Appy Pie has announced the alpha launch of AppyLM, an AI solution that enables developers to create native mobile apps without any prior experience with coding. AppyLM is the first and only large language model that can turn any text input into native mobile app code in technologies such as Swift and Kotlin offering a revolutionary approach to app development. Appy Pie AI, the AI arm of Appy Pie aims to transform and mark new beginnings in the app development industry with AppyLM.

AppyLM works by using a proprietary large language model (LLM) powered by a strong algorithm that has been trained on a huge corpus of text and code data. The large language model is a type of artificial intelligence that can understand natural language and generate code that matches the user's text or voice inputs. AppyLM takes the user's intent and converts it into an app description that specifies the features, design, and functionality of the app to which AppyLM generates native mobile app code for Android or iOS platforms.

Building native mobile apps traditionally required advanced coding skills and a deep knowledge of programming languages. However, AppyLM's simple and conversational interface eliminates these barriers, enabling users of all skill levels to create powerful and professional applications. With AppyLLM developers can simplify the app development process, speed up the launch, and deliver apps that satisfy the modern user's expectations.

"We are thrilled to introduce AppyLM to the world," said Mr. Abhinav Girdhar, CEO of Appy Pie AI. "With this proprietary large language model, we are revolutionizing the way native mobile apps are created. AppyLM empowers users to effortlessly generate complex code structures, saving them valuable time and effort. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, we are democratizing app development and making it accessible to a larger audience."

AppyLM is transforming the app development industry, offering a fast, easy, and affordable way to create professional and reliable mobile applications. It is also compatible with Appy Pie's other products, such as App Builder and Chatbot Builder, which offers a wide range of features and functionalities to enhance the app experience through integration. Join as an early adopter of AppyLM and help us make it better with your insights.

Origination has become of even greater strategic importance to Netflix as it builds its worldwide footprint and faces competition from the owners of the biggest content catalogs in the world (US studios) and deeply entrenched local players. New analysis from Omdia of PlumResearch data reveals the importance of originals in the US and other key Netflix markets.

In the US, 35.6% of total hours watched in the first three months of 2023 were Netflix originals. The US was its biggest market, with a total of 14.8 billion hours streamed in 1Q 2023. Originals accounted for the largest share of total hours watched in Poland - just under 40%. At the other end of the scale were Japan (20.6%) and South Korea (25.4%).

Although these percentages appear to be low, considering the massive investments Netflix has made in original content, Omdia estimates that last year the vast majority of Netflix originals were produced in the US: 403 titles out of a total 935 titles launched in 2022.

The analysis of viewing of local Netflix originals (i.e., originals produced in the country in question) offers a noticeably different perspective of the streamer's success with local production. Out of all original hours watched in South Korea, local titles accounted for nearly 68%. The US also had a high percentage of 61.4%, and both countries were very far ahead of the next placed country, Japan. Viewing of German originals in Germany was just 2.7%.

"Given its increasing emphasis on originals and heavy investment, the share of viewing actually going to these titles seems surprisingly low," said Tim Westcott, Senior Principal Analyst at Omdia. "The reasons for this could include: the continuing strong performance of certain non-original content, especially theatrical movies but also some TV series that have been acquired by Netflix. The Harry Potter movies and TV series like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Rick and Morty feature among the top titles in other countries like Italy and Germany."

"Another reason is the depth of catalog: Netflix has been originating since 2012, but still does not have the volume of Walt Disney, WB Discovery or Paramount."

Silent Push, an early detection-focused enterprise threat intelligence company, has taken on five veteran industry executives to accelerate sales and growth, following a $10 million investment led by Ten Eleven Ventures.

Silent Push, an early detection-focused enterprise threat intelligence company, has taken on five veteran industry executives to accelerate sales and growth, following a $10 million investment led by Ten Eleven Ventures.

Joining Ken Bagnall (CEO) and John Jensen (CTO) on the Silent Push Board are Frank Verdecanna, former CFO of Mandiant (now Google Cloud), Tim Dawson, Group Chief Information Security Officer at UBS, and Dave Palmer, General Partner at Ten Eleven Ventures, who has over a decade of experience in government intelligence operations, including at UK intelligence agencies GCHQ and MI5, and was one of the founders of AI cybersecurity company Darktrace.

Other key appointments include Chief Marketing Officer Phil Montgomery, former General Manager for Security Go-To-Market at Microsoft, and Chief Revenue Officer David Troha, former Chief Revenue Officer at Advintel.

Ken Bagnall, CEO of Silent Push, said, “It’s exciting times at Silent Push. Our customer base is expanding, our research was recently referenced in a CISA Cybersecurity Advisory report, we’ve secured our second round of seed funding, and our team is growing. Populating our board and executive team with globally renowned cybersecurity executives, adds a wealth of industry knowledge and priceless commercial insight. The collective expertise, insight and industry experience we are adding to the company will be a huge boost. The whole team is perfectly poised to take Silent Push to the next level.”

The Amazon A+ Content Builder and Global Amazon API empower Productsup customers to tailor product content more efficiently and expand their consumer reach in the Amazon store

Productsup, the leading Product-to-Consumer (P2C) software company, has announced an advanced set of features within its platform that enable businesses to further enhance product listings in the Amazon store. The tools, Amazon A+ Content Builder and Global Amazon API, provide Amazon sellers with full control over their product content to create a compelling brand story while scaling their operations globally.

“Selling in the Amazon store is a powerful channel for many businesses. It gives brands of all sizes and from any region in the world access to one of the largest global consumer bases, while being backed by a reliable market leader,” said Koen Looijmans, Executive Vice President of Retail at Productsup. “But until now, Amazon sellers have had to rely on numerous and disparate tools to successfully manage their brand across countries and categories. We’re excited to offer the capabilities companies have been waiting for to take their Amazon operations to new heights.”

Many global brands rely on Productsup to maximize their sales in the Amazon store. With these platform features, Productsup customers can create high-impact, error-free product listings across all of Amazon’s active stores:

• Amazon A+ Content Builder

The Amazon A+ Content Builder is a tool that enables businesses to easily create and export A+ Content for their products on Amazon directly from the Productsup platform. Amazon introduced A+ Content to help brands enrich their product descriptions and page details with enhanced images and video content to share their brand's story. Now with Productsup’s new tool, Amazon sellers can customize their A+ Content stories from predefined dynamic templates that meet Amazon’s requirements. Not only does this make it easier to create unique and engaging product stories that meet the specific needs of each target audience, but it also allows businesses to test and analyze various product titles, descriptions, and images to achieve higher conversion rates and increase Amazon search rankings.

• Global Amazon API

The Global Amazon API allows businesses to create and publish product content on the Amazon Seller Central and Vendor Central in all countries where Amazon is present. The feature breaks down barriers for brands looking to make their products available in new markets by simplifying and accelerating the process of tailoring product information for individual countries. In addition to customizing listings to fit cultural differences, such as translations to various languages, Amazon has unique product content requirements for each country it’s active in. Using the Global Amazon API, Productsup customers ensure their product pages meet the standards of both Amazon and the specific audience of consumers to scale faster and grow international sales.

• Atento agrees to term sheet with certain major financial stakeholders for at least $30 million of new financing in the near term and pathway to restructuring support agreement 

• Term sheet provides for additional $79 million upon implementation of a comprehensive restructuring for Atento to execute its transformation plan and drive growth

Atento S.A., one of the world's largest customer relationship management and business process outsourcing (CRM / BPO) service providers and an industry leader in Latin America, reports on progress in the previously announced negotiations with certain key stakeholders for a transaction involving a recapitalization and deleveraging of Atento's balance sheet.

Atento and certain members of an ad hoc group of holders of Atento's senior secured notes have agreed a term sheet for a new interim financing of at least $30 million and a comprehensive restructuring of its balance sheet that will significantly delever the group. The term sheet includes $79 million of additional capital in connection with the comprehensive restructuring. The parties further intend for the Company's leverage to be significantly reduced at the culmination of this process.

The new financing represents sufficient capital through to implementation of a holistic restructuring, and certain of the parties have agreed on a path to enter into a restructuring support agreement and definitive documentation on the financing within two weeks of execution of the term sheet. The Company looks forward to working with its financial stakeholders in the weeks ahead and is confident in achieving requisite support for the financial restructuring. New financing is subject to conditions including customer due diligence, and the grant of security interests.

This term sheet builds on Atento's prior announcement that the Company has been negotiating a comprehensive restructuring of funded and financial debt on its balance sheet to position Atento to execute on its long-term strategic plan and to continue its focus on its leading service to clients. Atento will be better positioned after such a restructuring to serve its +400 blue chip clients across sixteen countries and support global operations for the more than 135,000 global Atento employees.

"This term sheet is a milestone for our business and represents our partners' belief in the underlying strength of Atento's competitive value proposition," said Dimitrius Oliveira, Chief Executive Officer of Atento. "As we continue to enhance the capabilities of our business operations, we also remain focused on continuing to deliver great customer experiences through the combination of innovation, advanced technologies and the human touch. We are immensely grateful to our employees, customers, vendors and key stakeholders who continue to stand by us throughout this process. With this new infusion of capital we look forward to accelerating our transformation and further strengthening our business for the long term."

Atento is represented in these discussions by Houlihan Lokey and FTI Consulting as financial advisors and Sidley Austin and Loyens & Loeff Luxembourg, as lead legal advisors. The ad hoc group of investors is represented by Rothschild & Co. as financial advisor and Hogan Lovells as lead legal advisor.

Only 13% of IT Pros Have Found Great Success with Automation; 44% Cite Poorly Designed Tools

Torii, creator of the Distributed SaaS Management Platform for IT professionals, today announced its newest report, “State of IT Automation: Breakthrough or Buzzkill?,” which reveals that many IT professionals have been burned by the promise of automation largely due to poorly designed tools (44% of respondents) and a lack of education surrounding solutions (64%). But even though only 13% of respondents have found great success with automation, 92% are still championing it within their organizations - a signal that many still see its potential to eliminate mundane work, deliver consistent, error-free results, and streamline operations.

According to Evanta, a Gartner company, CIOs cite that increasing efficiency and productivity are top priorities for 2023. To do this, IT teams are increasingly turning to AI and automation solutions. However, as Torii’s report shows, all the hype can lead to disillusionment and ultimately impact adoption.

“OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have ignited an intense interest in emerging AI tools that can streamline work and empower employees to do their jobs smarter and more effectively, and for good reason,” said Uri Haramati, CEO and co-founder of Torii. “However, as Torii’s report shows, automation and, ultimately, AI solutions, will be hard-pressed to cross the chasm until people feel they can truly trust and rely on them, easily integrate them into their daily work lives, and see that they make a profound difference. This is exactly why our SaaS management technology has intuitive automation baked into it, eliminating the learning curve and allowing IT to see meaningful impact from the start.”

Key findings from the report include:

• The need for speed? Not so much: IT pros value consistency (48%) and error reduction (27%) more than speed (21%) in automation. Although conventional wisdom says speed is important for accelerating operations, these contrary findings make sense. Speed without reliability can actually add more work than it saves. Going faster in the wrong direction will only result in more – and more severe – problems.
• Barriers to automation remain high: 64% of IT professionals cite a lack of tool education, and nearly half (44%) cite poorly designed automation tools. They are so stretched that they don’t have time to properly investigate automation solutions. And they’ve been burned in the past by false promises, so the incentive to find time isn’t there.
• Automation adoption is lagging: Automation technologies have been around for a long time, so it was surprising that less than half of respondents have fully automated appropriate tasks, and only 13% reported great success with automation. This speaks to the automation tools’ perceived inadequacy and time commitment that many require to gain real value from them.
• Ease of use is paramount: Over half (54%) of IT professionals prioritize ease of use over things like transparency, cost-savings, and productivity, when evaluating new automation software. If it’s not simple to use, it’s not worth the effort. After all, you want the tool to do the work for you, and not the other way around. That’s why IT pros want automation in the first place.

Methodology

Torii and the Gartner Peer Community queried 200 IT professionals, from CIOs and IT Directors to IT Managers, about how their organizations are currently using automation and the benefits and challenges of doing so. For additional survey findings and implications, access Torii’s complimentary “State of IT Automation” report for additional survey findings and implications.

The Platform, built using well-architected framework, enables clients to build, manage and consume generative AI solutions responsibly

LTIMindtree , a global technology consulting and digital solutions company, today launched Canvas.ai, an enterprise-ready generative AI platform designed to accelerate the concept-to-value journey for businesses using mindful AI principles.

Canvas.ai is among the first-of-its-kind platform designed to help enterprises jump start and scale generative AI capabilities, bolstering business innovation and engineering productivity. Leveraging well-architected framework and sound governance measures, Canvas.ai effectively manages proprietary and industry-specific data, while factoring its ethical use, sustainability, privacy and security. The platform-based architecture of Canvas.ai caters to the business requirements of three key personas – creators who build the generative AI solutions, admins who manage, and users who consume governed generative AI solutions.

Debashis Chatterjee, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at LTIMindtree said, "Generative AI is a seminal trend that is slating the next phase of autonomous enterprises. Through our 4E model of Educate, Experience, Explore and Employ, we remain invested in helping our clients adopt and adapt generative AI ways of working. We are happy to note that several global clients are already leveraging Canvas.ai to solve for unique business needs in their journey towards digital transformation and cutting-edge experience."

Nachiket Deshpande, Whole-Time Director and Chief Operating Officer at LTIMindtree said, "With Canvas.ai, clients gain access to LTIMindtree's partnership with leading Large Language Model (LLM) providers and ecosystem of proprietary accelerators, domain-specific solution and product offerings, and future-ready talent pool. This will help clients harness the power of Generative AI and build out solutions for data monetization, productivity co-pilots, and engineering frameworks. Furthermore, the platform-centric design of Canvas.ai makes it adept at facilitating standardization, while accommodating the upgrades to generative AI technology, promoting enterprise-wide efficiency and reducing infrastructure and operating costs in the long term as clients digitize their core businesses."

Canvas.ai guarantees up to 40-50% reduction in time and effort for app modernization and cloud migration programs.

"Rapid advancements in technology and pervasiveness of generative AI make it necessary for organizations to carefully weigh in the ethical ramifications of its adoption," said Jitendra Putcha, Global Head, Data, Analytics and AI at LTIMindtree. "With built-in features such as explainable AI and security-first approach, which serve as guardrails, Canvas.ai prevents the abuse of the technology. It can help organizations traverse data regulations, minimize unintended bias and ensure transparency across the business supply chain. It gives them the scope for mindful innovation and the resources to deploy generative AI responsibly."

Facteus, the industry leader in consumer credit and debit card transaction data in the Alternative Data industry, expands its strategic partnership with Databricks, the data and AI company, by making its data products available on the new Databricks Marketplace. Now, any Databricks customer wanting to use Facteus' consumer spending data products can integrate, ingest, trial, and discover them seamlessly.

"Incorporating Alternative Data into decision making and investment research is already a large commitment for our clients," said Jonathan Chin, Co-Founder, Head of Data & Growth Strategy at Facteus. "Databricks Marketplace provides a seamless and natural platform for users to discover the wealth of third-party DaaS data providers and their data assets at their fingertips."

Databricks Marketplace aligns with Facteus' mission to democratize data insights, access, and analysis, where customers can seamlessly integrate Facteus data sets on any cloud. With Databricks Marketplace, joint customers can also leverage Facteus' newly announced Mobius API, a generative AI and consumer transaction data tool suite, to transform natural questions into data queries and visualization.

Facteus' strategic partnership with Databricks has been driven by the mutual vision of expanding the usage of data by lowering the barriers to entry and overhead for customers. Both Facteus and Databricks see a future where Alternative Data coupled with data science workflows become commonplace for any data driven enterprise.

"As the growth of data science continues to proliferate into every industry, we see more and more abstraction away from lower value data preparation tasks and more demand for quality data sets," said Jay Bhankharia, CFA, Sr. Director of Data Partnerships at Databricks. "As a data provider to corporations and investment firms, Facteus recognizes the power that Databricks Marketplace provides by circumventing arduous discovery workflows and connecting data providers with data consumers effortlessly."