Medal, a video game clipping company, raised $13 million to $333 million. Horizons Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Peak6, and Arcadia Investment Partners provided funding.
Highlight, a contextual AI assistant cross-platform desktop app, was also released. Highlight records screen material and lets users ask a Large Language Model (LLM) context-based inquiry.
Henry Gladwyn, a partner at OMERS Ventures, suggested that LLMs might use Medal's core technology. Gladwyn said the corporation is leveraging its "clipping technology" for contextual LLM prompts.
Highlight is a desktop assistant that uses on-screen data. Google Now, Google Assistant, Apple Intelligence, and Windows Recall are examples of comparable efforts from Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Highlight is a floating desktop button that captures screen material and sends it to ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Perplexity.
How Medal's AI Assistant Works
According to TechCrunch, to get users started, the AI assistant pre-populates questions and captures them locally, without saving material. Medal is also creating a ChatGPT-like helper for the gadget.
Highlight can contextually process documents and system audio. Medal is developing a local meeting transcription app similar to Granola, Limitless, and Krisp.
Medal is also creating an open platform for developers to distribute their programs on Highlight, akin to the Mac Raycast launcher but for Windows and Mac.
Highlight is free, but de Witte aims to monetize it with an app store, paid subscriptions for specific apps, and local-first approaches. Developers may receive up to $30,000 and work with the Highlight team to grow the app ecosystem.
Have a glimpse of Highlight's feature in this video:
This development comes after the Chinese open-source desktop operating system OpenKylin updated its AI personal computers (PCs) to lessen dependence on foreign systems, as reported by TechTimes.
The operating system community said on WeChat that the new version, published on Sunday, supports on-device large language models (LLMs), includes an AI assistant, and translates text to graphics, SCMP reported.
The community said that AI presents new challenges and opportunities for infrastructure software to boost domestic operating system users' productivity and creativity.
Science and Technology Daily termed OpenKylin AI "secure, stable, and controllable." To reduce China's dependency on Western OSes, OpenKylin is Windows-like.
After decades of work, China launched openKylin in 2022 as a Windows and macOS alternative. Beijing's technical self-sufficiency efforts have risen due to US-China trade tensions.
Important government programs that use Kylin, the closed-source predecessor to openKylin, are gradually abandoning Windows and Intel CPUs. State-owned China Electronics subsidiary Kylinsoft and over ten other Chinese companies, including the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Centre, created the openKylin open-source community.
Over 3,876 developers and 271 companies contributed to openKylin 1.0, its first open-source desktop OS, released in July 2022. Despite these efforts, StatCounter projected that Windows would dominate 80% of the Chinese market in June 2023.
Microsoft's AI Assistant Remembers Everything You Do
In May, Microsoft launched its AI chatbot that remembers everything users do on their computers and helps them decide what to do next.
In response to Big Tech competition, the software giant unveiled a new class of AI-powered personal computers that can create documents, produce photos, and act as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home, per Reuters.
The company announced plans to integrate Copilot, its AI assistant, into Windows, which already has millions of users.
The new Windows Recall function will provide the AI assistant with "photographic memory" of a user's virtual activities. Microsoft claims to preserve consumers' privacy by letting them select what they don't want to be monitored and keeping tracking on the device.
