When Facebook released an open source version of its recommendation model last week, cynics saw a ploy to seem less evil. Now Uber, one of the few big tech companies with a worse reputation than Facebook, has released an open source AI tool of its own. The Uber tool which trains conversational agents by having them talk to each other, which equal parts fascinating, frightening, and bizarre.
Here’s one of those “I thought they could already do that” items: identity specialist Signal announced the ability to do real-time identity resolution and data onboarding, meaning it can look up external data about a Web site visitor as soon as they appear. Looking up internal data about known visitors isn’t unique but identifying and appending external data about unknown visitors is something else.
Finally, news that in-app video advertising platform Vungle was bought by private equity investor Blackstone for a reported $750 million or more. You probably wouldn’t have read this if that number weren’t so large. I know I wouldn’t have written it.
Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.