It’s Monday, June 27 2016 and normally when we talk about robots with AI, our imaginations quickly run to some dystopian world where robots have taken over and … well, Terminator, basically. This little guy is here to change that image, however. Meet Cozmo, arguably the cutest stinkin’ robot we’ve seen since Wall-E, which was, of course, imaginary. Cozmo is very real, though, and if you’re thinking this is just another Aibo, then you definitely need to watch this video.
The brain-child of a bunch of college buddies in grad school at Carnegie Mellon, Cozmo was sparked to life by Anki, a company which brought together experts in mechanical engineering, robotics, AI, computer vision, animation, and sound design. The result is a robot with a real personality – think as if Disney’s Wall-E were to come to life and become your pet. Cozmo is extremely interactive, displays emotion, and loves to play.
As one of the robot’s creator’s explains, Cozmo knows who you are and what role you play in his world. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. And, you can bet when Cozmo is brought to market commercially, it’s going to be the hottest holiday toy ever produced. We expect a review unit this fall. But for now, check out the whole video and get even more details here.
Speaking of Robots, season 2 of the extremely popular sci-fi drama Mr. Robot airs in just over two weeks, but while we wait for the return of our new favorite faux hackers, there’s plenty of real life hacking going on, specifically against high-profile executives. This time the target is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose Quora account was just hacked. The culprits appear to be OurMine, the same group which recently hacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Spotify chief, Daniel Ek.
The strange thing about OurMine is that the group, supposedly made up of just three people, doesn’t seem to be out for blood. Rather than trash their target through social media channels, OurMine seems to be interested in selling it’s “services” as a cyber security firm. Of course, from where we sit, it looks a lot like extortion. Pretty sure that’s how Sundar feels about it, too.
But the whole issue makes you wonder: If Facebook and Google’s CEOs can be hacked so easily, what’s to keep folks like you and I from being targeted? For now, it looks like it pays NOT to be a high-profile celebrity.
Finally, as if we don’t waste enough time on Twitter as it is, the social media network has just launched a new feature for photos called Stickers. It’s a photo editing tool that allows users to overlay emoji, accessories and props on their photos. Once a photo is posted with Stickers on it, it becomes searchable using the Stickers hashtag. If you click on it, you’ll be taken to a new timeline which shows how the stickers in the photo have been used by others.
The new feature is to be rolled out for iOS and Android devices in the coming weeks, though you’ll be able to view Stickers at Twitter.com.
