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  • Satellite Meeting Alert, Text-to-Speech Breakthrough and more | AITX Newsletter #4

Satellite Meeting Alert, Text-to-Speech Breakthrough and more | AITX Newsletter #4

Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.

If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:

  • Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.

  • Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.

  • Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.

Before we jump into the regular news, a few important things:

  1. February AITX Meetup: Our next meetup is scheduled for Tuesday, February 27th, make sure to sign up here! To stay in the loop on all our monthly meetups and other community organized events, subscribe to our AITX calendar here.

  2. Please Read — SxSW 2024 Event Attendance:

    We are in the process—with a few collaborators—of getting an venue and hosting an event before the official AI events of SxSW start. We want to know how many people we can expect to better understand the size of the venue we should get.

    Please fill out this form here.

In this week’s edition you’re getting:

5 Upcoming Events

3 Austin AI Community Stories

1 Community Highlight

So let’s jump in!

UPCOMING EVENTS

A special shoutout to a member of our community, TJ Larkin, for getting engaged and making this happen.

TJ suggested having a complementary meetup to the AITX monthly meetups for those who can’t get enough of the energy in our community!

Check it out!

  • When: Tuesday, February 13 | 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM CST

  • Where: 12901 N Interstate Hwy 35 · Austin, TX

  • What: The ideal place for entrepreneurs curious about AI's vast potential. It's a space where you can build meaningful relationships, exchange innovative entrepreneurial ideas, and get inspired.

Austin AI Social Hour đźŤ¸ď¸Ź 

  • When: Thursday, February 8 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST

  • Where: Lazarus Brewing Co. 4803 Airport Blvd · Austin, TX

  • What: The perfect spot to mingle with a friendly mix of people who share an interest in AI and its potential. Whether you're looking to share your latest project, seek feedback and advice, or simply connect with like-minded individuals, this is the perfect opportunity to unwind and make new connections in a relaxed, casual environment.

  • When: Wednesday, February 7 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST

  • Where: Cosmic Coffee and Beer Garden 121 Pickle Rd, · Austin, TX

  • What: Starting out with the topic of consciousness, sentience, and AI. What is consciousness? What is sentience? What is special about humans? If we have something special, is it shared with other beings? Could AI one day share that thing?

  • When: Thursday, February 8 | 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM CST

  • Where: 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: An engaging presentation on this topic, led by Austin-based artist and technologist Kellyn Dassler. Kellyn will discuss and demonstrate opportunities for incorporating AI into art outside of generative AI in more artist-empowering ways.

  • When: Wednesday, February 7 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST

  • Where: Capital Factory, 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

  • What: An engaging evening as Fernando Labastida, a recognized content marketer and bilingual Spanish/English speaker, delves into the essence of his brand new book, "StartupBook".

COMMUNITY STORIES

TCEA 2024 in Austin is the go-to spot for K–12 tech buffs, packed with everything from AI in classrooms to the latest in esports and digital learning.

It’s a place where educators and IT pros can find new tools, get inspired by keynotes, and swap stories on tech integration and innovation.

Think of it as a giant meetup for the Austin AI community, buzzing with ideas on making learning cooler and more effective with tech.

Oracle just rolled out its OCI Generative AI service, making it a breeze for businesses to dive into generative AI without the fuss.

Now available to all, this service hooks up with Cohere and Meta's big brains to offer a wide range of business solutions, both in the cloud and on-prem. It's like giving enterprises their very own AI wizard, complete with tools for text generation and digging into data insights, all while chatting in over 100 languages.

But wait, there’s more!

They're also embedding AI into everything from their cloud applications to databases, meaning businesses can get creative with AI without needing to be tech wizards.

And with Oracle's global CloudWorld Tour hitting spots like Dubai and Austin, they're all about showing off how this tech can blend seamlessly into existing operations.

At CCW Austin 2024, VOC AI, a Silicon Valley innovator, showcased its latest AI tech aimed at transforming customer service and insights for Amazon sellers.

Their AI Agent for Customer Service, fueled by OpenAI, promises accurate, personalized responses, boosting satisfaction across sectors—from e-commerce to finance.

Their sentiment analysis tool offers Amazon sellers deep dives into customer emotions, improving products and services. VOC AI also revealed tools for market insights, including sales estimators and trend analyses.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT

This story is about Austin’s very own Brian Atwood.

Brian is the founder of Sindarin—a startup focused on creating the conversational speech engine for LLMs. He recently hit an exciting breakthrough in the wee hours of the morning last Sunday!

Why is such an important milestone?

Because sub-700ms is inside of typical conversational human response time. The current state of conversational AI is riddled with latency—degrading the user experience.

Sindarin is solving this problem.

They’re making it easy for companies to add speech to their product with with Sindarin’s SDK, without compromising on user experience.

If you or your company is looking for quality conversation speech AI solutions, give him a shout on X!

Additionally, people can now sign up to create their own personas—go to their site here if you’re interested.

That’s all for now, folks!

If you enjoyed this, consider sharing with a friend by sending them to sign up here.