Jio Platforms Invests $15 Mn in Pranav Mistry-founded Artificial Reality Startup

Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani promoted Reliance Industries, has invested $15 million in Pranav Mistry founded deep-tech startup, Two Platforms Inc. (Two), for 25% equity stake acquisition in the startup, on a fully diluted basis.

Pranav Mistry is an IIT Bombay & MIT alumnus and former President of 'Samsung Technology and Advanced Research'. He is best known for his work on SixthSense, a gesture-based wearable computer system he developed in MIT Media Lab.

Two is a Silicon Valley-based Artificial Reality startup building interactive and immersional AI experiences, beyond text and voice.

In its official blog post's announcement, the company said, "This investment will accelerate the development of our technology platform for Artificial Reality that enables real-time AI voice and video calls, digital humans, immersive spaces, and lifelike gaming."

"Our collaboration will combine the power of TWO’s technologies and Jio’s reach, and together build the future of digital life for billions in India and globally", the blog post mentions.

Founded in July last year, Two's platform enables real-time AI voice and video calls, digital humans, immersive spaces and lifelike gaming.

According to media reports, Two plans to bring its interactive AI technologies first to consumer applications followed by entertainment and gaming, as well as enterprise solutions including retail, services, education, health and wellness. 

The founding team at TWO. which includes Abhijit Bendale (also a former Samsung Executive) has several years of leadership experience in research, design and operations with leading global technology companies. 

Samsung unveils AI-powered Digital Avatar NEON that "Converse & Sympathise" like Real Humans

A Samsung lab on Tuesday unveiled a digital avatar it described as an AI-powered "artificial human," claiming it is able to "converse and sympathise" like real people.

The announcement at the opening of the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas touted a new kind of artificial intelligence called NEON, produced by the independent Samsung unit Star Labs.

But some industry experts questioned the lack of detail provided by Samsung on the underlying technology.

"As far as we can tell, there's no mystery here at all. NEON is just digital avatars - computer-animated human likenesses about as deserving of the 'artificial human' moniker as Siri," said the specialised tech website, The Verge.

"Don't worry about any 'AI android uprising' - these aren't the artificial humans you're looking for," it added.

According to the California-based unit of the South Korean giant, the technology allows for the creation of customised digital beings that can appear on displays or video games and could be designed to be "TV anchors, spokespeople, or movie actors" or even "companions and friends."

"NEONs will be our friends, collaborators and companions, continually learning, evolving and forming memories from their interactions," said Pranav Mistry, chief executive of the lab.

The NEON creators said the new virtual humans are the product of advances in technologies including neural networks and computational reality.

According to Star Labs, NEON is inspired "by the rhythmic complexities of nature and extensively trained with how humans look, behave and interact." The avatars "create life-like reality that is beyond normal perception to distinguish, with latency of less than a few milliseconds."

While digital avatars have long been able to be programmed for specific tasks such as role players in games, NEON goes further by enabling interactions that can incorporate human emotion.

Although the artificial humans may borrow features from real people, "each NEON has his or her own unique personality and can show new expressions, movements, and dialogs," the company said.

The announcement comes amid a proliferation of AI-manipulated computer videos known as "deepfakes," and growing concerns about how they could be used to deceive or manipulate.

Some analysts fear these fakes could be misused during an election campaign to exacerbate political tensions. Jack Gold, analyst at J. Gold Associates, said Samsung may be ahead of the pack if it can develop avatars that can show emotions and expressions."We have to wait and see what this means," Gold said.

"But it has major implications for many fields like customer service, help desk functions, entertainment, and of course could also be used to 'fake' a human interacting with a live person for bad or illegal purposes." Avi Greengart of the consultancy Techsponential said the avatars could be realistic but also "creepy."

"Leaving aside how impressive the technology is, will NEON be used in ways that people like, just tolerate, or actively hate?" he said.

According to Samsung and Star Labs, NEON offers avatars with lifelike reality "that is beyond normal perception to distinguish." The company envisions commercial opportunities to create avatars to be service representatives, financial advisors, healthcare providers or concierges.

"We have always dreamed of such virtual beings in science fictions and movies," Mistry said.

"NEONs will integrate with our world and serve as new links to a better future, a world where 'humans are humans' and 'machines are humane.'" The laboratory was launched in 2019 by Mistry, who had previously been a senior Samsung vice president and head of innovation at Samsung Mobile.

He was known for developing Sixth Sense, a gesture-based wearable technology system built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The India-born Mistry also worked on projects with Microsoft and Google and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (AFP)

Meet 4 Brand Ambassadors for Modi’s Digital India

(L-R) Kruti Tiwari, Satwat Jagwani, Pranav Mistry and Ankit Fadia

 

While the PM was away in a foreign land, there was much speculation going around back home about who actually were the government's pick for the brand ambassadors for the Digital Media initiative. After much speculation, the government has finally cleared the air and announced its chosen four.

The buzz regarding the brand ambassadors for the initiative were actually a result of a Facebook post put by Fadia where he shared the news of him being selected as one of the Digital India’s brand ambassador. The post created quite a buzz and criticism, which resulted in the Indian government issuing a statement denying any such appointment, only to retract the statement stating a need for clarification.

The freshly issued press release now clarifies that Ankit Fadia is indeed one of the four appointed brand ambassadors for the initiative. The other three appointed ambassadors are IIT-JEE toppers Krati Tiwari and Satwat Jagwani, as well as Samsung’s Pranav Mistry. They have been appointed for a period of one year. Fadia however is being trolled on social media for his appointment as brand ambassodor.

The government's press release declaring the appointment of four Digital India Brand Ambassadors is as follows:
"As part of the Digital India week (July 1-7, 2015) following four Brand Ambassadors were nominated for a period of one year to propagate the product and applications being launched by the department under Digital India Program:

1. Shri Satwat Jagwani, All India IIT-JEE — Advanced Topper -2015 (Student)

2. Ms. Krati Tiwari, All India IIT-JEE — Advanced Girl Topper -2015 (Student)

3. Mr Ankit Fadia, Author & Ethical Hacker

4. Shri Pranav Mistry, Samsung USA (Computer Scientist/ Author of 6th Sense)

Thereafter, no other person has been appointed as Brand Ambassador for Digital India.

The services of these Brand Ambassadors will be used, as and when required for generating mass awareness for the program."

"The services of these Brand Ambassadors will be used, as and when required for generating mass awareness for the program," read the press release.

17-year-old Satvat Jagwani topped the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) Advanced tests this year. That achievement not only secured his spot to the B.Tech course in computer science in IIT Powai, but also took him from being a boy in a small town in Madhya Pradesh to brand ambassador for the Indian government's campaign.

Kruti Tiwari  is an outstanding performer, standing out as one of the top-scoring candidates from the 3,049 girls. She is a native of Indore, attained 47th rank in JEE Advanced 2015 and was personally picked up by the president.

34-year-old Pranav Mistry is a computer scientist and Inventor. At present, he is the Global Vice President of Research at Samsung and the head of Think Tank Team. He is best known for his work on SixthSense.

Ankit Fadia, however,  as an ambassador is not going down with many as according to them, his past records don't essentially qualify him as an ambassador material. Fadia first acquired the news headlines when he proclaimed himself as an ethical hacker prodigy. Ever since then, he has written over 16 books and also has certification courses under his name. He's also infamous for having allegedly hacked CHIP magazine's website in the year 2013, though this claim was denied by former CHIP editor Charles Assisi via a post on the Forbes.

An Inivisible Computer Mouse - Yet Another Invention by Pranav Mistry

Pranav Mistry, who earlier had made headlines for his invention Sixth Sense and even received Popular Science 2009 Invention Award for it, has now invented yet another similar device and this time its invisible - A mouse and amusingly it costs just 20$ to build its prototype.

The perpetual changes in computer technology & web has seen many evolutions, right from large room size CPUs to miroprogrammed slim netbooks, heavy bulky monitors to thin LCDs, few MBs capacity hard disks to trillion capacity HDs but in all these what remained nearly unchanged and un-evolved is mouse - moving it around to help us interact computer.

Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse project done in in MIT Fluid Interfaces Group headed by Pranav Mistry, this invisible mouse provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse, hence removes the requirement of having a physical mouse altogether but still provides the intuitive interaction of a physical mouse that everyone is familiar with.

Mouseless consists of - (1) an Infrared (IR) laser beam, (2) an Infrared camera and both embedded in the computer itself. The laser beam module is modified with a line cap and placed such that it creates a plane of IR laser just above the surface the computer sits on. The user cups their hand, as if a physical mouse was present underneath, and the laser beam lights up the hand which is in contact with the surface. The IR camera detects those bright IR blobs using computer vision. The change in the position and arrangements of these blobs are interpreted as mouse cursor movement and mouse clicks. 

As the user moves their hand the cursor on screen moves accordingly. When the user taps their index finger, the size of the blob changes and the camera recognizes the intended mouse click.

However, the possibilities of this mouse is just beyond the capabilities of a modern mouse we use these days as Pranav Mistry stated on its website - As we improve our computer vision algorithms, an extensive library of gestures could be implemented in addition to mouse movement and mouse clicks. Typical multitouch gestures, such as zooming in and out, as well as novel gestures, such as balling one’s fist are all possible. In addition, the use of multiple laser beams would allow for recognition of a wider range of free hand motions, enabling novel gestures that the hardware mouse cannot support.