Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Singapore – DIGIX Lab, operated under the services of the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), has officially been opened in Singapore to help app developers drive idea exchange, business growth and collaboration.

The innovation hub works in the way that it offers a space for developers to connect and experience the full range of HMS developer resources, ranging from augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), HMS Core kits and other open technological capabilities. The DIGIX Lab services can also be accessed online, allowing developers across the region to make use of the resources virtually.

DIGIX Labs also operates under a so-called ‘1+8+N’ Seamless AI Life strategy, which is defined when the smartphone serves as One (1) centre, and Huawei’s ecosystem partners connect across Eight (8) supporting Huawei devices to create a fully connected IoT environment consisting of Endless (N) services.

Huawei-Mobile-Services-DIGIX-Lab-Tech-Developer-Inside
HUAWEI DIGIX Lab @ Singapore’s “Experience Zone” showcases Huawei all-scenario products. Developers, partners, and tech enthusiasts can look forward to a series of Residency Programmes like developer workshops, knowledge sharing sessions, and onsite consultation with tech experts hosted by Huawei online and offline. (Photo Courtesy of Huawei)

For Shane Shan, director for Asia Pacific at Huawei Consumer Cloud Service, the strategy system aims to empower tech developers and partners in the Asia Pacific in the mid of 5G rollout.

“The new DIGIX Lab serves as an all-encompassing innovation hub to give developers the boost they need to succeed. Huawei will continue to strengthen our collaboration with partners and institutions in the community and cultivate a resilient, evolving pool of tech talents in the Asia Pacific region,” Shan said.

The DIGIX Lab is divided into three main zones where partners and developers can communicate within the community:

  • Experience zone: An area for visitors to experience Huawei’s “1+8+N” all-scenario ecosystem. This area displays the latest smartphone models, and eight different types of Huawei devices including tablets, PCs, smart wearables and VR smart glasses. In addition, third party IoT home products supported by HUAWEI HiLink are also exhibited here.
  • Engage zone: A multipurpose zone with a collaborative area and training rooms to support community building. Developer programmes such as training, workshops, industry and networking events will be held in this area. Meanwhile, tech enthusiasts or individual developers can also book the space to host community events related to mobile app development.
  • Enable zone: This zone consists of three meeting rooms where developers who are facing challenges while developing an app can meet with Huawei engineers or business teams to get hands-on support. Four debug terminals are also available at the lab to support developers with the resource requirement.

HMS has also recently launched the HUAWEI Developers app, an official open platform for Huawei developers to manage their apps backend system, access the latest developer activities and receive event notifications on the go.

Three community programs are also slated to launch this year, namely the HUAWEI Student Developers (HSD), the HUAWEI Developer Groups (HDG) and the HUAWEI Developer Experts (HDE) to help developers of all levels grow with the HMS ecosystem. Developers in APAC will also be able to sign up for training courses to learn how to deploy HMS development tools into their apps and receive the ‘Huawei Developer Certification’ upon course completion.

Auckland, New Zealand – The New Zealand arm of media investment company GroupM has announced that it is now launching INCA, GroupM’s influencer marketing platform, in the country as part of INCA’s ongoing expansion in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

INCA works as a brand-safe influencer marketing network that gives advertisers access to a data-driven brand engagement tool that connects them with trustworthy and relevant influencers at scale.

Through the expansion, New Zealand advertisers can now leverage INCA’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology to partner with a vast network of relevant and authentic creators to plan, execute, and measure content-driven campaigns that bring their brand stories to life and deliver results. 

Furthermore, the launch solidifies the company’s efforts to uphold brand safety in the industry as more brands are allocating budgets to influencer marketing to drive brand engagement across social platforms. 

“New Zealand is such an exceptional market for creators. We feel very privileged to be able to connect our brands with the best creators through this new platform. Our people, technology, and partnerships put us in a unique position to sit across the intersection of creativity, media, data, and commerce and we’re excited to bring this value to our brands and strengthen the influencer eco-system in New Zealand,” said Nick Henderson, head of product and solutions at GroupM New Zealand.

INCA also deploys other features in the platform, including INCAtech, which provides unique creator and audience insights, workflow tools, content amplification, and detailed campaign reporting dashboards; and Genuity Score, which enables brands to check the proportion of real versus fake audience on a creators profile, which drives authenticity and effectiveness.

“Advertisers are faced with the challenge of connecting more deeply with consumers in social media platforms. INCA allows us to access thousands of authentic and relevant content creators in a highly cost effective way. This technology has simply changed the game in terms of how we can now plan, implement and measure our influencer content campaigns for clients,” said Chris Riley, chief executive officer at GroupM New Zealand.

INCA in New Zealand will be available to clients from all GroupM agencies which include media agency Mindshare, marketing and advertising company MediaCom, media company Wavemaker, and others.

Melbourne, Australia – Thrive, an AI-powered fintech aimed at small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has announced the initial stages of its crowdfunding, targeting A$3M, on the equity crowdfunding platform Birchal.

The crowdfunding comes after the platform’s interest in launching the Thrive app for its SME waitlist, which has numbered over 7,500 businesses.

According to Thrive’s data, financial admin has been the most disliked activity in running a business and that business owners waste over 42 days a year in managing their financial affairs. This is something that the platform aims to solve by automating banking, accounting tasks, and lending for SMEs. 

Furthermore, Thrive combines a smart business account with value-added services like receipt scanning, invoicing, tax forecasting, payroll, and more. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), these tools are designed to run on autopilot, winning back time for busy business owners and making it easy for them to stay in control of their financial destiny.

“We have been running a number of focus groups with small business owners as we put the finishing touches on our product. After we kept getting asked about investment, we decided that we couldn’t think of anything better than to allow our potential customers to become investors in the business as well,” said Michael Nuciforo, co-founder & CEO of Thrive.

Meanwhile, Thrive Co-founder and COO Ben Winford added, “We were really impressed with the Birchal team and platform. We can’t wait to launch our campaign and to get our members behind us. Crowdfunding presents an exciting opportunity to build our brand, grow our member base and build further advocacy for our business.” 

Auckland, New Zealand – Global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has partnered with global advertising agency BBDO in launching a live stream billboard in New Zealand as part of Kaspersky’s campaign ‘Safer Tomorrow’, aimed at trying to answer humankind’s questions about the foreseeable future.

The billboard, placed temporarily in Castlepoint Station on the Wairarapa coast of New Zealand, utilized BBDO’s developed foretelling neural network to answer to the most significant questions about ‘tomorrow’ – from “when will flying cars become ordinary vehicles?” to “what will 3D printing be capable of by 2050?” In addition, audiences are able to view the billboard live from New Zealand via the ‘Safer Tomorrow’ website.

“Kaspersky is committed to building a more protected and safer world. To achieve this, the global cybersecurity company closely follows technological trends and predictions to generate a picture of what we can expect in the future and to understand how to secure it in advance. Kaspersky also believes that the more people who consider the future and the likely trajectories of society and technology, the more they will be able to foresee and contribute to this better and safer tomorrow,” the company said in a press statement.

The deployed neural network uses the latest machine learning architecture and techniques and is trained to analyze requests and provide predictions based on data collected from hundreds of thousands of related sources, including science fiction books and magazines, selected media, and blogs.

Asked about the use of science fiction materials as a base for the ‘Safer Tomorrow’ predictions, the company stated that “boldest predictions were usually considered not just incredible but even whimsical at the time they were made.”

“Over the last few decades, as SciFi authors have got access to the latest progress in science, their ideas and predictions are treated with much more respect and seriousness even by scientists,” the company stated.

The company, however, clarified that the neural network itself will admit as to whether no answer can be provided, and will try its best to reformulate the question or prod for another one to be asked. 

“Some predictions are still to be made, and even the neural network’s knowledge has its limits. But not knowing everything about the future makes it even more amazing and thrilling. Generating a specific prediction as an answer to a question would take a few seconds,” the company added.

Furthermore, insights used in the ‘Safer Tomorrow’ platform will be also using Kaspersky’s former interactive project ‘Earth 2050’, a platform project providing a futuristic image of what the world will look like in 30 years’ time.

The creation of the ‘Safer Tomorrow’ platform, according to Andrew Winton, vice president for global marketing at Kaspersky, was to raise people’s awareness about what the future might look like and feel more certain about upcoming opportunities.

“Looking into and understanding the future is something that has occupied the minds of humankind throughout time. It is this knowledge that allows us to be secure, prepared and confident. Kaspersky believes in a bright future where, [the] as-of-yet unseen potential for humanity will be opened up by technology, which is why we secure it,” Winton stated.

The live stream billboard construction will be accessible to the public until February 25 and will be dismantled thereafter. 

Singapore – Global advertising and public relations company dentsu has recently appointed Rachel Ooi as the company’s new chief growth officer for customer experience management (CXM) for Asia Pacific.

Through the new appointment, Ooi will be responsible for bolstering CXM’s regional footprint through new business and organic growth, working closely with Media and Creative leads on integrated opportunities. She will also lead the regional roll-out and implementation of the sales platform across all sales and account management functions. She will report to Zhengda Shen, CEO of CXM at dentsu APAC, and Owen McCorry, global CXM chief growth officer.

“dentsu has world-class capabilities in CXM through Merkle and huge growth potential in APAC. I am excited to join the team at such a pivotal time for the business, especially when this growth opportunity collides with a seismic shift in changing consumer and business habits seen globally in the past year,” Ooi commented regarding her appointment.

Prior to joining dentsu, Ooi has worked for professional services company Accenture as managing director for Industry X.0 lead (growth markets), and for multinational conglomerate Electric (GE) as general manager for the ASEAN enterprise sales, as well as leading GE’s Ecosystem Alliance for the APAC region.

“Rachel has an impressive track record, is results-driven and skilled in leading high-performance teams and projects across various sectors, especially Tech Innovation and Digital. Her background and experience will ensure we continue to lead in this space,” Shen said.

Meanwhile, Owen commented, “We believe focusing our business capabilities around customer experience is the greatest advantage we can give our clients. Hence, we need someone like Rachel, who has proven strategic vision growing businesses and challenging the status quo. Most importantly, she will deliver client centricity across APAC markets, bridging cultural nuances, which is fundamental to success in this dynamic, fast-paced region.”

Rachel Ooi’s appointment comes with a greater need in digitalization of businesses. For her, there are opportunities to drive business outcomes for clients amidst transformations and convergence,  which she describes as the “era of digital genesis”, centered around a “digital-first, cloud-scaled, and AI-enabled circular economy”.

“CXM is the weakest link today in many organizations that are in transition, where there is an urgent need for creativity working with digital innovation and human-centric engagements for continual customer intimacy and business success. I look forward to working with the team to make a fundamental impact and deliver value for our clients,” Ooi concluded.

Singapore – PlanetSpark, the investment arm of electronic components distributor Excelpoint, has launched the PlanetSpark Innovation Centre, an accelerator for Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) innovations targeted to supporting Singapore tech startups speed up market deployment, and is supported by Enterprise Singapore.

Under the accelerator program, PlanetSpark will invest an initial S$5 million to expand the centre’s engineering capabilities and develop technology platforms, and has secured a lineup of five startups for its upcoming pilot run of accelerator programme. The project is also in response to high complexity associated with AIoT solution development – from proof-of-concept to production, and eventual commercialisation.

Through the program, PlanetSpark offers a one-stop ecosystem that brings together innovators, hardware and software providers, venture capitalists, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), manufacturers and potential customers.

“Startups can tap into Excelpoint’s vast industry networks of semiconductor manufacturers, sales channel partners and design engineering expertise – enabling the startups to expedite product design and optimize system-level integration for rapid prototyping, thereby reducing their time, cost and risks in bringing their solutions to market,” the company said in a press statement.

The initial group of startups will be developing market-deployable solutions integrating the middleware to solve real-world challenges in thermal sensing, facial recognition, satellite tracking and edge AI analytics.

“The PlanetSpark Innovation Centre is a welcome addition to Singapore’s vibrant technology and innovation ecosystem. It brings ideas, people and networks together to scale innovative AIoT solutions to market and provides enterprises with the necessary resources to build capabilities and drive the development of innovative AIoT solutions. This is important as demand for such solutions is expected to grow in tandem with the region’s emergence of smart homes, cities and industries,” said Satvinder Singh, assistant chief executive officer of Enterprise Singapore.

Meanwhile, Phuay Li Ying, managing director of PlanetSpark said, “Our role as a technology validator will also provide an indication of the potential of the startups for venture capital firms, which plays a key role in the success of a startup. Our ultimate objective is to have a collaborative hardware ecosystem where such start-ups can accelerate their growth and commercialization plans, attract venture capital funding and create new possibilities for local technology innovations and economic growth.”

Hong Kong – Insurance company FWD has made claim payments easier to receive by launching its instant claim service through its eService app.

Infographic_eServices App Instant Claims
Claim applications submitted to FWD’s eServices app

With the new platform launch, users can now process claims payment faster from days to within a day. Claim applications submitted to the eServices app are processed by its AI assessment engine, and customers can receive claims approvals and get paid through their selected means instantly via the platform’s Faster Payment System (FPS), at any 7-Eleven convenience stores, or by direct transfer to their bank accounts.

Infographic_AI Approves Instant Claims Application
Applications processed and approved instantly by eServices app’s AI assessment engine

“Elevating the customer experience is always our top priority, and every claim is a ‘moment of truth’. We’ve been continuously developing customer-led innovations and working closely with our partners to make claims more straightforward and effortless. FWD will continue to invest in improving the claims experience and enhancing overall insurance solutions to keep changing the way people feel about insurance, and truly ‘celebrate living’ together,” said Ken Lau, FWD’s managing director for Greater China and Hong Kong CEO.

The instant claims service is available for life insurance’s personal accident claims of up to HK$3,000 covering treatment expenses, as FWD will extend service to support hospital income and hospital claims later this year.

Manila, Philippines – Local-based private bank UnionBank has been honored the 2020 Philippines Excellence In Customer Experience by market research company Frost & Sullivan for its efforts in leveraging customer experience solutions in the banking industry through digital innovation.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. For UnionBank, the recognition goes to their excellence in ATM Ambience Experience and in Online Customer Experience, specifically their “initiatives to stay ahead of the demand curve by offering best-in-class, personalized customer experience with robust 24/7 services.”

Frost Sullivan UnionBank Award
The award is in recognition of bank’s initiatives to stay ahead of the demand curve by offering best-in-class, personalized customer experience with robust 24/7 services.

“The bank has used the customer experience framework of process, space, and people in its digitization process, bridging offline with online to deliver a seamless customer experience,” said Frost & Sullivan. 

Furthermore, the firm recognizes of UnionBank’s leverage of artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G technology to better anticipate customer preference and behavior.

“UnionBank has ramped up its digitization efforts in the past few years. A customizable system, self-service options, and personified robot assistant are among the digital options available to customers, half of whom now transact digitally. The bank also became the first in the Philippines to launch the smart branch leveraging 5G technology for seamless connectivity with internet of things (IoT)-enabled services,” said Edurra Talib, senior research analyst for Frost & Sullivan.

Singapore – Local based coffee shop Crown Coffee gets a new help for their shop duties—a robot barista developed by tech company Intel.

Named Ella after the wife of Crown Coffee’s CEO and founder Keith Tan, the robot does what a typical barista does: taking orders remotely via an online app, making a cup of coffee, notifying the customer when it’s ready, serving it, finalizing the bill and charging the customer’s credit card.

Built under the inspiration of Intel Singapore employees taking a break at the Crown Coffee, Tan gives thanks to Intel for materializing as to what he calls a ‘wild idea’.

“I have plenty of gratitude to Intel, as they helped me realize this idea. They listened to me, understood the problems I was trying to solve, and partnered with me to design and develop prototypes,” Tan stated.

With Ella being present at the Crown Coffee workspace, it solved many of Tan’s initial problems, including compactness of the unit, freeing up labor for efficiency, and coffee preparation safety: a vital feature put into use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Ella opens new possibilities to food retailers to enable contactless futuristic service and develop alternate revenue models with the data Ella gathers,” said Santhosh Viswanathan, managing director for Intel Asia Pacific and Japan.

“What we are doing is transformational and will be part of the landscape of smart cities where AI-driven robots become deeply ingrained into our daily lives. Also, this is New Retail, which eases retail labor shortages while providing re-skilling employment opportunities for value-added technology and engineering people,” Tan added, citing that Ella is planned to be expanded across their 40 locations on the island, and eventually to Japan.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Used car trading platform myTukar has announced the deployment of its artificial intelligence (AI) driven Car Defect Detection system and Car Plate Masking to its own platform.

The said service, developed via Amazon Web Services (AWS) and a combination of Amazon Rekognition and Amazon SageMaker, allows the platform to analyse images and videos using scalable and deep learning technology. In turn, this then automates and standardizes car inspection and uses AI to detect car defects such as dents, scratches and paint deterioration, while eliminating human error by up to 80%.

“The cutting edge myTukar AI was developed as a result of our passion to digitally transform the used car industry to ultimately benefit our customers and to digitize the industry. myTukar is the first tech company in the used car industry to set up an in-house data science team to provide both system efficacy and customization,” said Fong Hon Sum, CEO of myTukar.

He further added, “However, more than just digitalizing the used car market, the myTukar AI that we are implementing in our business operations today is but a glimpse of what is possible for the entire automotive industry in the near future. With a powerful self-diagnostic tool built on AWS such as myTukar AI, the entire customer experience within the automotive industry can be radically transformed.”

In addition, the AI algorithm also allows to produce car inspection report can be produced in seconds, consequently increasing the overall productivity and efficiency of myTukar’s operations within its 2,000 authorised dealerships.

“Most importantly, with the use of myTukar AI, we are benefiting our customers by strengthening the trust and increasing the transparency of the car inspection process,” Fong added.

The myTukar AI technology is set to roll out Carro Group’s Southeast Asia markets in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, a strategy to continuously expand and digitalize car trading for the Southeast Asia Region.