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Kore.ai Announces mParticle Partnership and Retail Assist Launch


Kore.ai, a conversational artificial intelligence and platform solutions company, is partnering with mParticle, provider of an AI-native customer data platform, to deliver an AI-first natural language processing (NLP)-based search engine and intelligent chatbots that personalize shopping experiences for retail customers.

The partnership will enable businesses with digital shopping interfaces to deploy NLP search assistants and intelligent chatbots powered with customer insights. Intelligent chatbots can be deployed on websites, mobile apps, and in-store kiosks to drive better personalization and improve efficiencies through natural language-based product discovery and search, placing orders and reorders, abandoned cart reminders, tracking and fulfillment of orders, pricing and promotions, returns, and self service support.

“Brands are increasingly realizing the power of personalization across the company, beyond marketing,” said mParticle Chief Product Officer Chee Chew, in a statement. “Conversational AI has made great advances in understanding what a customer says. With the full 360 customer profile data and AI data platform that mParticle brings to this partnership, we will help conversational AI get the right answer for each individual customer.”

“Digital marketplaces are discovering the transformative power of conversational AI in enhancing the shopping experience through personalized customer interactions and product recommendations,” said Kore.ai CEO and Founder Raj Koneru in a statement. “We are thrilled that Kore.ai and mParticle are joining forces to deliver personalized digital and voice chatbots that will provide an exceptional shopping experience to all customers, no matter their channel of choice.”

“Personalization can benefit consumers by helping them select the most suitable products, verify compatibility, and access coupons to drive loyalty leading to improved customer experience, increased revenue and reduced returns,” said Gopinath Polavarapu, Kore.ai’s senior vice president and general manager, in a statement. “mParticle plays a crucial role by providing one of the most comprehensive and efficient platforms for aggregating and managing customer data based on factors such as demographics, spending profiles, preferences and transaction histories. This partnership will help to enable personalized shopping experiences at scale, from search to purchase, and coupon redemption to returns.”

Kore.ai is also launching RetailAssist, a conversational commerce assistant solution for the retail industry. RetailAssist enables retail and ecommerce companies to modernize, scale, and transform operations by building competencies around self-service automation, personalization, omnichannel fulfillment, and 24/7 pre-/post-sales service and support. The solution also acts as an employee intelligent virtual assistant to help retailers with onboarding, day-to-day operations, and customer support.

The Kore.ai RetailAssist solution leverages language models like GPT-3, the technology behind ChatGPT, to help customers find the right products, get self-service support, check product compatibility, get the order status, returns, manage appointments in web and mobile apps and provide recommendations to customers based on their spend profile, demographics, geography, inventory availability, web and social profiles.

RetailAssist smart contact center automation helps automate voice and digital interactions for self-service and live assisted customer support operations in stores and contact centers while helping agents with their own intelligent virtual assistant for suggested responses, next-best actions, action fulfillment, and post-interaction wrap summaries.

The RetailAssist employee assistant is an AI-chatbot that informs workers about everything happening in the store, whether it is customers waiting on curbside, someone looking for help from an expert in the store, as well as enabling upselling and cross selling of products and services. It is also pre-trained to handle employees’ HR, administrative, IT, and operations-related queries and comes with out-of-the-box integrations with many retail enterprise applications.

“Personalization for web and mobile apps should be a top priority to transform online shopping experiences,” Polavarapu said. “Kore.ai has built an intelligent AI-native chatbot that allows consumers to search and discover products while simultaneously asking intricate questions to personalize the right products and services based on their customer profile, inventory status and promotions.”

“RetailAssist is one of the most comprehensive offerings, bringing together competencies that enable our retail clients to innovate and scale their digital self service use cases faster,” Koneru said. “With the ability to offer conversational intelligent virtual assistants that support the customer journey from start to finish, the solution empowers retailers to tap into the AI-powered conversational commerce today.”

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Apple announces biggest upgrade to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points





Apple announces biggest upgrade to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points – Latest News


Developers will also gain new flexibility to manage pricing globally

Apple today announced the most comprehensive upgrade to pricing capabilities since the App Store first launched, providing developers with 700 additional price points and new pricing tools that will make it easier to set prices per App Store country or region, manage foreign exchange rate changes, and more.

Since the App Store’s inception, its world-class commerce and payments system has empowered developers to conveniently set up and sell their products and services on a global scale. The App Store’s commerce and payments system offers developers an ever-expanding set of capabilities and tools to grow their businesses, from frictionless checkout and transparent invoicing for users to robust marketing tools, tax and fraud services, and refund management.

Pricing has been foundational to these capabilities, enabling developers to choose from a variety of business models, such as one-time purchases and multiple subscription types. These new pricing enhancements will be available for apps offering auto-renewable subscriptions starting today, and for all other apps and in-app purchases in spring 2023, giving all developers unprecedented flexibility and control to price their products in 45 currencies throughout 175 storefronts.

Under the updated App Store pricing system, all developers will have the ability to select from 900 price points, which is nearly 10 times the number of price points previously available for most apps. This includes 600 new price points to choose from, with an additional 100 higher price points available upon request. To provide developers around the world with even more flexibility, price points — which will start as low as $0.29 and, upon request, go up to $10,000 — will offer an enhanced selection of price points, increasing incrementally across price ranges (for example, every $0.10 up to $10; every $0.50 between $10 and $50; etc.). See the table below for details.

In each of the App Store’s 175 storefronts, developers will be able to leverage additional pricing conventions, including those that begin with two repeating digits (e.g., ₩110,000), and will be able to price products beyond $0.99 or €X.99 endings to incorporate rounded price endings (e.g., x.00 or x.90), which are particularly useful for managing bundles and annual plans.

Starting today, developers of subscription apps will also be able to manage currency and taxes across storefronts more effortlessly by choosing a local storefront they know best as the basis for automatically generating prices across the other 174 storefronts and 44 currencies. Developers will still be able to define prices per storefront if they wish. The pricing capability by storefront will expand to all other apps in spring 2023.

For developers distributing their apps around the world, the App Store’s global equalization tools have given them a simple and convenient way to manage pricing across international markets. Today’s enhancements expand upon these capabilities, allowing developers to keep their local currency constant in any storefront of their choice, even as foreign exchange and taxes fluctuate. This means, for example, a Japanese game developer who gets most of their business from Japanese customers can set their price for the Japan storefront, and have their prices outside of the country update as foreign exchange and tax rates change. All developers will also be able to define availability of in-app purchases by storefront.

Periodically, Apple updates prices in certain regions based on changes in taxes and foreign exchange rates. This is done using publicly available exchange rate information from financial data providers to help ensure prices for in-app purchases stay equalized across all storefronts. Currently, developers can adjust pricing at any time to react to tax and foreign currency adjustments. Coming in 2023, developers with paid apps and in-app purchases will be able to set local territory pricing, which will not be impacted by automatic price adjustments.

These newly announced tools, which will begin rolling out today and continue throughout 2023, will create even more flexibility for developers to price their products while staying approachable to the hundreds of millions of users Apple serves worldwide, and in turn help developers continue to thrive on the App Store.

Learn more about auto-renewable subscriptions

Learn about pricing for auto-renewable subscriptions



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Hall of Fame Village announces Jake Paul’s Betr as new mobile sports betting partner, ends previous mobile betting deal


CANTON, Ohio — The Hall of Fame Village has signed a 10-year deal with Betr, a company cofounded by Jake Paul, to create a sports gambling app associated with the resort.

It’s also cutting ties with Genesis Global Ltd., the sports-betting business that the resort in January had agreed to partner with for 10 years.

The Hall of Fame Village is one of 22 businesses that applied for “Type A” licenses under Ohio’s new sports gambling law, which would let them run a mobile sportsbook. The Ohio Casino Control Commission is reviewing applications.

The resort will share revenue with Betr and get limited equity in the company as part of the deal.

Betr was founded by Paul and Joey Levy, a veteran of the sports betting industry who co-founded Simplebet, which is focused on the technology behind “micro-betting.”

According to an announcement, Betr will focus mostly on micro-betting. It lets users bet on individual moments in a sporting event, like the next at-bat in a baseball game or a drive in a football game.

Paul, an entrepreneur, boxer and YouTube personality, grew up in Westlake.

The company will also have a media component that includes a show hosted by Paul where he speaks with top athletes.

“This partnership amplifies two of our key business verticals in gaming and media to further our strategic goal of continually creating new and unique sports content and experiences for our fans and guests to enjoy,” Michael Crawford, CEO of the resort, said in a news release. “Betr positions our company to obtain the necessary licenses to make a dramatic impact in the mobile betting space and will drive meaningful value for our stakeholders.”

Paul and Levy launched the new company a few days ago, telling Fox Business Betr is “sort of the TikTok-ification of sports betting.” The company is aiming for a younger audience with real-time betting and sports content.

Read more: Sports-themed village finally taking shape around Canton’s Pro Football Hall of Fame, but financing challenges remain

“Our differentiated product, combined with our sports media company built for the next generation of sports fans along with (Hall of Fame Village’s) strengths and access to unique content experiences in Ohio and throughout the country makes us confident this will be a successful partnership,” Levy said.

At the tail-end of the announcement, the Hall of Fame Village said the Betr deal “replaces the previous announced agreement with Genesis Global, Ltd.”

Companies that get a Type-A license are able to get two “skins” or vendor contracts, allowing one license to support two apps.

The resort has partnered with Rush Street Interactive to build a physical sportsbook at the resort, pending a license from the state.



Apple TV+ officially announces new ten-episode mystery ‘Sugar’




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After months of rumors, Apple has confirmed that “Sugar,” starring Colin Farrell, is coming to Apple TV+.

In a press release, Apple TV+ revealed that it has ordered the series “Sugar.” While the company has been relatively quiet on the details, in December 2021, it was described as a “contemporary take” on the detective genre.

The series will be directed by Academy Award nominee Fernando Meirelles. Farrell, who starred in “The Batman,” “True Detective,” and “The Lobster,” will also serve as executive producer.

It’s not yet clear when the series will debut.

This is the latest in a series of recent developments for the streaming platform. On Friday, June 3, Apple TV+ released a trailer of the comedy series “Loot.”

June 8 saw the news of Apple signing a deal agreeing to the production of an unnamed Formula One film starring Brad Pitt.



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