Releases

OpenAI released Universe, a software platform for training intelligent agents across games, websites, and applications.

AWS introduced a managed text-to-speech service with natural-sounding voices.

AWS introduced the conversational AI service built from the speech recognition and language understanding technology behind Alexa.

AWS introduced managed image analysis for object, scene and face detection.

Oracle introduced the infrastructure platform that became OCI, later forming the base for its managed AI services and GPU cloud.

Baidu launched its core AI technology engine and open-capability platform.

Scale launched the data infrastructure that became its core Data Engine, combining APIs, machine assistance, and human review to create high-quality training data.

Google publicly reveals the TPU, a custom accelerator designed to speed machine-learning workloads in its data centers.

Facebook introduced FBLearner Flow, its internal platform for managing the full lifecycle of machine-learning models.

OpenAI released the public beta of Gym, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement-learning algorithms.

The Pascal-based Tesla P100 accelerator debuted alongside DGX-1 for deep learning and HPC.

NVIDIA unveiled DGX-1, its first integrated deep-learning supercomputer.

Microsoft launches Cognitive Services APIs for adding vision, speech, language, knowledge and search capabilities to applications.

Baidu began building enterprise cloud services that evolved into Baidu AI Cloud.

IBM created Watson Health to apply data and cognitive-computing technologies across healthcare and life sciences.

AWS launched its first managed machine-learning service for building predictive models from data in S3, Redshift and RDS.

Microsoft makes Azure Machine Learning generally available as a cloud platform for creating and deploying predictive models.

Amazon introduced the Alexa voice service with the first Echo smart speaker.

Microsoft launches Xiaoice, a social conversational AI designed for long-term, emotionally engaging interactions.

Microsoft introduces Cortana as a personal digital assistant for Windows Phone, later expanding it across Windows and Microsoft 365.

Amazon launched a marketplace for human intelligence tasks that became widely used for labeling and evaluating machine-learning data.