A team of researchers at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) yesterday unveiled artificial intelligence (AI) tools for making audio and visual materials for advertisements, saying it could help businesses save time and costs.
Online ads have become a part of daily life, but producing creative promotions are time-consuming, associate professor of computer science Wu Shan-hung (吳尚鴻) told a news conference in Taipei.
Through a government-funded program, the team spent two years developing AI tools that use deep-learning models and social media analysis to produce images with designated objects and context, he said.
The researchers helped AppFinca’s concentration training app Flora reach top ranking on the list of free apps in Taiwan on Apple’s App Store, outperforming Gmail and Google Drive, he said.
Liu Yi-wen (劉奕汶), an associate professor of electrical engineering, also develops tools for mimicking human voices to sing songs.
However, their tools still cannot create original melodies, and they need further research to avoid producing materials that might raise copyright issues, Liu said.
The tools are intended to improve the work efficiency of copywriters, but would not replace human writers who would still have to sign off on an ad, Wu said.
Although many start-ups have good products, they do not know how to market them, he said, adding that he first noticed this after teaching entrepreneurship classes.
The AI toots, he said, could help small and medium-sized businesses save money on ad development.
The team is in discussion with Asustek Computer, United Microelectronics and KKBOX, as well as startups, about technical cooperation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater