Finally, AI-based scheduling software x.ai is making its system available for free, so long as you share your calendar, location, and contacts. X.ai describes itself as an example of a “utilitarian social network” that provides specific shared services. They point to Venmo, DocuSign, and DropBox as other examples. Interesting.
Small business martech vendors Benchmark (email) and Hatchbuck (CRM plus marketing automation) are merging. The deal will help the two relatively small firms compete with industry giants. The combined firm will have 130 employees and over 150,000 users.
Since we’re dancing on the frontier between digital and physical, let’s finish with a bow to Syte, which just raised a $21.5 million Series B for its visual recognition AI. Syte lets shoppers take a picture of a product and search for similar products on an ecommerce Web site. It also has in-store applications such as smart mirrors and in-store stylists. They get bonus points for a company name that puns on both Web site and eye sight.
“Ask Meta AI anything” is what you now see instead of the traditional search bar across Meta apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Meta AI will still perform the basic search function but will also answer questions and chat with you. It should hardly be a surprise when a tech company launches a genAI solution these days but this is a bold challenge to Google and Open.ai (it’s also available as a standalone tool at Meta.ai).