Now, Cognixion is bringing its AI communication app to the Vision Pro, which Forsland says has more functionality than the purpose-built Axon-R. “The Vision Pro gives you all of your apps, the app store, everything you want to do,” he says.

Apple opened the door to BCI integration in May, when it announced a new protocol to allow users with severe mobility disabilities to control the iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro without physical movement. Another BCI company, Synchron, whose implant is inserted into a blood vessel adjacent to the brain, has also integrated its system with the Vision Pro. (Apple is not known to be developing its own BCI)

In Cognixion’s trial, the company has swapped out Apple’s headband for its own, which is embedded with six electroencephalographic, or EEG, sensors. These collect information from the brain’s visual and parietal cortex, located at the back of the head. Specifically, Cognixion’s system identifies visual fixation signals, which occur when a person is maintaining their gaze on an object. This allows users to select from a menu of options in the interface using mental attention alone. A neural computing pack worn at the hip processes brain data outside of the Vision Pro.

“The philosophy of our approach is around reducing the amount of burden that is being generated by the person’s communication needs,” says Chris Ullrich, Cognixion’s chief technology officer.

Current communication tools can help but aren’t ideal. For instance, low-tech handheld letterboards allow patients to look at certain letters, words, or pictures so that a caregiver can guess their meaning, but they’re time-consuming to use. And eye tracking technology is still expensive and not always reliable.

“We actually build an AI for each individual participant that is customized with their history of speaking, their style of their humor, anything they’ve written, anything they’ve said, that we can gather. We crunch all that down into something that is a user proxy,” Ullrich says.

Amazon on Tuesday unveiled the latest generation of connected products, featuring enhanced artificial intelligence capabilities designed to make interactions with AI more frequent and natural.

Nearly 20 years after the launch of the Kindle e-reader, the Seattle-based online retail giant now offers a family of connected devices, from the Echo smart speaker to the Ring doorbell and Fire TV.

Amazon now aims to multiply their capabilities through AI, but wants to use it “without getting in the way,” said Panos Panay, head of devices and services, during a New York presentation.

The company had already made a major move into AI enhancements with the February launch of Alexa+, an upgraded version of the Alexa voice assistant.

Amazon’s ambition, like that of competitors Google, LG and Samsung, is to become the connected home nerve center.

But the sector has struggled to deliver on the promise of a fully connected home, with consumers forced to choose from competing ecosystems or left struggling with technology that fails to deliver on expectations.

“Alexa, what happened around the house today?” a user asks in a demonstration video. The smart assistant explains that the children walked the dog, a package was delivered and raccoons rummaged through the trash—using images captured by Ring or Blink cameras.

Has your dog run away? After the escape is reported on the Ring app, other Amazon doorbells in the neighborhood can detect if the animal passes by and alert you.

With the Kindle Scribe, readers can ask generative AI for a book summary to refresh their memory or ask questions about a character.

As for connected television, viewers can verbally request to see a scene from their favorite movie or receive a summary of a football game they missed.

Amazon believes in “ambient” AI, in Panay’s words, which “lives naturally in the products themselves.”

The generative AI revolution is playing out on both software and physical interfaces, with major tech players seeking to determine which product will prevail—smartphone, smart glasses, earbuds or speakers.

OpenAI is working on a new kind of device, while Meta is betting on glasses and Apple on earbuds.

© 2025 AFP

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India’s “late entry” into the global semiconductor race, he pinned hopes on pioneers such as Vellayan Subbiah to create a chip innovation hub.

The chairman of CG Power, who oversees a newly commissioned semiconductor facility in western India, is seen as one of the early domestic champions of this strategic sector in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

“There has been more alignment between the government, policymakers, and business than I’ve ever seen in my working history,” Subbiah, 56, told AFP.

“There’s an understanding of where India needs to go, and the importance of having our own manufacturing.”

As US President Donald Trump shakes global trade with tariffs and hard-nosed transactionalism, Modi has doubled down on self-reliance in critical technologies.

New Delhi, which flagged its push in 2021, has this year approved 10 semiconductor projects worth about $18 billion in total, including two 3-nanometer design plants, among the most advanced.

Commercial production is slated to begin by the end of the year, with the market forecast to jump from $38 billion in 2023 to nearly $100 billion by 2030.

Subbiah, whose CG Power is one of India’s leading conglomerates, predicts “over $100 billion, if not more”, will flow into the industry across the value chain in the next five to seven years.

He said “symbiotic” public-private partnerships were “very exciting”.

‘Ability to accelerate’

Chips are viewed as key to growth and a source of geopolitical clout.

India says it wants to build a “complete ecosystem”, and break the global supply chain dominance by a few regions.

The government has courted homegrown giants such as Tata, alongside foreign players like Micron, to push design, manufacturing and packaging in joint ventures.

CG Semi, a joint venture with CG Power, plans to invest nearly $900 million in two assembly and test plants, as well as to push its design company.

“We are looking to design chips, so that we can own the (intellectual property) too—which is very important for India,” said Subbiah, a civil engineer by training with an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Still, critics say India is decades late starting, and remains far behind chip leaders in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Japan and China.

“First we have to recognize there is a gap,” Subbiah said, noting Taiwan’s TSMC has a 35-year head start.

But he insists India’s scale and talent pool—the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people—gives it “a significant ability to accelerate” production.

‘More complicated’

Modi this month said that “20% of the global talent in semiconductor design comes from India”.

But wooing talent who sought opportunities abroad back to India remains a challenge, even after Trump’s restrictions on the H-1B skilled worker visa program, heavily used by Indians.

India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, still struggles with bureaucratic inertia and a lack of cutting-edge opportunities.

Subbiah acknowledged that his own venture employs about 75 expatriates.

“That’s not the way we want to grow. We want to grow with Indians,” he said, calling for policies to lure back overseas talent. “How do we bring these people back?”

But the path is tougher than in 2021, when New Delhi first pushed for chip self-sufficiency.

While India has secured semiconductor and AI investment pledges from partners such as Japan—which pledged $68 billion in August—Trump is expected to be less willing than past US leaders to back ventures that build Indian capacity.

“The geopolitical situation overall has become more complicated,” Subbiah said.

Yet he remains upbeat for the long run.

“There are only going to be two really low-cost ecosystems in the world: one is China, and the other is going to be India,” he said.

“You’re going to see the center of gravity move towards these ecosystems, if you start thinking about a 25-30 year vision”.

© 2025 AFP