AI News Roundup: SoftBank, Symbotic to offer AI warehouse-as-a-service

AI Business brings you the latest news and insights from across the AI world.

This week’s roundup covers SoftBank and Symbotic’s joint venture that will offer AI-powered automated warehouses as a service, TikTok rolled out text-only posts and Google offers free AI training, among other developments.

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SoftBank, Symbotic to offer AI warehouse-as-a-service

SoftBank and Symbotic, an AI-powered automation technology provider whose clients include Walmart, formed a joint venture to offer what they call warehouse-as-a-service.

Called GreenBox, the JV will use Symbotic’s robotics and AI technology to automate warehouses and lease this high-tech space to customers. The companies call it “cloud computing for the physical world.”

They said that these first-of-its-kind warehouses will house the “efficiency, SKU agility, scalability and density” of the Symbotic system, which will enable GreenBox to manage these single or multi-tenant facilities.

Both claim that this technology will enable clients to reduce their inventory and lower costs while raising SKU count and agility, “all without associated capital expenditures and operational complexity.”

SoftBank owns 65% of GreenBox and Symbotic owns the rest. They funded GreenBox with $100 million initially; the JV is expected to be self-funding afterwards. The service is scheduled to be operational in 2024.

New X (Twitter) rival: TikTok

TikTok will now let users write text-only posts, in a bid to compete with X (Twitter) and Meta’s Threads.

The new format will give creators space to showcase the “written creativity we've seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine,” according to a company blog post. “Text is the latest addition to options for content creation, allowing creators to share their stories, poems, recipes, and other written content.”

Users can add stickers, tags, hashtags, background colors and sound to their text posts.

Google offers free AI training in U.K.

Google is offering free digital training on AI to everyone in the U.K.

The search giant said its AI-focused New Fundamentals series will give people and businesses “practical skills and knowledge to capture the benefits of AI, whether it’s to save time, get a new job or grow their businesses.” The Federation of Small Businesses said just 2% of British small and medium-size businesses are using machine learning tools, according to Google.

The training consists of 10 modules focused on developing essential AI skills. Two modules have been launched with the rest coming soon:

Grow your productivity with AI

An introduction to the smartest ways AI tools can save you time. Learners will gain a clear understanding of what AI is, how AI already helps out in everyday products, what Large Language Models can do, and how to be much more productive with AI – from brainstorming new ideas, to writing code or reducing the burden of administrative tasks.

Understanding machine learning

Designed for small and medium-size business leaders, this course teaches the potential of machine learning to improve efficiency, reduce costs and drive growth. It covers ways to apply different ML models, when and how to invest and how to prepare data and resources data for a machine learning project.