Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Zoom’s AI-powered avatars, which can represent users in online meetings, will be available to use later this month, the company announced on Tuesday, alongside news of other tools and services. Notably, the company is introducing its own AI Docs, Slides, and Sheets apps, an AI agent builder for non-technical people, and a voice translator for meetings. The company said its AI-powered productivity apps will be available as a preview in the spring. The AI avatars, announced last year, are the long-anticipated photorealistic avatars that can mimic your appearance, expressions, and lip and eye movements. Designed to mime your actions when…
Google announced on Tuesday that it’s bringing a slew of new Gemini-powered AI capabilities to Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. The new features let users do things like quickly generate fully formatted first drafts, slides, and sheets based on information from their Gmail, Chat, and Drive. The tools are designed to make the apps more personal and capable of helping users get things done faster, right within the platforms themselves, instead of needing to switch to a separate tool or chatbot. A new “Help me create” tool in Docs lets users describe what they want to create, and Gemini will…
Sandbar, a startup by former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, attracted much attention last year when it showed off its note-taking wearable, the Stream ring. The company has now raised $23 million in a Series A funding round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures. The company’s smart ring is focused on note-taking, similar to products by Plaud or Omi, and not health-tracking like Oura’s products. The ring has a microphone that’s off by default, but can be activated using a flat, touch-sensitive panel at the top. You can hold this touch panel to record notes, chat with an…
By Emma FargeGENEVA, March 10 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the “black rain” falling in Iran after strikes on oil facilities could cause respiratory problems, and it backed Iran’s advisory urging people to remain indoors.The U.N. health agency, which has an office in Iran and works with authorities on health emergencies, said it has received multiple reports of oil-laden rain this week. Tehran was choked in black smoke on Monday after an oil refinery was hit, in an escalation in strikes on Iran’s domestic energy supplies as part of the U.S.-Israeli campaign.”The black rain and…
2026-03-10T12:00:01.249Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Tech sector employee confidence drops amid AI growth and job security fears. Glassdoor reports a 7.1% drop in tech employee confidence over the past year. AI advancements and past overhiring may be contributing to tech workers’ uncertain outlook. Employee confidence slipped again in February, and no sector is feeling…
Commuters, residents and tourists who take to social media during warm months to complain about sweltering subway systems in New York, Boston and London should feel vindicated — new research says they aren’t alone.As temperatures rise aboveground, the number of subway riders reporting uncomfortable heat belowground increases, according to a new study in the journal Nature Cities on Tuesday. This could worsen as climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, makes for a hotter planet.Northwestern University researchers analyzed more than 85,000 crowdsourced social posts on the social platform X and Google Maps reviews from 2008 to 2024 in…
AT&T built much of the communication network that US households and businesses rely on every day, and now it’s rebuilding it.The 150-year-old company said Tuesday it is investing $250 billion to modernize its US telecom infrastructure over the next five years.”The first phone call sparked an entirely new way for people and businesses to deepen connections and thrive,” CEO John Stankey said in a statement. “Today, we carry the spirit of communication forward in bold new ways, powering connections for a new generation — more instantaneous, seamless, and limitless than ever before.”By comparison, competitor Verizon reported spending $17 billion on…
AI tools can boost productivity, but companies need to be wary of overdoing it.That’s according to a new study published in the Harvard Business Review, which surveyed 1,488 full-time U.S.-based workers in large companies across a variety of industries.The study found that a small but noticeable number of workers report experiencing mental fog, headaches, and slower decision-making, or what the authors call “AI brain fry.””We look at this as kind of the canary in the coal mine,” Matthew Kropp, one of the study’s lead authors and a managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, told Business Insider. “Those…
The great vibe coding war of 2026 isn’t the bloodbath it appears, says a venture capitalist whose firm backed Cursor.On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Monday, Miles Clements, a partner at VC firm Accel, said that the AI-assisted coding industry is big enough for Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cursor.After Anthropic released its latest model, Opus 4.6, last month, founders and developers said on X that they are ditching Cursor for Anthropic’s Claude Code.”This market is growing enormously, and I don’t think a lot of these companies are actually experiencing success at the expense of the others,” Clements…
AMI Labs, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. AMI is working on world models, or AI that learns from reality, not just from language. This category has fewer players than generative AI, but maybe not for long. “My prediction is that ‘world models’ will be the next buzzword,” AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch. “In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding.” LeBrun said this with a smile because he thinks AMI Labs is fundamentally…