Useful Sensors Launches AI-In-A-Box with NLP
Useful Sensors has launched AI-In-A-Box, a low-cost, off-the-shelf artificial intelligence module to enable natural language interaction with electronic devices, locally and privately, with no need for an account or internet connection.
AI-In-A-Box can answer queries and solve problems, but thanks to compression and acceleration technologies developed by Useful Sensors, the module hosts its LLM file locally, enabling its low-cost microprocessor to understand and respond instantly to spoken natural language queries or commands without reference to a data center.
Disconnected from the internet, the AI-In-A-Box module eliminates user concerns about privacy, snooping, or dependence on third-party cloud services.
"The AI-In-A-Box module contains an advanced model that the user can talk to naturally and with no network connection, account, or API calls. It offers the benefits of AI—an intuitive, natural way to control devices at home, answer queries or just have a chat with a natural-language avatar—without having to share any of your conversations or other data with a big tech company or a cloud service provider. At home, every conversation with the box stays within the user's four walls," said Pete Warden, founder and CEO of Useful Sensors, in a statement.
The AI-In-A-Box module offers natural language processing, answers questions, tells stories and jokes, and gives opinions on topics such as art or sports. But while these other tools require arrays of high performance and high-cost GPUs hosted in a data center, the AI-In-A-Box module contains a single, general-purpose Arm Cortex-A-class microprocessor running all AI operations. This means the module provides a bolt-on hardware and software platform with a natural voice-based user interface for any electronic product.
Other capabilities of the module include real-time closed captions of nearby conversations. Upgrades in development by Useful Sensors will add translations between English and other languages and the ability to use the box as a voice keyboard (speech-to-text function).