The headlines you may have missed in May 2023
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As May comes to a close and we mourn the end of the bank holiday bonanza, I bring you the Fitzrovia IT monthly tech roundup to lift your spirits! With a dose of fashion, AI, and human augmentation, there was plenty to get excited about over the past month.
If you're a regular tech news reader then I'm sure you've stayed abreast of the major developments and scandals of the month, but I wonder if you missed these interesting snippets?
Your May Tech News Snapshot
Hey Alexa, where has Samuel L. Jackson gone?
If you’re an Alexa user then you may need to brace yourself for bad news, Amazon has announced that it is discontinuing the Alexa celebrity voices feature. Since its launch in 2019, users have been able to purchase the voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Melissa McCarthy, and Shaquille O’Neal. The voices were created using Amazon’s neural text-to-speech model, meaning they were generated instead of based on pre-recorded lines. If this news has hit you hard and you’d like a refund on your celebrity voice purchases, then you’ll need to contact Amazon customer service with a request. Make the most of your time with the celebs, as you only have until the 7th of June.
Roll up, roll up. Get your Neuralink brain chip!
In his quest to take over the world and gain a few more likes on Twitter, Elon Musk has now ventured into the business of brain chips. It was recently reported by the BBC that Musk’s Neuralink company has gained approval from the US Food and Drugs Administration to begin trialling implants on human participants. Neuralink assert that their chips can restore impacted vision and mobility, although this is yet to be tested on people. When it comes to augmenting humans we have to ask, what are the ethical implications? I certainly won’t be signing up for the trials.
Thanks to the power of tech, you can have a Coach ‘Tabby’ in hand.
As Fitzrovia IT’s resident handbag enthusiast, Coach’s recent venture into AR and immersive shopping was an extremely exciting move. The heritage brand has been crafting handbags for over 80 years but isn’t afraid to invest in innovative marketing strategies to cement its longevity. They recently partnered with AR try-on brand Zero 10 in order to give shoppers the chance to virtually model the Tabby handbag, the installation outside of Coach’s SoHo store drew in crowds of shoppers - boosting in store traffic by 49.4%. The success of the endeavour means other heritage and luxury brands will likely move to incorporate innovative tech strategies within their marketing, and Coach is already considering introducing an AI stylist. If you want to see the AR generated Tabby in action, head to their SoHo store before the 5th of June, or explore the hashtag #InMyTabby.
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And in some personal news…
Well, it’s not strictly personal… But in some Fitzrovia IT news, we’ve recently been awarded Investors in People Gold, and received 3 awards in the Best Companies awards! We don’t like to toot our own horns, but this was big news for the whole team. Without the hard work and dedication of everyone at Fitzrovia IT we wouldn’t be where we are today, and we’d (possibly) be 4 awards lighter.
Photo of the Month
Photoshop Firefly told me there are two-headed horses in Iceland?
Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay, and it’s just levelled up. Adobe have recently rolled out a beta version of their Firefly ‘Generative Fill’ function, an image generation service that enables you to alter an image based on automatic generation or user prompts. Budding photographers are now able to expand the borders of their images, add in new elements, or create nightmarish horrorscapes. As journalist Allison Johnson demonstrated in her holiday photos from Iceland, previously iconic landscapes can be totally adapted to create other-worldly scenes.
While that’s all for this month, if you’ve enjoyed reading our snapshot of the month in tech then keep your eyes peeled for the June edition of the Informant!
Freya Insoll from Fitzrovia IT