Category robots

Researchers have developed a new technique that pairs artificial intelligence and X-ray science.

A team of engineers and roboticists at EPFL in Switzerland has designed and built a gliding drone that can use its wings as a gripping tool to perch on a vertical object. In their project, reported in the journal Communications Engineering, the group created a drone inspired by animals such as bats that can land on vertical poles and tree limbs.

The requirements included automatic pick and place of up to 60 keys per minute, seamless integration with the existing production line and a minimal factory floor footprint.

Imitation learning is a promising method to teach robots how to reliably complete everyday tasks, such as washing dishes or cooking. Despite their potential, imitation learning frameworks rely on detailed human demonstrations, which should include data that can help to reproduce specific movements using robotic systems.

AI design tools are transforming the creative process, unlocking unprecedented potential for productivity and innovation. Imagine creating stunning visuals, presentations, and artwork with just a few clicks, thanks to the power of artificial intelligence.

As part of our ongoing series on AI productivity tools, we’ve already explored AI solutions for scheduling and task management, research, and personal assistance. Today, we dive into the world of AI-powered design and presentation software. In this installment, we’ll examine five leading tools: Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Beautiful.ai, Decktopus, and Midjourney.

We’ll uncover how these tools can elevate your creative projects by exploring their applications, AI features, and overall performance. From generating images and editing graphics to crafting entire presentations, these AI-driven solutions promise to make your design process faster, easier, and more effective than ever before.

If this in-depth educational content is useful for you, subscribe to our AI mailing list to be alerted when we release new material. 

Top AI Design Tools

Let’s explore each of the five AI-powered design tools in detail. We’ll cover their applications, AI features, quality of generated visuals, flexibility, and pricing to help you understand how they can enhance your creative projects.

Canva

Canva is primarily a template-based design tool, recently enhanced with AI-powered features for media generation and editing.

Applications: Canva has a very wide range of applications, including presentations, social media posts, logos, documents like reports or resumes, videos, posters, flyers, and more.

AI Features: Canva allows you to generate media from text prompts, such as images, graphics, and videos. It also offers AI-powered editing tools, like background removal, specific parts editing, image expansion, and text editing within images.

Quality: The quality of Canva’s AI-generated images can be quite good if you have a general idea without needing anything specific. However, more advanced features, like logo generation and object replacement, often perform poorly, and AI video generation is still experimental and unreliable.

Flexibility: Canva is quite flexible when working with templates. While AI-powered features offer additional flexibility in theory, they do not yet work reliably enough for consistent use.

Pricing: The Canva Free plan provides access to most features for individual use. Canva Pro costs $12.99 per month or $119.99 per year, offering more AI tools, a larger template library, and 1TB of cloud storage, with a 30-day free trial available. The Canva Team plan, for a minimum of three people, costs $10 per person per month or $100 per person per year.

Overall, Canva’s combination of user-friendly design templates and emerging AI features makes it a valuable tool for a wide array of design tasks, though its advanced AI functionalities are still developing.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the leading design tools, renowned for its robust features that allow users to design and edit all kinds of images, protographs, graphics, illustrations, and more. While incredibly powerful and versatile, it is not as beginner-friendly as tools like Canva, requiring a steeper learning curve to master its extensive capabilities.

Applications: Photoshop has a wide range of applications, including illustrations and photographs for marketing, social media, and personal use. Its versatility makes it a preferred choice for professional designers and artists.

AI Features: Photoshop includes many generative AI features for image editing, such as expanding images in any direction, adding or removing specific objects, and editing or removing backgrounds. The Photoshop Beta also allows users to generate images from scratch using text prompts or reference images, with the ability to specify styles to achieve the desired look.

Quality: While Photoshop’s AI features don’t always work perfectly, they are generally reliable. The tool generates three variations for each prompt, usually offering at least one acceptable option. For optimal results, users might need to rerun prompts several times.

Flexibility: Adobe Photoshop is extremely flexible, enabling users to customize any image or illustration with both AI tools and a comprehensive manual toolkit. However, new users might need to invest time in learning how to use the tool effectively to take full advantage of its capabilities.

Pricing: Photoshop is offered starting at $19.99 per month, with a 7-day free trial available for new users.

Overall, Adobe Photoshop stands out for its powerful and versatile design capabilities, although its extensive features come with a steeper learning curve compared to more beginner-friendly tools.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai is a presentation design tool that leverages AI to simplify the creation of professional-looking slides, making the process quick and easy. Recently, it has been enhanced with additional AI features that further streamline the design process.

Applications: While primarily focused on creating presentations, Beautiful.ai also assists with creating images, charts, tables, diagrams, and other visual elements within those presentations.

AI Features: Beautiful.ai was AI-powered even before the recent surge in generative AI technology. However, recently, it has incorporated many generative AI features that make the presentation creation process even more seamless. Image generation is powered by DALL-E 3, and slide generation is powered by Anthropic. This allows users to create entire presentations or specific slides and images with text prompts. For instance, you can specify the topic of a slide, select the preferred format (e.g., list, diagram, text, image, comparison), and provide additional context by uploading a file, adding text, or linking a webpage. Additionally, the tool includes various text generation features, such as rewriting blurbs, shortening or lengthening text, and correcting spelling and grammar errors.

Quality: Beautiful.ai is convenient for generating an initial draft of your presentation, saving you from starting from scratch. However, depending on the topic and your goals, the presentation will likely require significant editing. While AI slide generation isn’t fully reliable yet, the image generation and text generation features work quite well.

Flexibility: The tool offers considerable flexibility, allowing users to manually edit almost any aspect of their presentations. However, image editing is not an option within Beautiful.ai, so you may need to use other tools for this purpose.

Pricing: The Pro plan for individuals is priced at $12 per month, billed annually. For team collaboration, the Team plan costs $40 per user per month if billed annually, or $50 per user per month if billed monthly. A 14-day free trial is available for those who want to try the tool before committing for a year.

Overall, Beautiful.ai is a powerful tool for creating professional presentations quickly and easily, thanks to its extensive AI features, though some aspects of AI generation still need improvement.

Decktopus

Decktopus is an AI-powered tool designed for creating presentations, offering a wide range of AI features and the flexibility to incorporate your own content and ideas, resulting in more relevant and tailored presentation drafts.

Applications: The tool is focused on creating presentations but can incorporate different media types inside your slides, enhancing the overall presentation experience.

AI Features: Decktopus allows users to create presentations from scratch using AI or based on a PDF document. When starting from scratch, the tool prompts you for the topic, audience, and presentation goal, offering several options to choose from. It then suggests an outline, which you can modify or use as is, followed by a selection of presentation styles. Users can manually edit their presentations using a convenient drag-and-drop editor or seek further assistance from an embedded AI assistant, which can help generate images from text prompts, assist with copywriting, and create personalized notes.

Quality: The designs produced by Decktopus are aesthetically pleasing and easily changeable. However, like other generative AI tools, its AI features do not always work reliably, often necessitating additional manual adjustments.

Flexibility: Presentations in Decktopus are easy to edit and customize. Refining text, whether manually or using AI, works smoothly. However, the tool does not allow for editing generated images, requiring the use of other tools for this purpose.

Pricing: The Pro plan for individuals costs $14.99 per month if billed monthly or $9.99 per month if billed annually. The Business plan is priced at $49.99 per month if billed monthly and $34.99 per month if billed annually. Unfortunately, there is no trial period offered.

Overall, Decktopus provides a powerful and flexible solution for creating presentations, although its AI features may require some manual intervention to achieve the desired results.

Midjourney

Midjourney is arguably one of the best AI image generation solutions available. While it won’t create presentations, diagrams, or complex posters with lots of text, it’s an excellent choice for generating images for articles, blog posts, or social media.

Applications: Midjourney can be used to generate all kinds of images, including photorealistic images, artwork, illustrations, logos, and more. Its versatility makes it suitable for a variety of visual content needs.

AI Features: At its core, Midjourney is powered entirely by AI. Users can generate images using text prompts and then edit them by changing the aspect ratio, extending them in any direction, zooming out, or replacing certain objects within the image. This AI-driven approach offers a dynamic and creative way to produce high-quality visuals.

Quality: Midjourney is capable of generating very high-quality images. However, learning how to write effective prompts may take some time to achieve the best outcomes. The tool may not always follow instructions precisely, and random or weird objects can occasionally appear in the images. Despite this, for non-specific needs, Midjourney can produce impressive images to illustrate your content, offering a viable alternative to buying stock images.

Flexibility: The tool provides a rich set of options for processing and editing generated images. However, the prompt-guided editing process can be somewhat stubborn, often requiring significant time to achieve the desired results. This can be a challenge for users seeking precise control over their image outputs.

Pricing: Midjourney offers a range of plans based on the number of images you want to generate per month. Prices range from $10 to $120 per month if billed monthly, and from $8 to $96 per month if billed annually. This variety allows users to choose a plan that best fits their usage needs and budget.

Overall, Midjourney stands out for its ability to create high-quality images through AI, making it a powerful tool for enhancing visual content. However, it has some drawbacks, such as not always precisely following the prompt and occasionally generating weird objects within the images. Despite these limitations, Midjourney remains a valuable resource for producing impressive visuals.

Conclusion: Elevating Your Creative Workflow with AI

AI-powered design and presentation tools are redefining the boundaries of creativity and productivity. From Canva’s user-friendly templates and AI enhancements to Adobe Photoshop’s powerful, professional-grade capabilities, these tools offer diverse solutions to meet your design needs. Beautiful.ai and Decktopus simplify the creation of polished presentations, while Midjourney excels in generating high-quality images.

Each tool brings unique strengths and some limitations, but together they demonstrate the remarkable potential of AI in the creative industry. Whether you’re a beginner looking for easy-to-use design options or a professional seeking advanced features, these AI tools can significantly enhance your workflow. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect even more innovative features that will further streamline and elevate the design process.

Enjoy this article? Sign up for more AI updates.

We’ll let you know when we release more summary articles like this one.

The post From Canva to Midjourney: Exploring AI’s Impact on Visual Content Creation appeared first on TOPBOTS.

A combined team of roboticists from MIT and the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new type of remote control for robots called Open-TeleVision that allows for VR-type control. The team has posted a paper describing their robot system on the arXiv preprint server. They also posted videos on YouTube showing the robot and its pilot in action.

With VC support from General Catalyst, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, and Samsung Next, Standard Bots is bringing to market software and hardware engineered for next-gen AI robotics arms, serving renowned organizations such as NASA

Four-legged animals are innately capable of agile and adaptable movements, which allow them to move on a wide range of terrains. Over the past decades, roboticists worldwide have been trying to effectively reproduce these movements in quadrupedal (i.e., four-legged) robots.

A new study finds that AI enhances creativity by boosting the novelty of story ideas as well as the 'usefulness' of stories -- their ability to engage the target audience and potential for publication. However, AI was not judged to enhance the work produced by more creative writers and the study also warns that while AI may enhance individual creativity it may also result in a loss of collective novelty, as AI-assisted stories were found to contain more similarities to each other and were less varied and diverse.

Scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia have developed a tiny "claw machine" that is able to pick up and drop a marble-sized ball in response to exposure to chemical vapors.

Farmers and agricultural enterprises are embracing robotic solutions to optimize crop production while reducing environmental impact. These technologies enable precision agriculture, efficient resource utilization, and eco-friendly farming.

A team of roboticists and AI specialists at Google's DeepMind have demonstrated a robot capable of giving context-based guided tours around its offices. They have posted a paper describing their work, along with demonstration videos, on the arXiv preprint server.

Says Microsoft: We’re going to help ourselves to your Web content, thank you

Apparently, when it comes to copyright law, Microsoft never got the memo.

According to Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s CEO of AI, as reported by writer Sean Endicott: “With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been that it is fair use.

“Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding.”

The only currently ‘in-dispute’ exception to Microsoft’s ‘I’ll-help-myself, thanks’ perspective, according to Suleyman, are Web sites and publishers that explicitly state on their Web sites “do not scrape or crawl me for any other reason than indexing me so that other people can find that content.”

And according to Suleyman, even that warning is a ‘gray area’ that he believes will wind up in the courts.

Really?

That’s news to me.

Perhaps Sulyman should visit the U.S. Copyright Office on the Web, whose history domain documents that the first copyright law was enacted in the U.S. in 1790.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Snapshot on the Big Four in AI Writing: Writers looking for the latest on AI writing from the Big Four — OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Facebook parent Meta — can check-out this latest update.

The piece offers perspectives on the tech from a number of digitally oriented businesses based in India.

Observes Sajal Gupta, chief executive, Kiaos Marketing, a digital marketing consultancy: “The key is to integrate AI so seamlessly into your toolkit that it appears as natural as it possibly can.

“From a consumer’s perspective, if the tools are implemented well, the experience will only improve.”

*Google Adding It’s New AI to Gmail, Other Products: Many Gmail users already have access to new generative AI from Google, which they can use for auto-writing text, summarizing an email thread, searching through their inbox using AI — and more.

Powered by Google’s Gemini AI engine, the new feature can be found on Gmail’s side panel and can be activated with a click.

Roll-out of the new AI — which will also be popping up in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive — should be complete by the close of July

*Microsoft Adds ChatGPT Competitor to its AI Offerings: Making good on its commitment to featuring a wide spectrum of AI services throughout its product line, Microsoft is integrating Writesonic into its Azure cloud infrastructure.

The ChatGPT competitor — which specializes in content creation and search engine optimization — gets to showcase its chops to businesses already using Azure.

*ChatGPT Competitor Gets an Upgrade: AI writing pioneer Writer has just launched an upgrade capable of ingesting and analyzing a document of up to 10 million words.

Observes Deanna Dong, product marketing lead, Writer: “We know that enterprises need to analyze very long files, work with long research papers, or documentation. It’s a huge use case for them.”

Also new with the upgrade is added transparency into what Writer’s AI is going.

Observes writer Michael Nunez: “The system shows users the steps the AI takes — including how it breaks down queries into sub-questions and which specific data sources it references.”

*Multi-Faceted AI Copywriter for Marketing Released: Given that automated AI writing is essentially a commodity now, startups specializing in AI marketing tools are increasingly coming out with offerings that do much more.

Singapore-based Addlly AI is no exception.

The company just released a beefed-up automated writing tool that is able to reference brand data — and incorporate analytical insights gleaned from social listening –as it creates copy for marketers.

Observes Tina Chopra, CEO, Addlly AI: “By merging cutting-edge AI technology with valuable data insights, we help businesses produce content that’s not just fast and more targeted, but also highly relevant and impactful.”

*New AI-Automated Email Service Launches: CallSine is offering a new email marketing service that uses customer data to auto-generate highly personalized email marketing pitches.

Observes Logan Kelly, president, CallSine: “Unlike generic AI tools, we build a detailed knowledge base about your company and prospects.

“This allows us to use AI to generate truly relevant and tailored messaging beyond acknowledging a prospect’s standard profile information.”

*New AI-for-Lawyers Startup Wins a Trial Run: Legal tech AI service Leya — which offers lawyers auto-writing of draft contracts and similar AI services — has scored a tryout with law firm Bird & Bird.

Observes Karen Jacks, chief technology officer, Bird & Bird, added: “This proof of concept trial with Leya is the latest addition to our GenAI toolkit and will be an important part of our five-year strategy as we guide organizations through a world shaped by technology, innovation and regulation, and driving the transformation of legal services delivery.”

*Growing Pains: Another Unsupervised AI News Site Goes Rogue: When will they learn?

Tennis tournament Wimbeldon became the latest organization to realize that while AI auto-written content sure is convenient — it still needs human supervision right now.

Wimbledon’s blunder: It’s AI-powered ‘Catch-Me-Up’ news services — designed to auto-write pre-and-post-match player profiles with AI-generated stories and analysis — began spitting-out error-ridden copy on its first day of use.

Observes writer Emine Sinmaz: “The new offering on Wimbledon’s app and website described the former US Open champion Emma Raducanu as the British No 1, although she is the No 3. The 21-year-old who grew up in Bromley was also described as having won 11 matches so far this year, when she has had 14 triumphs.

“It also described a clash between 35-year-old Zhang Shuai, a two-time doubles grand slam champion from China who is on a losing streak, and Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, 27, as an “eagerly anticipated encounter between two up-and-coming players.”

As many have uttered down through the ages: Trust — by verify.

*AI Big Picture: ChatGPT Maker Gets Real About AI and the Military: AI users concerned that increasing breakthoughs in AI may be falling into the wrong hands should be cheered by the appointment of Paul M. Nakasone — a former director of the U.S. National Security Agency — to the board of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Granted, many ‘effective altruists’ are sure to decry the new presence of a military perspective on AI’s board.

But there are plenty of others who believe the U.S. needs to continually ‘what-if’ how AI may be used nefariously and how to protect against it — given that there are plenty of rogue nations already deeply engaged in the pursuit.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Sticky Fingers appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

A motorless, flexible, waterproof prosthetic foot inspired by the anatomy of the human extremity is the new SoftFoot Pro bionic foot prototype, designed by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa. Its design is unique on an international level and aims to serve both as a flexible technological prosthesis for people with limb-loss and as a solution for the humanoid robots of the future.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have trained a humanoid robot to effortlessly learn and perform a variety of expressive movements, including simple dance routines and gestures like waving, high-fiving and hugging, all while maintaining a steady gait on diverse terrains.