Is Tech-Related Abuse?

Tech-related abuse can include partners and ex-partners constantly calling texting and messaging or sending “friend requests” to family and friends, using social media and email to harass a partner/ex-partner or to harass their partner’s employer and clients, and sharing or threatening to share a person’s information/photos/intimate images online.  It can also even include partners/ex-partners hacking children’s iPads, Xboxes and PlayStations, stalking and harassing via fake social media profiles, installing apps such as ‘find my iPhone’ onto a device, using a Ring doorbell to track movements, using key-logging software, and even using a virtual assistant e.g. Amazon Echo to effectively bug a house by exploiting a feature that lets users remotely connect to enabled smart speakers.

Resources Relating To Tech Abuse

Refuge provides a number of pdf guides on its website (and via links to US partner NNEDV Safety Net’s website) to help survivors of abuse to understand how to use different devices, apps, websites and networks safely. For example, these include ‘iPhone privacy and security’, ‘Technology safety and quick tips’, ‘Staying safe on Facebook ‘and even ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Home Automation: Survivor Privacy Risks & Strategies’.

Reporting Abuse

Domestic abuse is a crime and should be reported to the police. There are also many other organisations that can offer help and advice.  For example, many of these are listed on a UK government web page here: https://www.gov.uk/report-domestic-abuse

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Technology can be used for bad as well as good and perpetrators of domestic abuse now have many technology routes to stalk, isolate and control women (and men).  There is an argument, therefore that technology product makers have a responsibility think through the consequences of their creations and accept some of the burden of safety, rather than leaving it to end-users to try and educate themselves for protection.  For example, IBM has developed a set of design principles to guide device and software-makers so that there is not an assumption that every user would like their data/information shared with all family members (which could allow monitoring of their whereabouts).  Also, device and software makers could consider adding safeguards such as alerts when a person’s device is being remotely monitored (with a manual override) and even, perhaps intelligent monitoring of free text fields that some abusers are known to use to send abusive messages e.g. online bank transfers or gift notes added to internet shopping purchases. Just as social media companies have found themselves to be in the news and under pressure over the spread of hate speech and online bullying via their platforms, so more attention should be given to how the makers of devices and software could be doing more to protect all users and prevent their products from being easily used by abusers.

Swedish clothing retailer, H&M, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) has introduced the first jumper-cycling machine to one of its Stockholm stores.

Environmental Impact

Reducing the constant need for new-fibre garments is an important way in which the clothing industry can reduce carbon footprints and its impact on the environment. For example, fashion clothing accounts for 10% of human carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams with plastic fibres.  Also, it is staggering to think that 85 percent of all textile production ends up being dumped each year.

Recycling Agenda

With reducing this terrible environmental toll in mind, H&M is one clothing retailer that aims to be carbon positive by 2040, helped by focusing on the recycling of what its customers already have in their wardrobes. Before lockdown, H&M customers could already hand in used clothes at most H&M stores for recycling.  Also, the H&M Foundation HKRITA has developed a method for separating cotton and polyester in blended garments and has already started building an industrial-scale facility for this operation.

The Jumper Recycling Machine

Then new machine which has evolved from the first ‘Mini Mill’ jumper recycling machine is a way for a customer to witness ‘live’ recycling of their old jumper into yarn and thereby to understand the possibilities of recycling.  The yarn from their old jumper can then be knitted into a either a sweater, a baby blanket, or a scarf.

The machine is a container-sized system with a multi-step process that offers a significantly lower environmental footprint than producing garments from scratch. Following the sanitising, opening, cleaning, and spinning of the yarn, it can then be doubled, twisted, and knitted into a new garment.

The H&M Foundation says about the Mini Mill, “we believe we have a role to play to educate, inspire and nudge people into new habits. This is why we sponsor the Mini Mill”.

Award-Winning

The Mini Mill received the Red Dot Award back in 2019 (an international award for those who distinguish their business activities through design) and was a finalist in Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Pollution in the oceans and rivers and the environmental impact of fast fashion and other waste producing consumption are now hot topics among more environmentally aware consumers and among governments with environmental targets to meet. Like other companies, having a foundation that works on and donates environmental projects and ways to improve lives in different parts of the world is a constructive way to offset negative impacts of the business and create good PR, but also to genuinely raise awareness and bring about positive change. Using technology to educate and show new possibilities are ways in which businesses can add value, give something back, and differentiate themselves from other high street competitors in a way that shows an ethical and caring side that is now more valued by consumers who are more interested in the origins and impact of their product choices, and how it reflects upon their view of themselves.  Also, being seen to support positive, green values is becoming more important where social media profiles contribute to feelings about ‘self’.

It has been reported that YouTube (owned by Google) is testing a feature that will enable viewers of YouTube videos to directly purchase products that they see featured in the video they are watching.

Back in 2015

The idea was originally announced as far back May 2015 when YouTube announced that it had introduced “shoppable cards” within videos called “TrueView” for brands to sell products directly to individuals. The feature was designed to allow a person to make an impulse purchase of something they saw in a YouTube video.

Fast-forward a bit further to May 2019, and as part of a re-vamp of Google Shopping, Google announced that people would have the chance to buy products shown on YouTube videos i.e. purchase the items featured in the videos.

The Present Day

The latest reports appear to have emerged via Bloomberg which reported that YouTube had been asking creators to tag and track the products used in their videos. It is understood that the data is being sent to Google to help improve its analytics, to shopping tools on YouTube, and possibly being used to contribute to a future integration with Shopify, which is a competitor to Amazon.  Shopify is a (Canadian) e-commerce, online platform with more than 1 million merchants globally who use Shopify’s technology for their own independent, decentralised stores.

Bloomberg also reports that a YouTube spokesperson has confirmed that the feature is being tested with some YouTube video channels, and that creators can decide which products appear as being available for sale.

Video Builder Too

Back in April, as a way that to remind users of the value and scope of its suite of business services,  YouTube announced the launch of its (beta) Video Builder, a free tool that enables businesses to easily make short video adverts.  YouTube said that the new tool would be of value because businesses of all sizes have limited time and resources and that in-person video shoots “are no longer practical in many countries”.  The YouTube Video Builder was also introduced with brands or agencies in mind who may want to experiment and create supplemental, lightweight videos, and to smaller businesses and businesses with less creative experience, who need an efficient, low-resource way to create videos. YouTube suggested that the completed videos could be used for advertising campaigns, on websites or in emails.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

As demonstrated by YouTube influencers, the engaging power of video can make it a potent sales tool and Google’s YouTube is the leading video platform. Having the power to catch and direct customers straight to a sale when they are at their most engaged and enthused with a product is likely to be a tool that many marketers and businesses would really value and want.  Introducing this feature would see YouTube moving into shopping and competing directly with Amazon. An integration with Shopify would also be another competitive move against Amazon.

Google has clearly augmented its platforms with more features recently, and the addition of this feature would help Google to attract more marketers to YouTube and to leverage its store of user data and business relationships to help those marketers reach the right audiences and generate sales through a new, direct route.

Users of the Google Meet, Enterprise for Education video-communication service (formerly part of G Suite) will soon be able to divide meeting participants into Breakout Rooms.

Greater Engagement

The feature, which started its gradual roll-out on 8th October will allow groups of students to split off into smaller groups for discussions which Google says is a way of offering more engaged distance learning.

Moderators move between the different breakout rooms to monitor and participate in discussions but (in a similar way to walking into a physical classroom) they won’t be able to the see chat messages that were exchanged when they were not in the room.

Create and Move

The event creator can create breakout rooms during the call and although call participants are then randomly and equally distributed across the rooms, event creators can also manually move people into different rooms.

Google says that 100 breakout rooms can be created in a call and that anyone with a Google account that is joining (from the web or through the Meet app) can be a participant.

Instructions for using the new feature can be found on Google’s website here: https://support.google.com/meet/answer/10099500

Google Meet

At a time when Zoom (especially) and Microsoft Teams have experienced huge new daily user numbers because of the remote working required during the pandemic lockdown, distance learning has become a necessity. In the UK for example, with jobs being lost and the Chancellor suggesting that people ‘retrain’ there has also been a push to promote adult education.  In addition to localised restriction in parts of the UK, there is now the threat of further winter lockdowns.  High profile competitor Zoom also offers a breakout rooms feature, albeit for up to 50 separate sessions.

It is against this backdrop that Google has found a way to compete with online video conferencing rivals and make a timely release announcement for this feature, which is likely to be in demand in many countries facing the same educational challenges that COVID-19 has created.

100+ Daily Users

Google Meet, which is now a free video conferencing service for all, announced back in April that it was getting 3 million new users each day, had seen a thirty-fold increase in usage since January, and that there were 100 million daily Meet meeting participants. Zoom, for example, has grown its daily user numbers from 10 million before the lockdown to an estimated 300 million.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For Google, this announcement is a way to raise the profile of ‘Meet’ and differentiate its service by focusing on education and offering more breakout rooms than Zoom at a time when there is fierce competition in the video-conferencing market. This competitive move builds upon Google’s April announcement that it would be making its ‘Google Meet’ premium video conferencing service free for everyone rather than leaving it as part of its paid-for G Suite.

For educators, this feature may add value and make the Google Meet platform more attractive and for larger businesses especially, this means that there is now even more choice for video conferencing options.