McDonald’s might not be the only restaurant experimenting with AI-based order taking in the near future. Restaurant Divereports McDonald’s is selling its McD Tech Labs to IBM in order to “further accelerate” work on its automated voice ordering systems. The deal will help apply the technology to a wider variety of countries, languages and menus, McDonald’s said, while bolstering IBM’s Watson-powered customer service offerings.
The deal is expected to close in December. McD Tech Labs will join IBM’s Cloud & Cognitive Software team.
McDonald’s started testing AI drive-thru order taking in 10 Chicago-area restaurants in late spring. While the fast food chain saw “substantial benefits” for both customers and staff, it was clear the system needed improvement. It was only about 85 percent accurate, necessitating human intervention for nearly a fifth of orders. CEO Chris Kempczinski said it would take more than a year or two to implement the technology on a broader scale, and indicated that McDonald’s routinely bought companies (like the AI firm Apprente) for short stints before spinning them out with partners who can expand the technology — it clearly sees IBM as key to making AI drive-thrus a success, at McDonald’s and elsewhere.
It’s not clear whether or not restaurant employees should be thrilled. This will save staff from the drudgery of listening to orders at 2AM, but it also raises the possibility of job cuts as restaurants limit human involvement to preparing orders. As before, automation could be a double-edged sword that hurts as much as it helps.
Robot vacuums can be expensive, and if you want one with a base that automatically collects dirt, it’ll cost you even more. But now you can get one of Shark’s most advanced models for the lowest price we’ve seen. The Shark IQ RV1001AE robot vacuum with clean base is 47 percent off, bringing it down to $319. That’s more than $280 off its normal price and the lowest we’ve seen it — not to mention that also makes it even cheaper than most iRobot devices that come with clean bases, even when they’ve been on sale.
We’ve been fans of Shark’s robot vacuums since one of its cheaper models made it into our budget robot vacuum guide. Originally priced at $600, the RV1001AE is one of Shark’s higher-end robo-vacs with powerful suction and a self-cleaning brush roll. The latter ensures that hair won’t get tangled in the brush, making this vacuum a good pick for pet owners. In addition to Shark’s IQ navigation, it also maps out your home as it cleans so you can tell it to only clean the living room or the kitchen by using the mobile app. And if you don’t want to bother with manual cleanings, you can set a schedule in the mobile app, too, and let the robot do all the work.
This robot vacuum also cleans itself — it’ll automatically empty its bin into the clean base that comes with it. Yes, you’ll have to empty the base once every month or so, but that’s much more convenient than having to remember to dump out the robot’s contents every time. Also, Shark’s clean base is bagless, so you don’t have to buy proprietary liners like you do with other robots that come with similar bases.
If you can live without the clean base, a few other Shark vacuums — both robot and not — are on sale right now, too. Of note is the Shark IQ AV970, which is down to $250. That’s $150 off its normal price and close to its all-time low of $230. It has many of the same features as the RV1001AE, including a self-cleaning brush roll, IQ navigation and Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands. Aside from the clean base, you’ll have to forgo home mapping with this model, but you’ll get an extra-large dust bin, which allows the robot to suck up more dirt and debris before you need to empty it.
Amazon is offering another solid batch of games to Prime Gaming members at no extra cost next month. Remedy’s excellent Control:Ultimate Edition(which includes both DLC chapters), Rise of the Tomb Raider and Dragon Age Inquisition are the big-name titles you’ll be able to claim starting November 1st. The lineup also includes Rogue Heroes, Liberated, Puzzle Agent 2, Demon Hunter 2: New Chapter, BAFL – Brakes Are For Losers and Secret Files: Sam Peters.
Meanwhile, Prime Gaming has forged a new year-long partnership with Riot to give League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, Valorant and League of Legends: Wild Rift players some goodies. Over the next 12 months, you can snag esports emotes and Riot Points for League of Legends, weapon skins in Valorant and much more. Prime Gaming will sponsor Riot esports events too, while members can expect some surprises to mark next week’s release of League of Legends animated series Arcaneon Netflix.
Along with freebies for those games, Prime subscribers can claim swag for Apex Legends (including a character and weapon skin for the latest legend, Ash), Rainbow Six Siege, Amazon’s own game New Worldand other titles in November. You can pick up consumables and in-game currency for Genshin Impact too.
Members still have a few more days to claim the current Prime Gaming perks. Those include Star Wars: Squadrons, Alien: Isolation and the terrific Ghostrunner.
Ghostface strikes in a new look at Scream’s return. The latest Stephen King adaptation rounds out its cast. Get a tiny glimpse of the new Paranormal Activity. Plus, new looks at what’s next on Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Creepshow. Spoilers away!
Once a respected brand when it came to DSLR alternatives, Canon is now slapping the PowerShot label on all sorts of gimmicky experimental cameras, including the new PowerShot PX: a sort of security camera-meets-AI-powered photographer that promises to automatically capture the best possible photos and videos of an…
Nikon has officially unveiled its new flagship mirrorless camera, the $5,500, 45.7-megapixel Z9 with 8K 30p video and up to 20 fps RAW burst shooting speeds. It’s Nikon’s first camera to use a stacked sensor with built in memory that allows for very fast readout speeds. In fact, Nikon is so confident in the electronic shutter that it has abandoned the mechanical shutter entirely, so the Z9 is the first high-end professional camera without one.
With that high-speed sensor (which has the same megapixel count as the Z7 II), the Z9 allows a flash sync of up to 1/200th of a second, which looks like the fastest sync speed ever for an electronic shutter. That should also make it very resistant to rolling shutter, which is crucial if the camera is to be used for sports or action photography.
The faster sensor allows JPEG burst shooting at up to 30 fps, or RAW photos at 20 fps. If you’re willing to drop down to 11 megapixels, you can shoot photos at an astounding 120 fps. As with other stacked sensor cameras, the Nikon Z has much improved buffering, letting you capture up to 1,000 frames at once with either JPEG or the new HE (high efficiency) RAW compression algorithms.
Nikon
Nikon’s autofocus (AF) system is also all-new, and makes even more extensive use of AI algorithms. Much like Canon’s EOS R3, it can now track a wide range of subjects, including the eyes, faces and bodies of people, along with dogs, cats and birds, planes, trains, motorbike and bicycles. And unlike other AI cameras, there’s no need to tell it what you’re shooting — the camera will figure that out if you set it to “Auto” (or, you can set the subject type manually). It also offers a “3D tracking” system much like you can find on Nikon’s DSLRs. All of this falls into line with the Z9’s purpose as a sports/action/wildlife photography camera.
Nikon has also improved its in-body stabilization system (which it calls “vibration reduction” or VR). Now, it can combine in-body and lens stabilization system for steadier video or fewer blurry photos. This will only be available with several lenses to begin with, however, namely the Nikkor Z 70-200m F/2.8, Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR and freshly announced Z 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VR S.
Video performance is equally impressive. The Z3 will be able to capture 8K at 30p at launch, along with oversampled 4K 30p from an 8K capture that should be incredibly sharp. If you don’t mind pixel binning or line skipping, it will also be able to capture 4K at up to 120 fps.
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To start with, you’ll be able to capture these formats at up to 10-bit with H.264 or H.265 long GOP codecs. On top of that, Nikon is offering the very useful option of capturing video with ProRes 422 HQ compression, which is much easier to edit straight out of the camera.
Things will get even more interesting later on, though. Nikon plans to introduce a future firmware update that will enable 12-bit 8K 60fps capture in a new, proprietary N-RAW format or using Apple ProRes RAW HQ capture at 4K/60p. Nikon promises that you’ll be able to capture the oversampled 4K/30p for more than two hours at “normal” temperatures.
The Z9 has a large pro-style body with controls about where you’d expect them, other than a repositioned play button and AF button near the front. It uses dual CFexpress Type B slots (backward compatible with XQD) for maximum performance for video and burst photos. The new large, EN-EL18d battery is rated for up to 740 shots per charge with the LCD, or 700 shots with the EVF enabled.
It has a 3.69 million dot OLED viewfinder with just a 60 fps refresh rate, but Nikon said that it always delivers that speed and never downgrades it. It uses a multi-direction rear LCD and not a fully-articulating screen, but you can tilt t he screen up to face yourself.
With the Z9, Nikon has taken some of the best aspects of Canon’s EOS R3 and the Sony A1 and married them into a single, large body. It falls a bit short of those models in terms of shooting speed, and the electronic viewfinder isn’t too impressive on paper. However, Nikon seems to have vaulted ahead of both Sony and Canon in terms of video specs, but we’ll have to wait and see if video autofocus is up to snuff. The Nikon Z9 will arrive by the end of the year in the US for $5,500 for the body only.
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