Google plans RISC-V Android tools in 2024, wants developers to “be ready”

Google plans RISC-V Android tools in 2024, wants developers to “be ready”

Google

Android is slowly entering the RISC-V era. So far we’ve seen Google say it wants to give the up-and-coming CPU architecture “tier-1” support in Android, putting RISC-V on equal footing with Arm. Qualcomm has announced the first mass-market RISC-V Android chip, a still-untitled Snapdragon Wear chip for smartwatches. Now Google has announced a timeline for developer tools via the Google Open Source Blog. The last post is titled “Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready.”

Getting the Android OS and app ecosystem to support a new architecture is going to take an incredible amount of work from Google and developers, and these tools are laying the foundation for that work. First up, Google already has the “Cuttlefish” virtual device emulator running, including a gif of it booting up. This isn’t the official “Android Emulator”—which is targeted at app developers doing app development—Cuttlefish is a hardware emulator for Android OS development. It’s the same idea as the Android Emulator but for the bottom half of the tech stack—the kernel, framework, and hardware bits. Cuttlefish lets Google and other Android OS contributors work on a RISC-V Android build without messing with an individual RISC-V device. Google says it’s working well enough now that you can download and emulate a RISC-V device today, though the company warns that nothing is optimized yet.

The next step is getting the Android Emulator (for app developers) up and running, and Google says: “By 2024, the plan is to have emulators available publicly, with a full feature set to test applications for various device form factors!” The nice thing about Android is that most app code is written with no architecture in mind—it’s all just Java/Kotlin. So once the Android RunTime starts spitting out RISC-V code, a lot of

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Google Keep’s Android app is getting formatting tools and version history

Good news for Android-toting Google Keep users: you’re finally getting the text formatting options the app has so desperately needed for years. Google announced this week that the ability to bold, italicize, and otherwise transform text in your notes is rolling out now, and you should start to see it in the app soon. (I don’t have it yet, but Mishaal Rahman and a few others actually spotted the feature ahead of its official launch, so it seems to be coming fast.)

The new Keep features are more in the “should have been here all along” category than they are shiny new things, but they’re still a welcome addition to the app. And actually, Google has been paying an unusual amount of attention to Keep recently: users got a new homescreen widget earlier this year, and you can now open multiple Keep windows at a time on your device. Google’s also slowly rolling out version history so you can see all the changes you’ve made to your notes over time.

Keep is, if you didn’t already know, an excellent note-taking app. It’s fast, available on Android, iOS, and the web, and it manages to be both extremely simple and quite clever. Paste a link into a note, and the card reformats as a rich preview so you know exactly what it is. A single-line note just looks like a Post-it, but a longer note looks more like a document. You can draw in a note; you can record audio in a note; you can set reminders in a note! And because this is a Google product we’re talking about, it’s all searchable and accessible in the sidebar of a bunch of other Google products.

The new formatting options make Keep even more powerful — while still being super simple.
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Google to Add Bard AI Tools to Android, Home Virtual Assistant in Chatbot Push

Google will soon release a version of its virtual assistant that is powered by the company’s Bard artificial intelligence technology, helping users handle more complex tasks.

The new offering, called Assistant with Bard, will be available in a test phase shortly and then roll out to the general public in the coming months, the company said Wednesday. The release will equip the Assistant, which helps users of Android and Google devices complete tasks and find information, with some of the capabilities of Bard, a chatbot that is the company’s answer to OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT.

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Watching the detectives: Suspicious marketing claims for tools that spot AI-generated content

A common trope crossing the science fiction and mystery genres is a human detective paired with a robot. Think I, Robot, based on the novels of Isaac Asimov, or Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E., a show-within-a-show familiar to Friends fans. For our purposes, consider a short-lived TV series called Holmes & Yoyo, in which a detective and his android partner try to solve crimes despite Yoyo’s constant malfunctions. Let’s take from this example the principle – it’s elementary – that you can’t assume perfection from automated detection tools. Please keep that principle in mind when making or seeing claims that a tool can reliably detect if content is AI-generated.

In previous posts, we’ve identified concerns about the deceptive use of generative AI tools that allow for deepfakes and voice cloning and for manipulation-by-chatbot. Researchers and companies have been working for years on technological means to identify images, video, audio, or text as genuine, altered, or generated. This work includes developing tools that can add something to content before it is disseminated, such as authentication tools for genuine content and ways to “watermark” generated content.

Another method of separating the real from the fake is to use tools that apply to content after dissemination. In a 2022 report to Congress, we discussed some highly worthwhile research efforts to develop such detection tools for deepfakes, while also exploring their enduring limitations. These efforts are ongoing with respect to voice cloning and generated text as well, though, as we noted recently, detecting the latter is a particular challenge.

With the proliferation of widely available generative AI tools has come a commensurate rise in detection tools marketed as capable of identifying generated content. Some of these tools may work better than others. Some are free and some charge you for

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10 “Best” AI Marketing Tools (July 2023)

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are revolutionizing nearly every sector, including marketing. Many companies of all sizes are relying on AI marketing tools to promote their brands and businesses. They should be part of any business plan, whether you’re an individual or organization, and they have the potential to take your marketing strategy to the next level. 

AI marketing tools are software or platforms that help create automated decisions based on data that is collected and analyzed, and they have made it far easier to predict buyer behavior. Most of the time, human intervention is not required. 

AI can process massive amounts of information pulled from various sources, such as social media and email. Everyone knows data is key to marketing, and AI takes that one step further while also saving a ton of money and time. Organizations no longer need to rely on a staff for these tasks, which allows them to be used in other crucial areas of the business.

Another major benefit of AI marketing tools is that they allow businesses to personalize their sales and marketing strategies. This can be done through predictive analytics, which provides deep insights into buying habits. You know how companies like Google and Netflix are all about recommendations? This is the work of AI marketing tools. 

There are many impressive options on the market, so let’s take a look at the 10 best AI marketing tools: 

Many recognize Jasper as the best overall AI writing assistant, leading the market with its impressive features and quality. You first provide it with seed words, which Jasper then analyzes before creating phrases, paragraphs, or documents based on the subject matter and tone of voice. It is capable of producing a 1,500-word article in less than 15 minutes.

The platform has more than 50 AI content

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Meta Announces AI-Powered Tools To Streamline Ad Processes

In another Big Tech move to redefine digital advertising with artificial intelligence (AI), Meta announced several AI-powered tools to enhance business performance and streamline ad processes.

From the AI Sandbox to upgraded features in the Meta Advantage suite, these innovations promise to catapult online advertising into a new era.

Meta’s latest offerings provide an intriguing glimpse into the future of marketing with generative AI.

Meta’s AI Sandbox

The first portion of the announcement covered the AI Sandbox, a testing playground for AI-driven advertising tools.

  • Text Variation automatically creates multiple versions of an advertiser’s copy, helping advertisers test messages tailored to different audiences.
  • Background Generation allows advertisers to create background images for creative assets from text inputs.
  • Image Outcropping adjusts creative assets to fit different aspect ratios across multiple platforms like Stories or Reels, saving advertisers time when repurposing ad creatives.

Meta Advantage Suite

Next, Meta shared new features for its Meta Advantage suite.

Meta Advantage is a suite of automation tools designed to enhance advertising campaigns by leveraging AI and machine learning. It streamlines ad personalization and optimizes results, potentially saving advertisers time and ad spending.

The platform, which consolidated various automated products under a single banner last year, has witnessed significant growth in adoption.

The latest update brings several new features to Meta Advantage:

  • Businesses can convert existing manual campaigns to Advantage+ shopping campaigns with a single click. This feature, available in the Ads Manager, is expected to roll out across the platform within a month.
  • Advertisers can enrich their catalog ads with video content, a departure from the previous restriction to static images. This feature is being tested and is expected to launch later this year.
  • Performance Comparison reports allow advertisers to measure and compare the performance of their manual and Advantage+ shopping campaigns. This feature is already
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