Meta’s open-source speech AI models support over 1,100 languages

Advancements in machine learning and speech recognition technology have made information more accessible to people, particularly those who rely on voice to access information. However, the lack of labelled data for numerous languages poses a significant challenge in developing high-quality machine-learning models.

In response to this problem, the Meta-led Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS) project has made remarkable strides in expanding language coverage and improving the...

23 May 2023 | Applications

Meta calls up generative AI squad as Snap releases ChatGPT-powered bot

Generative AI is firmly in the sights of social media. Meta is forming a new product group around generative AI to focus on ‘building delightful experiences’ into all of the company’s products, while Snap has unveiled a new chatbot running on OpenAI’s GPT technology.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the seat-shuffling in a Facebook post, stating that teams currently working on generative AI will be pulled together. Detail was light on the scale of projects, but Zuckerberg...

28 February 2023 | Applications

Meta’s protein-folding AI reminds us it’s not just a metaverse firm

Meta has unveiled a new protein-folding AI that could be revolutionary for science and the development of new medicines.

Facebook, as the company was known before changing its name, has always been seen as a leader in AI. The popular open-source framework PyTorch was Facebook’s creation and earlier this year Meta became a founding member of a foundation aiming to drive the adoption of AI.

In its pursuit to become a leader in the metaverse, changing its very company...

2 November 2022 | Applications

Meta’s chatbot hates Facebook and loves right-wing conspiracies

A chatbot called BlenderBot was launched by Meta on Friday and it’s already been corrupted by the darker parts of the web.

To ease us in with the odd but harmless, BlenderBot thinks it’s a plumber:

https://t.co/KWEHxoXpqg also has thoughts on the Deep State and thinks it’s a plumber. I did not suggest this. pic.twitter.com/SbOj7hziSg

— Jeff Horwitz (@JeffHorwitz) August 7, 2022

Like many of us, BlenderBot criticises how Facebook...

10 August 2022 | Artificial Intelligence

Meta’s NLLB-200 AI model improves translation quality by 44%

Meta has unveiled a new AI model called NLLB-200 that can translate 200 languages and improves quality by an average of 44 percent. 

Translation apps have been fairly adept at the most popular languages for some time. Even when they don’t offer a perfect translation, it’s normally close enough for the native speaker to understand.

However, there are hundreds of millions of people in regions with many languages – like Africa and Asia – that still suffer from poor...

7 July 2022 | Applications

Meta claims its new AI supercomputer will set records

Meta (formerly Facebook) has unveiled an AI supercomputer that it claims will be the world’s fastest.

The supercomputer is called the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) and is yet to be fully complete. However, Meta’s researchers have already begun using it for training large natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZnykn1tDSE

RSC is set to be fully built in mid-2022. Meta says that it will be the fastest in the...

25 January 2022 | Applications

Meta releases PyTorch Live for creating mobile ML demos ‘in minutes’

Meta has announced PyTorch Live, a library of tools designed to make it easy to create on-device mobile ML demos “in minutes”.

PyTorch Live was unveiled during PyTorch Developer Day and enables anyone to build mobile ML demo apps using JavaScript, the world’s most popular programming language.

https://twitter.com/PyTorch/status/1466121890791972869

While on-device AI demos cannot currently be shared, Meta says that functionality is on the way. Developers can...

2 December 2021 | Development

Facebook claims its AI reduced hate by 50% despite internal documents highlighting failures

Damning reports about the ineffectiveness of Facebook’s AI in countering hate speech prompted the firm to publish a post to the contrary, but the company's own internal documents highlight serious failures.

Facebook has had a particularly rough time as of late, with a series of Wall Street Journal reports in particular claiming the company knows that “its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm” and “despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous...

18 October 2021 | Ethics & Society

Social media algorithms are still failing to counter misleading content

As the Afghanistan crisis continues to unfold, it’s clear that social media algorithms are unable to counter enough misleading and/or fake content.

While it’s unreasonable to expect that no disingenuous content will slip through the net, the sheer amount that continues to plague social networks shows that platform-holders still have little grip on the issue.

When content is removed, it should either be prevented from being reuploaded or at least flagged as...

17 August 2021 | Ethics & Society

AR overtakes AI as the ‘most disruptive’ emerging technology

A new report from GlobalData finds that professionals now believe AR will disrupt their industry more than AI.

70 percent of the 2,341 respondents across 30 business sectors picked AR as disrupting their industry most out of a selection of seven emerging technologies: AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, blockchain, and 5G.

Filipe Oliveira, Senior Analyst at GlobalData, commented: “This change in how people see AR will likely be long term, and not just a temporary...

28 July 2021 | Apple