Truecaller AI Voices, DeepL Nabs $300M, Volvo Self-Driving Trucks

Welcome, AI enthusiast — Here’s this week’s edition of Inside AI,
Weekly Round-Up:

• Truecaller AI Assistant

• Huge Funding for AI Startup

• Volvo Working on Autonomous Trucks

• More AI tools & Resources

MICROSOFT
Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known caller ID service, is the latest to take this approach with its announcement that it will now allow customers to use its AI-powered Assistant to answer phone calls in their own voice.

The new experience comes via a partnership with Microsoft that allows the Swedish company to use the Redmond giant’s Personal Voice technology, introduced in November as part of Azure AI Speech.

By using Microsoft’s Personal Voice, Truecaller’s Assistant, available to paid users, will be able to replicate users’ voices in order to greet and respond to callers. This is in addition to the preset system-generated voice options available to users through the digital assistance feature that helps answer phone calls for you, screen unknown calls, take messages, respond on your behalf or even record the call.

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DEEPL NABS
AI language translation startup DeepL nabs $300M on a $2B valuation to focus on B2B growth

More funding is being poured into startups focused on AI. DeepL, which builds automated text translation and writing tools that compete against the likes of Google Translate and Grammarly, said on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $300 million. It is now valued at $2 billion, post-money.

This round, led by Index Ventures, underscores the frenetic interest that investors have in AI startups at the moment and how companies are capitalizing on that opportunity while they can. DeepL, which is still not profitable, was valued at $1 billion in January 2023, when it raised just over $100 million.

The new money will be used to drive more sales and marketing, as well as further research and development.

The company, based in Cologne, Germany, said it has more than 100,000 businesses and organizations using its tools. Given that this is just a tiny percentage of the company’s addressable market, the aim is to try to scale that significantly.

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VOLVO
Volvo teams up with Aurora to reveal an autonomous semi truck

Volvo revealed its first “production-ready” self-driving truck that it’s making with Aurora, the autonomous driving technology company founded by former executives from Google, Uber, and Tesla.

The truck is based on Volvo’s new VNL, which is a Class 8 semi truck built for long-haul transportation. The autonomous version of the truck features an array of sensors and cameras to power Aurora’s Level 4 autonomous driving system, which enables the truck to operate without a human behind the wheel. The companies say the truck is “purpose-designed and purpose-built” for Aurora’s self-driving hardware and software stack.

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🛠️ More Tools

• Presence - Discover people in your area with shared interests and backgrounds. (link)

• TLDR This - Feeling overwhelmed by long articles? This clever AI tool can whip up a summary in seconds! Just paste the link, choose how much detail you want. Get your key points condensed for easy reading. (link)

• ArtFlow AI - Bring your animated stories to life! This AI tool lets you build unique scenes, characters, and even write their dialogs for a fun and easy way to create cartoon adventures. (link)

• Ideogram - Helps users visualize their data in a graphical format. It provides a simple, easy-to-use interface to create diagrams and charts that represent data points, relationships, and trends. (link)

📘 Resources

• Google Cloud and Hugging Face announced a new partnership to advance open-source AI, with HF users now able to leverage Google infrastructure to build models. (link)

• PayPal to launch AI-based products as new CEO aims to revive share price. (link)

• Apple Podcasts is getting auto-generated transcripts with iOS 17.4. (link)

• Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox to run on the iPhone. (link)

• Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes. (link)

• Etsy launches ‘Gift Mode,’ a new AI-powered feature that generates 200+ gift guides. (link)

• General purpose humanoid robots? (link)

AI ART OF THE WEEK
Name these new species