Would you buy a home in the metaverse? The Financial Times examines the real estate options in various virtual worlds. For example, Republic Realm’s Fantasy Islands launched last August. That is virtual development of 100 islands with villas. Owners remodel the homes and furnish them with NFT artworks. The FT report that resale listings range from $104,000 to over $2.6M [FT]
Introducing Meta’s Next-Gen AI Supercomputer – Meta introduced the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), which they believe is among the fastest AI supercomputers running today and will be the fastest in the world once fully built out in mid-2022. AI can currently perform tasks like translating text between languages and helping identify potentially harmful content, but developing the next generation of AI will require powerful supercomputers capable of quintillions of operations per second.
RSC will help Meta’s AI researchers build better AI models that can learn from trillions of examples; work across hundreds of different languages; seamlessly analyze text, images and video together; develop new augmented reality tools and more. Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for the next major computing platform — the metaverse, where AI-driven applications and products will play an important role. [Meta]
Conversational AI use expands, presents opportunities – Conversational AI is becoming more integrated into consumers’ lives every year, as tech like retail bots and virtual agents continue to improve the customer experience.
eMarketer forecasts that close to 47% of the US adult population will use voice assistants at least once per month this year. This figure will inch closer to the halfway mark by the end of 2025.
Buying on these devices has yet to gain traction. Only about a quarter (26.8%) of smart speaker users ages 14 and older, or 8.9% of the population, made a purchase via the device in 2021, according to our estimates. Those figures will rise slightly in the coming years, climbing to 27.5% and 9.9%, respectively, in 2025. [eMarketer]
WarnerMedia has made three more senior content hires in Asia to bolster its original productions teams in advance of the launch of HBO Max in the region – In the Singapore-based team, Mark Francis has been appointed Group Lead of Production & Development (Scripted and Unscripted); and Wee Shi Ming has been named Lead of Entertainment Content Acquisition for North Asia content. They both report into Magdalene Ew, WarnerMedia’s Head of Content – Entertainment for Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
In Mumbai, Saugata Mukherjee joins WarnerMedia as Head of Content – Entertainment, India. The newly-created role, like Ew, reports into Clement Schwebig, Managing Director of India, Southeast Asia & Korea. [WarnerMedia]
Dr. Oz Continues Campaigning for a Senate Seat in Pennsylvania – Dr. Oz shared photos from a visit to Sunset West restaurant in Centre County today. The doctor met with voters at a Pittsburgh Penguins game the next before.
The latest TV ad for ”The Batman’ has dropped. ‘The Batman’, releasing in cinemas on March 4, 2022. –
The Washington Post names Monika Mathur director of News Research – Monika will work with Alice Crites, Magda Jean-Louis and Jennifer Jenkins and continue to build the team as part of a growing, global newsroom focused on breaking news, investigations and complex enterprise.
Monika has directed the news research department at the Associated Press since 2018 and previously had worked as a researcher at AP since 2000. As AP’s head of research, in addition to managing the team, she conducted research for both long-term projects and breaking news and developed and conducted training for AP staffers on electronic resources, FOIA requests and best practices in information sourcing. [Washington Post]
Brie Larson shares her 2022 workout goals – Brie is getting motivated to workout and is inviting fans to join her:
Celebrity Big Brother returns to CBS and Paramount+ on February 2 – The show follows a group of celebrities living together in a house outfitted with over 80 HD cameras and over 100 microphones recording their every move 24 hours a day and having no contact with the outside world. Each week, one or more Celebrity Houseguests will be voted out of the house, with the last remaining Houseguest receiving the grand prize of $250,000. Celebrity Big Brother is produced by Emmy Award-winning producer Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan for Fly on the Wall Entertainment, in association with Endemol Shine North America.
The cast includes Cynthia Bailey, Todd Bridges, Todrick Hall, Chris Kattan, Chris Kirkpatrick, Carson Kressley, Teddi Mellencamp, Shanna Moakler, Mirai Nagasu, Miesha Tate, and Lamar Odom.
