Everything announced on Facebook F8 2016 Conference

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference is one of the biggest events of the year, especially given how social media is changing our lives in significant ways. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, delivered a keynote speech yesterday which showcased Facebook’s vision of the future. He also listed how Facebook is expanding vigorously in other tech fields as well.

Zuckerberg’s F8 2016 keynote was mostly about Facebook’s future and some customer products. Bots took center stage just like at the Microsoft’s developer conference that was held recently. This was followed by improvements in some customer products, new Facebook features and some new tech coming from the world’s biggest social network.

Lets take a look at what Facebook is bringing for its users down the road.

Messenger Gets a Bot Platform

Facebook is going with bots after many of its competitors did so. Telegram, WeChat, Kik offer it already and Skype just got it. Now its Messenger’s turn to incorporate AI-powered bots for its 900 million users. The company took its sweet time before launching the feature. Even now, it’ll be offered with the newly launched Messenger Beta platform.

The developer platform will let businesses, including news companies, create bots which can interact with Messenger users. Bots can send and receive text, images, buttons, bubbles and calls. Facebook showed off a CNN messenger bot which was capable of reading stories, getting summaries and offered an “Ask CNN” command.

Zuckerberg says the app will learn from your actions and personalise its algorithms to evolve with time.

Facebook Bot Engine

The social network announced the beta launch of Bot Engine, a tool which lets developers teach chatbots what to say in specific situations. Developers can use the Bot Engine along with the Send/Receive API to build Messenger bots. The technology comes from the Messenger’s Wit.AI team.

Facebook Live Stream

Facebook Live is the company’s answer to Meerkat and Periscope. It lets users stream live videos to the social network which, the company hopes, will play a big role in its next growth phase. Live API now supports third-party hardware allowing people to use separate cameras to live stream content. The company has partnered with different manufacturers to build on it and release its own products within the next five years.

Internet Beaming Satellite

During F8 2016, Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s Free Basics program will soon launch its first satellite into orbit in the next few months. According to him, the free internet program is helping more than 25 million people around the world.

Facebook has also announced a Free Basics simulator which lets developers test out how their websites would look like when accessed using Free Basics.

360 Degree VR Camera

The social network just released its Oculus Rift VR headset a few weeks ago. However, it’s not stopping there. Facebook just revealed its new open-source 360-degree camera which can capture some great quality VR content. The camera boasts 17 cameras and can record 8K video at 60 frames per second. The built-in software automatically stitches the videos together.

Being open-source, developers can make their own hardware and software based on the available designs and code.

Instant Articles for Everyone

Facebook announced a couple of months ago that it was bringing Instant Articles to everyone. WordPress will be getting a plugin which will let publishers export their content to the social network. Instant Articles will be added to user feeds directly and increase reader interactions as a result.

Account Kit

The social network announced a new software called the Account Kit. Third-party developers can add it to apps, letting their users to sign in to connect with just their phone number or email address – no passwords needed.

Save To Facebook

Save to Facebook will be a new addition to the social network’s portfolio. It will let users add content to a list of things to view later. The button will be visible on websites, and work like Pinterest, Pocket or Digg.

Share Quotes Easily

Sharing quotable quotes have become quite popular on Facebook. That’s why the company is bringing a new method that will let users clip quotes they like on the web (or e-books) and share them on Facebook in a neat and clean way.

Mark’s View on VR and AR

The founder of Facebook says that virtual reality and augmented reality of the future will be accessible using a gadget not so different from a common pair of glasses. The glasses have been announced as a part of Facebook’s 10 year plan for the future. AR and VR are expected to grow to a $120 billion market by 2020.

Vine for Profile Videos

Facebook is making it much easier for people to replace their profile pictures with profile videos. The ability to upload a 7 second video instead of still pictures has been available since last year. However, users will now be able to upload videos using third-party apps.

Vine and Boomerang will be the first two partners with support for the profile video feature on Facebook.

Facebook and WhatsApp Beat Regular SMS

People use Facebook and WhatsApp to send 60 billion messages every single day, three times more than regular SMS. The figure is a clear indication of the world moving towards online methods of communication rather than the offline ones.

So there you have it folks. Which of these announcements are you excited about? Let us know in the comments below.

Facebook uses Artificial Intelligence to Describe Facebook for Blind Users

Today the Internet has become dominated by images, and it’s the major feature that got Facebook to a Billion daily users.

We can not imagine Facebook without photos, but for Millions of blind and visually impaired people, Facebook without photos has been the reality since its launch.

But not now! Facebook has launched a system, dubbed Automatic Alternative Text, which describes the contents of pictures by telling blind and visually-impaired users what appears in them.

Blind and visually-impaired people use sophisticated navigation software known as screen readers to make their computers usable. The software turns the contents of the screen into speech, but it can't "read" pictures.

However, Facebook's Automatic Alternative Text or AAT uses object recognition technology that can decode and describe photos uploaded to the social network site using artificial intelligence and then provide them in a form that can be readable by a screen reader.

Video Demonstration

ATT tool, led by Facebook's 5-year-old accessibility team, has already made its way to iOS devices and would soon be available for Android and the Web as well.

Facebook says its AAT tool The more images it scans, the more sophisticated the software will become. While still in its early stages, the AAT technology can reliably identify objects and activities in categories including:

• Appearance - baby, eyeglasses, smiling, beard, jewellery, shoes and selfie
• Environment - outdoor, sky, grass, tree, mountain, snow, ocean, beach, water, wave, sun
• Food - pizza, ice cream, dessert, sushi, coffee
• Transport - aeroplane, train, bus, boat, car, motorcycle, bicycle, road
• Sports - tennis, basketball, baseball, golf, swimming, stadium

The move by the social network giant is a bigger step forward for blind and visually-impaired users, although it only works in English at the current.

So in order to see the AAT technology in action for yourself, iOS users using iOS’s built-in screen reader can Go to Settings → General → Accessibility, and activate VoiceOver.

The company will soon bring the new functionality to other mobile platforms as well as languages. You can see the video demonstration to know how AAT tool works for someone using a screen reader.

Haris Aziz Listed Among Top 10 Upcoming AI Researchers

A Pakistani researcher, Haris Aziz, has managed to get his name in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering’s (IEEE) “AI’s 10 to Watch”. The list was published in IEEE’s Intelligent System’s Magazine. 

According to the IEEE’s official statement, “AI’s 10 to Watch” acknowledges the top 10 researchers and professionals in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI’s 10 to Watch

The list features young scientists from across the globe. The criteria to be named in the list requires the candidates to have completed their doctoral degree (Ph.D) within the past five years. The candidates should also have worked and made notable contributions to AI research. IEEE Intelligent Systems publishes the list after every two years and Haris Aziz was featured in the Jan-Feb edition of the 2016 issue.

A Profile of Haris Aziz

Haris graduated with a BSc (Honours) in 2003 from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He completed his degree in Computer Science from LUMS. After that, Haris went to the UK and received a degree in MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science from the University of Oxford. The former LUMS student finally completed his Ph.D in Computer Sciences from the University of Warwick, UK.

The Pakistani scientist currently works as a senior researcher at Data61, one of Australia’s largest data innovation companies. He’s a conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney as well.

Haris Aziz was recognized for his research in the field related to computational social choice, an intersection between artificial intelligence and economics. His work consisted of design of preference aggregation algorithms, models and algorithms for cost allocation, mechanics for multi-agent resource allocation, and team formation using tools from cooperative game theory.

If IEEE’s list of emerging scientists in artificial intelligence proves correct, these 10 scientists and researchers could make a noticeable impact in the field over the coming few years.