Yope is the latest photo-sharing app vying to take on Instagram and TikTok.
The pitch? A hybrid of a private Instagram and a group chat. While WhatsApp and Snapchat allow for group messaging and Instagram offers private accounts, Yope blends the best of bothcreating a space where users can share photos exclusively with their chosen circles.
Launched in September 2024, Yope has grown exponentially over the past six months, now boasting 2.2 million monthly active users and 800,000 daily active users, many of whom are in the investor-coveted Gen Z demographic. The company also claims that 40% of users are still active on the app seven days after installing it. According to TechCrunch, Yope has raised an initial seed round of $4.65 million on a valuation of $50 million.
Users can create and name groups, invite friends, and post photos exclusively within those spaces. Each group features a wall where Yopes machine-learning technology stitches images into a continuously evolving photo collage.
The app also offers a lock screen feature similar to the app Locket, displaying the most recent shared photos. A Snapchat-like streak function boosts engagement, while the recap featureakin to Google Photos and Apples Photos appcompiles shared images into a slideshow.
Videos posted by Yope ambassadors on TikTok and Instagram have racked up more than 56 million views, and the company told TechCrunch that 70% to 80% of its users join through invites from friends. The apps user base currently skews young, with an average age of 18.
Instagram and Snapchat have become platforms for curated content. While Gen Z users take a lot of photos, only 1% of them are shared, Bahram Ismailau, Yopes cofounder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
Yope is betting on a shift away from public platforms like Instagram and X in favor of private, closed-group sharingreminiscent of an earlier internet era. Other apps have tried to capture this nostalgia. BeReal (RIP) had its moment, while Poparazzi and Locket also attemptedand failedto redefine social medias halcyon days.
The question is: Can Yope succeed where others have fizzled out, or is it just another fleeting challenger to Instagram and TikTok?
The dramatic images of wealthy neighborhoods burning during the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires captured global attention, but the damage was much more widespread. Many working-class families lost their homes, businesses, and jobs. In all, more than 16,000 structuresmost of them homeswere destroyed, leaving thousands of people displaced.
The shock of this catastrophic loss has been reverberating across Southern California, driving up demand for rental homes and prices in an already unaffordable and competitive housing market. Many residents now face rebuilding costs that are expected to skyrocket.
Climate-related disasters like this often have deep roots in policies and practices that overlook growing risks. In the Los Angeles area, those risks are now impossible to ignore.
As the region starts to recover, communities have an opportunity to rebuild in better ways that can protect neighborhoods against a riskier future, but at the same time dont price out low-income residents.
Research shows that low-income residents struggle the most during and after a disaster. Disaster assistance also tends to benefit the wealthy, who may have more time and resources to navigate the paperwork and process. This can have long-term effects on inequality in a community. In Los Angeles County, where one-third of even moderate-income households spend at least half their income on housing, many residents may simply be unable to recover.
My research at the University of San Diego focuses on managing risk in the face of climate change. I see several ways to design solutions that help low- and moderate-income residents recover while building a safer community for the future.
Better building policies that recognize future risk
Before a disaster, communities trying to adapt to climate change often prioritize protecting high-risk, high-value property, such as a beachfront or hillside neighborhood with wealthy homes. My own research also shows a trend toward incremental climate adaptations that dont disturb the status quo too much and, as a result, leave many risks unaddressed.
Climate risks are often underestimated, in part because of policy limitations and a political reluctance to consider unpopular solutions, such as restricting where people can build. Yet disasters once considered unimaginable, such as the Los Angeles wildfires, are occurring with increasing frequency.
Making communities safer from these risks requires communitywide efforts. And that can mean making difficult decisions.
Policy changes, such as updating zoning laws to prevent rebuilding in highly vulnerable areas, can avoid costly damage in the future. So can not building in risky areas in the first place.
California already has some of the strictest wildfire-prevention codes in the country, but the same rules for new homes dont apply to older homes. Communities can invest in programs to help these property owners retrofit their homes by offering grants or incentives to remove highly flammable landscaping or to harden existing homes to make them less vulnerable to burning.
Research shows that resilience efforts can spur climate gentrification, or displacement due to increases in property values. So, focusing on affordability in resilience efforts is important. For long-term affordability and resilience, governments can collaborate with communities to develop strategies such as supporting Community Land Trusts through grants, low-interest loans, or land transfers; implementing zoning reforms to enable higher-density, climate-resilient affordable housing; and incentivizing green infrastructure to strengthen community resilience.
In some cases, communities may have to consider managed retreat (moving people out of high-risk areas) but with adequate compensation and support for displaced residents to ensure that they can rebuild their lives elsewhere.
[Image: Beverly Hills Fired Department]
Making the risks cear through insurance
Insurance rates can also encourage residents and communities to lower their risks. Yet in many places, insurance policies have instead obscured the risks, leaving homeowners less aware of how vulnerable their property may be.
For years, insurers underpriced wildfire risk, driven by market competition. California policies also capped the premiums they could charge. As fire damage and rebuilding costs soared in recent years, insurers unwilling to shoulder more of the risk themselves pulled out of the state. That left countless Californians uninsured and hundreds of thousands reliant on the state-run insurance known as the FAIR Plan. The plan imposes caps on payouts and is now struggling to stay solvent, resulting in higher costs that insurers are expected to pass on to consumers.
Insurance reforms could help reduce the financial burden on vulnerable populations while also lowering overall risk. To achieve this, the reforms could incentivize building more resilient homes in less risky areas.
As seen with the L.A. fires, what your neighbor does matters. Reducing fire risk in each home can make entire neighborhoods safer. Insurers can provide a road map for how to reduce those risks, while state and local governments can provide assistance to retrofit homes and help ensure that insurance premiums remain affordable.
There are also innovative approaches to fund resilience efforts that can include insurers. One example is New Yorks Climate Change Superfund Act, which requires fossil fuel companies to finance climate adaptation efforts.
Equipping communities with resilience hubs
When disasters strike, local groups and neighbors play critical roles in stabilizing neighborhoods. But residents also need more specialized help to find housing and apply for disaster aid.
Building resilience hubs in communities could help support residents before, during, and after disasters.
The resilience hub in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles provides one model for what these spaces can achieve. Its anchored in a community arts center with solar power and backup energy storage. Residents can drop in to cool down during heat waves or charge their phones during power outages. It also hosts community classes, including in disaster preparedness.
During and after a disaster, resilience hubs can serve as central organizing points. They can provide crucial information, resources, and assistance with completing paperwork to access aid. Having access to skilled help in navigating what can be a complicated, time-consuming process is often critical, particularly for people who arent native English speakers.
Getting assistance is also often critical for displaced renters, who may have little certainty about when or if they will be able to return to their homes. Understanding their legal rights can be confusing, and rising costs as rental housing is rebuilt can price them out of the market.
Research shows that building a supportive community can provide a crucial social safety net when dealing with disasters and also boost the communitys social and economic well-being.
Reframing policies for everyone
The catastrophic L.A. wildfires were a powerful reminder that governments and communities need to think carefully about the risks they face and the role policies may play as they learn to live with greater fire risk.
Building a resilient future in a warming world will require bold, innovative, and collective strategies that support communities while advancing equitable solutions.
Nichole Wissman is an assistant professor of management at the University of San Diego.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It used to be that if you asked a classroom of kids what they want to be when they grow up, youd get answers like firefighter and astronaut. These days, Gen Alpha dreams of becoming content creators.
A survey of 910 U.S. Gen Alpha kids (ages 12 to 15) by social commerce platform Whop found that nearly a third want to be YouTubers, while one in five aspire to become TikTok creators. Content creation isnt their only ambition19.1% also expressed interest in becoming mobile app or video-game developers.
While the “iPad kid” generation is learning plenty from screen time, many feel their schools arent keeping up with the rise of digital careers. More than half of Gen Alpha say they feel unprepared by their education when it comes to building a personal brand and online presencekey components of a successful online career.
Everyone wants to be a content creator, especially kids who have grown up online. They can see the opportunities that exist to make money, find a community, and build a following, says Cameron Zoub, Whop cofounder and chief growth officer. [For] a 15-year-old today, if you have a laptop, theres a million ways to make money on the internet.
Long gone are the days of lemonade stands and car washes. Gen Alpha sees real earning potential in streaming video games, selling products online, reviewing brands, securing sponsorships, and even competing in esports tournaments.
Entrepreneurship is also on the rise. More than one in six Gen Alpha kids aspire to start their own business, with many already earning hundreds of dollars annually, despite being too young for traditional jobs. Brands are taking notice too: Nearly a quarter of Gen Alpha report that either they or someone they know has been approached for a sponsorship deal. With mid-tier YouTubers charging $5,000 to $10,000 per brand partnership, thats some serious pocket change.
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AI and energy are two of the most critical forces shaping the future of our planetand their relationship is impossible to ignore today.
From the significant power consumption of data centers to the growing energy requirements of AI-driven applications, the rapid adoption of AI is driving a surge in global energy demand that is outpacing the growth of renewable energy sources.
This presents a crucial challenge: How to balance the environmental impact of this technology with the transformative potential it holds? The solution is more AI.
Transform the environmental impact of energy production
As I explored in my recent article, technologies like cloud, edge computing, and AI are reducing the carbon intensity of oil and gas production today while helping to advance the new energy systems of tomorrow.
For example, consider the parallels between data intelligence for energy operations and autonomous vehicles. Much like how self-driving cars interpret real-time data about other drivers and traffic conditions to make decisions, AI-enabled devices in the oil field interpret data from wells and facilities in the network to take proactive and autonomous actions. This ensures that operations stay in the sweet spot, unlocking significant productivity gains while reducing costs and carbon emissions.
This is only the beginning. Soon, AI will enable optimization throughout the entire production life cyclefrom subsurface exploration to field development and production operations. This will allow us to optimize assets in real time, marking a significant step forward in energy production while maximizing performance and sustainability.
But to realize this vision, we must unleash the full potential of AI across our industry. It must evolve from a digital tool that supports individual tasks into a fundamental capability set woven into the very fabric of our planning, decision making, and operations.
AI will be the X factor for our industry. It has the potential to fundamentally transform the environmental impact of energy production. But for this to happen, we cant rely on traditional AI and machine learning workflows. We need tailor-made solutions to meet the unique demands of the energy industry. Enter engineered AI.
Engineered AI: AI for the energy industry
The AI lexicon is constantly expanding and now includes everything from narrow AI to general AI to superintelligent AI, alongside the now ubiquitous generative AI. However, the unique challenges of the energy industry demand a specialized approach.
To address them effectively, we at SLB propose “engineered AI”a specialized approach to AI development focused on solving the energy sector’s most pressing challenges.
Now, you may ask, Do we really need more AI? Well, consider this: Before a single barrel of oil or cubic foot of gas is produced, vast amounts of data are generated, analyzed, and acted upon. In fact, a single well can produce more than 10 terabytes of data per day, roughly equivalent to half of the text content in the U.S. Library of Congress.
Engineered AI is purpose-built to address these complexities. It combines machine learning and generative AI with energy-specific data, physics-based modeling, and the deep domain expertise of the scientists and engineers across our industry. With open, secure, and adaptable architectures, we can unlock decades of historical data to drive innovation across the industry.
As engineered AI evolves, it will enable the industry to rapidly accelerate and derisk processes such as reservoir design and management, construction of wells and facilities, and asset maintenance and performance. Ultimately, this will result in greater efficiency, reduced costs, and lower carbon emissions across the entire energy value chain.
AI for the energy transition
While engineered AI will be critical for improving performance and reducing emissions in the oil and gas industry today, it will also play a key role in scaling the low carbon solutions of tomorrow.
Leveraging decades of subsurface data, we are already developing engineered AI solutions to identify optimal locations for carbon capture and storage and geothermal energy developments. This represents a significant step forward in reducing industrial emissions and accelerating the transition to clean, renewable energy systems. And as engineered AI capabilities mature, its impact will continue to accelerate.
So, while the rapid growth of AI undoubtedly introduces new complexities to the global energy mix, I believe AI will unlock new opportunities, becoming one of our most valuable tools in delivering secure, affordable, and sustainable energy for all.
When we get it right, AI isnt just technology. Its the key to a world with more energy and less emissions.
Rakesh Jaggi is president of Digital & Integration at SLB.
A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, officials there said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night, state officials said, amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The Lubbock hospital where the child had been treated didnt respond to a request for comment.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is watching cases, though he did not provide specifics on how the federal agency is assisting. He dismissed Texas’ outbreak as not unusual during a Wednesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members.
We’re following the measles epidemic every day, Kennedy said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has told the AP it is providing vaccines as well as technical and laboratory support in West Texas, but the state health department is leading the response.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said through a spokesman that his office is in regular communication with the state health department and epidemiologists, and that vaccination teams are in the affected area.
The state will deploy all necessary resources to ensure the safety and health of Texans, said spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, calling the child’s death a tragedy.
The CDC has said it will only provide weekly updates on the measles outbreak, and has not yet updated its public webpage to reflect the childs death. Texas health department data shows that a majority of the reported measles cases are in children.
The virus has largely spread among rural, oil rig-dotted towns in West Texas, with cases concentrated in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community, health department spokesperson Lara Anton said. Gaines County, which has reported 80 cases so far, has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.
The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine which is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old for the first shot, with the second coming between 4 and 6 years old.
Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.
The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools nationwide.
Last week, Secretary Kennedy vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases, despite promises not to change it during his confirmation hearings.
Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to 9 out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most kids will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.
Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60.
Devi Shastri, AP health writer
AP writers Amanda Seitz, Jim Vertuno, and JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.
He’s not a movie buff, so New York musician Larry Saltzman doesn’t always watch the Oscars. This year, however, he’s got a rooting interest.
Saltzman taught actor Timothée Chalamet how to play guitar for the role of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. In turn, Chalamet earned a best actor nomination and the film is also up for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday.
A guitarist who’s performed with Simon & Garfunkel, Bette Midler and David Johansen, as well as in the pit at Broadway productions Hairspray and Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, Saltzman has developed a specialty in teaching actors how to play music for their roles. Besides Chalamet, recent pupils have included Adam Driver and Sadie Sink of Stranger Things.
On a fellow musician’s recommendation, Saltzman first got a call from a movie studio about a decade ago. He admits to being cranky as discussions dragged on. I almost did everything to talk them out of hiring me, he said.
Not until the fifth phone call did the studio identify the client: Meryl Streep.
She needed to learn the electric guitar for her starring role in the 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, where she portrayed an aging rocker trying to keep her career and life together in the wake of a series of disappointments.
Working with Streep is a little like a political consultant’s first client being elected president. If she likes you and word gets around, other students will follow. Teaching actors now represents about 40% of his business, the 69-year-old said.
My time spent with her was excellent, he said of Streep. She’s smart. She knows how to learn things. There was a steady progress over three or four months. She did very well.
Faking it just won’t do for serious actors and film directors. It’s like lip-syncing the audience is going to tell the difference, and the characters will be less believable. That was especially true with Chalamet, who needed to sing and play at the same time for a character whose artistry is the centerpiece of the film.
When the actors come to you, they’re kind of vulnerable, Saltzman said. They want to do a great job.
Saltzman had more than 50 sessions with Chalamet, starting in person and retreating to Zoom during the pandemic. It wasn’t easy. Chalamet had to learn some 25 songs in the script.
Sometime in 2018 I had my first lesson with this great guitar teacher named Larry Saltzman who at some point became less of a teacher and more a co-sanity artist through COVID, Chalamet recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press. I think we were keeping each other sane. We would Zoom three, four times a week and doing songs that never made it into the movie.
It helped that Saltzman is a Dylan buff. Focusing on imparting the guitar playing of pre-electric Bob, he taught his charge so well that Chalamet was a musical guest as well as host on Saturday Night Live, performing obscure Dylan cuts last month. Saltzman says, in the course of their sessions, Chalamet went the extra mile and unearthed very early, obscure Dylan songs that weren’t even in the script.
Saltzman generally likes teaching actors more than common folk, in part because there’s a specific goal: They need to learn certain songs to inhabit a particular character. When it’s open-ended someone just wants to learn the guitar it can be more of a challenge, he said. Saltzman also believes that it’s an advantage to not be a regular teacher, someone who may approach clients with a more rigid style.
Actor Johnny Cannizzaro said he appreciated Saltzman’s calming bedside manner and felt welcome in an apartment filled with guitars. Cannizzaro has the role of E Street Band member Little Steven Van Zandt in the upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
There was never really a moment where he expressed any sort of frustration or impatience with me during a session, said Cannizzaro, who has background playing keyboards but not guitar. If anything, he would express some excitement when you grasped something he was teaching. That put me at ease.
Saltzman also studied films of Van Zandt so he wasn’t just teaching Cannizzaro guitar he was showing specifics of how Van Zandt plays, the actor said.
Beyond teaching, Saltzman’s time is divided between studio work, playing in New York clubs accompanying different artists and Broadway he’s just about to begin Smash.
It’s an eye-opening experience for him to later see his students on screen. That was particularly the case when he saw A Complete Unknown and marveled at Chalamet’s ability as an actor.
All the more reason to watch the Oscars, and to take some pride in his own work.
In my own humble way, I’m a small gear in that machinery, he said. What is rewarding is knowing that in some small way I’m contributing to making a better film.
David Bauder, AP entertainment writer
Nvidia forecast first-quarter revenue above market estimates on Wednesday, expecting robust demand for its leading AI chips to persist as businesses spend heavily to expand generative artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Its shares rose about 1% in choppy extended trading, after closing up 3.7% in regular trading. Nvidia is the biggest beneficiary of a rally in AI-linked stocks, with its shares up more than 400% over the last two years.
The company expects revenue of $43 billion, plus or minus 2% for the first quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $41.78 billion according to data compiled by LSEG.
Demand has grown unabated for Nvidia’s advanced chips that can speedily process the large amounts of data used by generative AI applications, as companies race each other to emerge as leaders of the new technology. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can learn from data and improve over time.
Nvidia’s optimistic forecast also helps allay doubts around a slowdown in spending on its hardware that emerged last month, following Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s claims that it had developed AI models rivaling Western counterparts at a fraction of their cost.
This could add fuel to the sputtering AI rally after the Magnificent Seven stocks’ tumultuous retreat from their late-2024 peaks as Wall Street’s optimism waned under the shadow of DeepSeek’s innovations.
Nvidia’s revenue for the fourth quarter grew 78% to $39.3 billion, beating estimates of $38.04 billion.
Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters
All the recent aviation disasters and close calls have people worried about the safety of flying.
The midair collision that killed 67 near Washington, D.C., last month was the worst disaster. But there was also the plane that crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto, the fiery plane crash in Philadelphia and a plane crash in Alaska that killed 10, as well as two small planes that collided in Arizona. Those all came before the scary moment this week in Chicago when a Southwest Airlines plane had to abort its landing to avoid crashing into another plane crossing the runway. A plane landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport also had to perform a go-around maneuver Tuesday to avoid getting too close to another aircraft departing from the same runway.
That’s not to mention the time earlier this month when a Japan Airlines plane clipped a parked Delta plane while it was taxiing at the Seattle airport, or the security concerns that arose after stowaways were found dead inside the wheel wells of two planes and aboard two other flights. In addition, a United Airlines plane caught fire during takeoff at the Houston airport and a passenger opened an emergency exit door on a plane while it was taxiing for takeoff in Boston.
So of course people are wondering whether their flight is safe?
What happened in the worst cases?
The Jan. 29 collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed everyone aboard both aircraft. It was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground. After that, there hadn’t been a deadly crash of any kind involving a U.S. airliner since February 2009.
crasd Everyone survived that crash.
Crashes are more common involving smaller planes, like the single-engine Cessna that crashed in Alaska on Feb. 6, or the two small planes that collided in Arizona on Feb. 19. Ten people including the pilot were killed in the Alaska crash, and two died in the Arizona one.
A medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31, killing the six people onboard and another person on the ground. That Learjet generated a massive fireball when it smashed into the ground in a neighborhood not long after taking off from a small airport nearby.
How worried should I be?
Fatal crashes attract extraordinary attention partly because they are rare. The track record of U.S. airlines is remarkably safe, as demonstrated by the long stretch between fatal crashes.
But deadly crashes have happened more recently elsewhere around the world, including one in South Korea that killed all 179 people aboard in December. There were also two fatal crashes involving Boeings troubled 737 Max jetliner in 2018 and 2019. And last January, a door plug blew off a 737 Max while it was in flight, raising more questions about the plane.
Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at U.S. airports. Among the reasons they have cited for staffing shortages are uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training and mandatory retirements.
President Donald Trump added to those concerns when he blamed the midair collision over Washington D.C. on the obsolete air traffic control system that airports rely on and promised to replace it.
Even with all that, officials have tried to reassure travelers that flying is the safest mode of transportation. And statistics back that up.
The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation tell a similar story.
What is being done?
The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating these recent crashes and close calls to determine what caused them and look for ways to prevent recurrences.
There have already been troubling revelations about the midair collision, but it will take more than a year to get the full report on what happened.
The NTSB always recommends steps that could be taken to prevent crashes from happening again, but the agency has a long list of hundreds of previous recommendations that have been ignored by other government agencies and the industries it investigates.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said the public is right to say that crashes like the recent ones are unacceptable. That is why he plans to make sure safety is paramount as he leads the agency that regulates all modes of transportation.
I feel really good about where were at and where were going and the plans we have in place to make sure we een make the system safer and more efficient than it is today, Duffy said in a Fox News interview.
Josh Funk, Associated Press
Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a generative-AI infused Alexa that it says will allow the popular voice assistant to have more personality, check a users tone and even plan romantic dates.
But unlike before, when Alexa was offered for free on any Alexa-enabled devices, customers will have to pay Amazon a monthly fee of $19.99 for the revamped voice assistant, which it calls Alexa+. However, the generative-AI powered Alexa will be free for Prime members, who pay the company a monthly or annual fee for free delivery and other perks.
At a media event held in New York City, Amazon executives showed off the update to the ten-year old digital assistant with the new features aimed at boosting sales and interactions with Alexa-enabled devices.
The company says Alexa+ is able to have conversations with a more natural, humanlike flow and can learn more about a user such as dietary preferences or allergies the more its used.
Im not just an assistant, Im your new best friend in the digital world, Alexa+ said during an onstage demo on Wednesday.
At the event, Panos Panay, Amazons vice president of devices & services, listed off the other things the voice assistant can now do, such as create study plans, text a babysitter and call an Uber ride for a friend. He and other company executives also said Alexa can fetch videos from Ring cameras such as checking whether a user’s dog was walked that day and is able to remember handwritten recipes, emails and other documents shared with it.
Shes smarter than shes ever been before, but shes also approachable, Panay said.
Alexa is built into products such as smart speakers, Amazons Fire TVs and earbuds. The Seattle-based tech giant launched its popular voice assistant in 2014 alongside its first Echo device, which responds to voice commands. Panay said Amazon has sold more than 600 million Alexa-enabled devices and that user engagement grew 20% last year compared to 2023. Some market estimates have shown Alexa holds the largest market share among voice assistants.
The revamped Alexa uses large language models, including some developed by Amazon and others by Anthropic, the generative AI startup the tech giant has poured billions into. Alexa+ has a model-agnostic system, allowing it to select the best AI model for the tasks it wants to complete, said Daniel Rausch, Amazons vice president for Alexa and Echo.
Amazon says it will start rolling out early access to Alexa+ in the U.S. next month. It will then roll it out in waves internationally, starting with certain Echo devices. The upgraded assistant will be available across Alexa-supported devices, but some features are only built for products with screens.
Amazons announcement came more than a year after the company teased an early version of an AI-infused Alexa at a media event held to show off new devices. At the time, Amazon had said it was working on a speech-to-speech model that would allow Alexa to exhibit humanlike attributes, such as laughter and phrases like uh-huh during conversations.
During the demo on Wednesday, Amazon highlighted features it had previously kept under lid. In one exchange, Panay showed the new Alexa a video of the crowd in the room to test a feature that apparently allows it to sense the surrounding mood. Panay asked Alexa+ if the crowed looked pumped to which it responded the room full of journalists were paying attention to you and excited.
Like its predecessor, Alexa+ is enabled when users say the voice assistant’s name but executives on Wednesday said users now only have to say that wake word once before having a prolonged, back and forth exchange. Still, demonstrators would occasionally say Alexa again if it seemed like the voice assistant didn’t catch something.
Amazon competes in the smart speaker market with other tech giants, including Apple and Google.
Though it has had success in selling devices, the companys other goal driving Amazon purchases through Alexa has been more challenging to pull off. Amazon has said Alexa customers have used their device to shop. However, many rely on it mostly for menial tasks, such as playing music, asking questions or checking the weather.
A subscription fee for the revamped Alexa will allow the company to offset costs related to AI development and help its devices operations become more profitable.
Haleluya Hadero and Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Associated Press
Deere investors voted overwhelmingly against a resolution aimed at its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on Wednesday, continuing a pattern of shareholder distaste for anti-DEI measures despite Republican political pressure on executives.
During a webcast of its annual meeting, executives with the farm equipment maker said only 1.3% of votes cast were in support of a resolution calling on the company to report on racial and gender hiring statistics “to prove it does not practice discrimination.”
The resolution was filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank that has opposed many corporate diversity efforts. Two other resolutions aimed at restricting social action by Deere won similarly low levels of support.
Deere’s meeting was closely watched because in July it became one of the first major U.S. companies to back away from supporting programs such as LGBTQ+ pride events.
Numerous other U.S. companies have retreated from DEI in recent months, particularly as the Trump administration has stepped up threats to companies and institutions that engage in those efforts.
But many investors and executives see DEI efforts as necessary to address underrepresentation of certain populations in management roles. On Tuesday, Apple investors voted in defense of the company’s DEI policies, as did Costco investors in January.
Ross Kerber and Utkarsh Shetti, Reuters
