Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals

Category: Computing & data (Page 1 of 95)

Computing and data is a broad category. Our coverage of computing is largely limited to software, and we are mostly focused on unstructured data, semi-structured data, or mixed data that includes structured data.

Topics include computing platforms, analytics, data science, data modeling, database technologies, machine learning / AI, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented reality, bots, programming languages, natural language processing applications such as machine translation, and knowledge graphs.

Related categories: Semantic technologies, Web technologies & information standards, and Internet and platforms.

Microsoft announces agentic AI capabilities for retail

Microsoft announced a set of agentic AI capabilities aimed at supporting automation and decision-making across retail operations, including merchandising, marketing, store operations, and fulfillment. The tools are designed to connect data and workflows so teams can act on context in real time.

Copilot Checkout, now available in the U.S. on Copilot.com, allows shoppers to complete purchases directly within Copilot without being redirected to a retailer’s website, while merchants remain the merchant of record. The service integrates with partners including PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, and supports participating retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and Etsy sellers.

Microsoft also introduced Brand Agents for Shopify merchants and a personalized shopping agent template in Copilot Studio. These tools enable conversational shopping experiences using a retailer’s product catalog, with options ranging from turnkey deployment to fully customizable implementations.

In public preview, a catalog enrichment agent template automates product onboarding and categorization by extracting attributes from images and enriching data for search and recommendations.

For physical stores, a store operations agent template provides natural-language access to inventory, policies, and operational insights, helping staff manage workflows, staffing, and day-to-day decisions using internal and external data signals.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/01/08/microsoft-propels-retail-forward-with-agentic-ai-capabilities-that-power-intelligent-automation-for-every-retail-function

Snowflake to acquire Observe

Snowflake, an AI Data Cloud company, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Observe, a provider of AI-powered observability. With this acquisition, Snowflake will deliver their next generation of AI-powered observability, built on open standards and designed for the scale, complexity, and economics required by modern AI-driven enterprises. Snowflake and Observe will provide enterprises with: 

  • Agentic AI for faster troubleshooting: The combination of Observe’s AI-powered Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with data in Snowflake enables a shift from reactive monitoring to proactive, automated troubleshooting. Observe’s AI SRE leverages a unified context graph that correlates logs, metrics, and traces, allowing teams to detect anomalies earlier, identify root causes, and resolve production issues faster.
  • An open-standard architecture built for scale: The acquisition also establishes a unified, open-standard observability architecture based on Apache Iceberg and OpenTelemetry. Enterprises can manage massive telemetry volumes using economical object storage, elastic compute, and interoperable standards.
  • Full telemetry data retention with efficient economics: As AI-driven applications generate volumes of logs, metrics, and traces, enterprises have increasingly been forced to rely on sampling and short retention windows to manage cost. By unifying Observe’s AI-powered observability platform with Snowflake’s scalable data foundation, organizations may eliminate these tradeoffs.

https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-announces-intent-to-acquire-observe-to-deliver-ai-powered-observability-at-enterprise-scale

Squirro announces Squirro Release 3.14.4

Squirro, a global supplier of enterprise-grade Generative AI and knowledge graph technology, announced the general availability of its latest Long-Term Support (LTS) platform update. Squirro Release 3.14.4 introduces new capabilities designed to close the gap between structured enterprise knowledge and ad-hoc user workflows.

Most notably, the update includes direct file uploads, multimodal image reasoning, and an enterprise-grade prompt library – features that help organizations extract insights from complex documents, whether stored in enterprise repositories or sitting on a user’s desktop.

The centerpiece of the latest Squirro Platform Release is an enhanced chat experience designed for versatility and depth. Direct file uploads let users bypass traditional indexing workflows by dragging contracts or reports directly into the chat for on-the-spot analysis. For complex long-form content, a new “Chat with Item” agent maintains deep memory context retaining the first 100 pages plus a summary to support Q&A sessions without losing the thread.

Multimodal image reasoning enables the AI to interpret charts, tables, and images contained within documents, while newly introduced table rendering capabilities automatically format structured data outputs into clean, readable tables.

By combining deep context memory, multimodal reasoning, and dynamic ad-hoc analysis, the upgrade enhances reasoning capabilities of auditable agentic workflows.

https://squirro.com/news-and-events/new-release-december-2025-enhanced-chat-multimodal-reasoning

Bloomreach launches Personalized Media in-Grid

Bloomreach, an agentic platform for personalization, introduced Personalized Media in-Grid, a new capability that turns static product grids into intelligent storytelling surfaces, powered by its AI-powered search solution Bloomreach Discovery and amplified through its marketing and conversational shopping solutions. The feature transforms product-listing pages into dynamic, story-driven experiences, showcasing Bloomreach’s connected suite. Personalized Media in-Grid brings the compound value of the platform to life, uniting placement, personalization, and conversation inside the shopping journey.

Today’s product-listing pages are largely static and transactional. Personalized Media in-Grid changes that by allowing retailers to insert videos, images, buying guides, seasonal promotions, and cross-sell messages between products on search and category pages. With slot selection, in-context preview, audience targeting, and scheduling capabilities, merchandising teams can manage and optimize content, and

  • Blend storytelling with commerce: Insert rich media, buying guides, promotional banners, and cross-sell content directly into product grids at specific slots.
  • Manage content: Apply rules globally across queries or categories, preview in context, and schedule campaigns..
  • Target specific audiences: Deliver tailored messages by integrating with Bloomreach Engagement for segmentation and 1:1 personalization, and with Bloomreach Clarity for conversational experiences.
  • Measure impact: Track performance through Discovery’s built-in analytics and extend reporting through Engagement dashboards.

https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2025/bloomreach-unites-search-storytelling-and-personalization/

Snowflake to acquire Datometry Migration Solution

From the Snowflake blog…

We’re thrilled to announce Snowflake has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the technology powering the Datometry software migration solution, which makes moving from legacy data warehouses like Teradata to Snowflake up to four times faster while reducing costs by 90%. This new venture will enable our current and future customers to accelerate their data journey with faster migrations.

Datometry’s solution translates queries, scripts and workloads in real time, allowing applications built for legacy systems to run on Snowflake with minimal code changes.

We’re eager to start integrating the power of Datometry into SnowConvert AI. In addition to bringing Datometry’s capabilities to Snowflake, we’re thrilled to also welcome many talented Datometry employees, including Datometry founder and CEO Mike Waas, CTO Michael Duller, and VP of Customer Success Rima Mutreja. With their deep knowledge and expertise, we’re looking forward to collaborating to bring innovative developments in data migration to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.

Snowflake’s free solutions, SnowConvert AI and Snowpark Migration Accelerator, reduce migration risks and costs and simplify code conversion to help customers realize more value from their data from day one.

https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/accelerate-data-migration-datometry-technology

Google introduces the File Search Tool in Gemini API

From the Google technology developers blog…

Today, we’re launching the File Search Tool, a fully managed RAG system built directly into the Gemini API that abstracts away the retrieval pipeline so you can focus on building. File Search provides a simple, integrated and scalable way to ground Gemini with your data, delivering responses that are accurate, relevant and verifiable:

  • Integrated developer experience: automatically manages file storage, chunking strategies, embeddings and dynamic injection of retrieved context into prompts.
  • Vector search: to understand the meaning and context of user querys even if the exact words aren’t used.
  • Built-in citations: automatically included citations specify which parts of your documents were used to generate the answer.
  • Support for a wide range of formats: including PDF, DOCX, TXT, JSON and common programming language file types.

We’re making storage and embedding generation at query time free of charge. You only pay for creating embeddings when you first index your files, at a fixed rate of $0.15 per 1 million tokens (or whatever the applicable embedding model cost is, in this case gemini-embedding-001). This new billing paradigm makes the File Search Tool easier and cost-effective to build and scale with.

https://blog.google/technology/developers/file-search-gemini-api

Sitecore unveils SitecoreAI

Sitecore announced SitecoreAI, a digital experience platform that puts artificial intelligence at the center of marketing. As customer journeys shift from static search to AI-driven discovery.

Built on Sitecore XM Cloud, SitecoreAI unifies content, data, and personalization in a single, composable SaaS platform designed to optimize as teams work – helping marketers launch faster, spend smarter, and improve performance through AI-enabled workflows. At its core is the Agentic Studio, a workspace where marketers and AI collaborate to plan, create, and personalize experiences. The Agentic Studio debuts with 20 AI-powered agents that automate complex workflows from campaign planning to content migration, production and testing – and gives marketers and their agency partners the flexibility to design their own agents and flows using simple visual tools.

Within the Agentic Studio, Agentic Flows orchestrate multi-step personalized campaigns from briefing and experimentation through publishing and optimization. Spaces enable real-time collaboration between people and AI, turning disconnected tools into a coordinated system supporting continuous improvement.

Running on Microsoft Azure, SitecoreAI is the evolution of XM Cloud, unifying content management, customer data, personalization, and search in one platform that adapts through configuration and human feedback. For current XM Cloud customers, the upgrade is seamless – no migration required.

https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2025/10/sitecore-unveils-sitecoreai-ushering-in-the-ai-first-era-of-digital-experience

Adobe delivers new AI assistants and models across Creative Cloud

Adobe announced new AI features across Creative Cloud apps including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, and Illustrator. The updates focus on improving efficiency, precision, and control for creative professionals.

Highlights include the AI Assistant in Photoshop, which can handle repetitive tasks, provide personalized recommendations, and support conversational editing while allowing seamless switching to manual tools. Photoshop also gains Generative Fill with partner models, Generative Upscale using Topaz Labs and other partners, and Harmonize for blending objects naturally into scenes. Premiere introduces AI Object Mask, shape-based masking tools, and Fast Vector Mask in public beta for faster video editing. Lightroom receives an AI Assisted Culling feature to help manage large photo collections.

Firefly enhancements include Image Model 5 in public beta for 4MP photorealistic generation and editing, Prompt to Edit for natural language adjustments, and planned Layered Image Editing. Firefly Boards adds Rotate Object for 2D-to-3D perspectives, PDF export, and batch image downloads. Firefly Creative Production supports no-code batch editing of thousands of images. Firefly Custom Models let users create personalized models for stylistically consistent outputs.

Many features are in public or private beta, with partner models from Google, Black Forest Labs, Topaz, and others integrated directly into Adobe apps, available to Creative Cloud Pro and Firefly plan subscribers.

https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/10/adobe-max-2025-creative-cloud

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