San Francisco: After shutting down one of its artificial intelligence (AI) systems as chatbots defied the human-generated algorithms and started communicating in their own language, Facebook has acquired an AI startup Ozlo to enhance its Messenger's personal assistant.
The four-year-old California-based startup that specialises in understanding text-based conversations claims that its virtual assistants can understand and provide answers to questions which do not have simple "yes" or "no".
"By joining a team (Facebook) that shares our values and our vision, we will be able to continue to work on building experiences powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning," a post on Ozlo's website read late on Monday.
Ozlo has raised $14 million from a number of investors. The startup has 30 employees, majority of whom would be joining Messenger in Facebook's offices in either Menlo Park (California) or Seattle (Washington).
"They're just going to be working with [Messenger] to continue their work with artificial intelligence and machine learning," a report in ReCode quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The social media giant on Sunday pulled the plug on its AI system "because things got out of hand".
"The AI did not start shutting down computers worldwide or something of the sort, but it stopped using English and started using a language that it created," media reports noted.
Initially, the AI agents used English to converse with each other but later, they created a new language that only AI systems could understand, thus, defying the purpose of the researchers.
Earlier this year, Messenger's product head Stan Chudnovsky said Facebook was focused on text-based AI because voice conversations like that of Apple or Google required an extra step.
"Until we nail [text] we don't want to go into a world where we teach people what we cannot do well. Otherwise we're going to be in the world where people very quickly realise certain things that we don't do well yet and then they may not give us another try," Chudnovsky said.
The video calling is available for all Skype Lite users across the country and will allow anyone to join the group video or audio call on the app for free.
Users can tap on the call tab on the application to start a group call with friends or family.
Meanwhile, the AI-based chatbot is available on all Skype products in the country.
"Ruuh", with female voice rendition, will help users create personalised cards for Diwali apart from chatting with the user, the company said.
The tech giant has also introduced other features such as Diwali-themed stickers and emoticons.
Earlier this year, Microsoft threw a direct competition to social media apps like Google's messaging app Allo and video calling app Duo, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, by launching Skype Lite to provide seamless experience in messaging, audio and video calling even at lower bandwidths.
The lightweight app supports several Indian languages including Gujarati, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
The app named 'CARE4U', developed by an interdisciplinry team of 2nd year B.Tech students, connects the caregiver to the elderly. While one of these apps can be installed on the phones of the elderly, the other can be attached to the smartphone of the caregiver.
"The neural network-based fall detection algorithm in the app installed on the phone of the elderly can detect whether the elderly has fallen down. If there is a fall, it automatically calls the caregiver and emergency services with the location of the elderly person," a statement said.
The other features include detecting emotion by taking a picture and calculating the mood index. To make this feature more effective the team has developed a cognitive intelligent chatbot for the elderly person to engage with.
"We customized it to recognize the current mood of the person and, accordingly, fine-tune its conversations with that of the person. For example, the chatbot can recommend a motivational quote or an old song when the person is sad," said team member Kanishka Haldar from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering.
Moreover, the app can also do other activities like make a call, send a text, book a cab and so on. It also has a record of medical histories, an account of allergies, an SOS button, real-time location tracking, among others.
The 'CARE4U' app includes a 'Medicine Reminder' feature to remind both the elderly person as well as the caregiver that it is time for the former to take medicine.
The app recently won the IIT Kharagpur team the first runners-up position at a nationwide hackathon called vesAIthon'19.