Microsoft acquired an AI company

File image: IOL.

File image: IOL.

Published May 21, 2018

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CAPE TOWN - American multinational technology giant, Microsoft announced that it has acquired an AI technology company, Semantic Machines Inc. 

Microsoft’s latest acquisition sees the company making strides in improving its artificial intelligence technology and teaching computers how to understand human communication. 

This comes after Microsoft said that it will make human interaction more understandable for computers. 

“We are excited to announce today that we have acquired Semantic Machines Inc., a Berkeley, California-based company that has developed a revolutionary new approach to building conversational AI. Their work uses the power of machine learning to enable users to discover, access and interact with information and services in a much more natural way, and with significantly less effort”, said Microsoft in a blog statement. 

According to Microsoft, Semantic is led by pioneers in conversational AI. This includes technology entrepreneur, Dan Roth, UC Berkeley professor Dan Klein, Stanford University professor Percy Liang and former Apple chief speech scientist, Larry Gillick.

Microsoft said in a blog statement that the goal is to expand their vision of computers to a point where they can see, hear, talk and understand as humans. 

Currently, there are more than 1 million developers who utilise Microsoft’s Cognitive Services which was designed by infusing speech recognition and natural language understanding into AI assistants. 

The technology giant added that it has further plans to develop their work in conversational AI with their digital assistant, Cortana and social chatbot, Xiaolce. 

“With the acquisition of Semantic Machines, we will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley to push forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces. Combining Semantic Machines’ technology with Microsoft’s own AI advances, we aim to deliver powerful, natural and more productive user experiences that will take conversational computing to a new level. We’re excited to bring the Semantic Machines team and their technology to Microsoft”, said Microsoft. 

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