Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Colors can affect our feelings and behavior in ways so profound that studies have been conducted on how we can better use them in life, and in society, to “hack” culture. This covers subjects from what colors to wear to a job interview … to the ideal shade for prisons.

Because of this odd relationship we have with color, the colors we choose, and what we name them, become meaningful shorthands for much bigger stories. Every year, Pantone selects a “Color of the Year” that thematically puts us on the right track for the next 12 months. We project as much onto Pantone’s choices as the brand seeks to project onto us. (This year’s color was “Greenery.”)

With all this in mind, research scientist and neural network geek Janelle Shane decided to see how well artificial intelligence fares at both selecting colors and naming them. A writer at Ars Technica calls her results “the greatest work of artificial intelligence I’ve seen to date.”

On Tumblr, Shane describes both the terms of the experiment and its output. “I gave the neural network a list of about 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors along with their RGB values (RGB = red, green, and blue color values),” she writes. “Could the neural network learn to invent new paint colors and give them attractive names?”...

By now, every business knows it has to be smart in its online strategy. Gone are the vanity metrics of yesteryear, with numbers of downloads, visitors, and the like. Now it’s all about user engagement, customer loyalty, and business results.

This startup based in Singapore and India is using AI to automate a lot of what goes into generating sales leads and acting on them fast.

More and more sophisticated tools are coming into the market to help with tracking what’s actionable that really matters to the business. Conversion rate optimization, funnel analysis, real time heat maps, abandoned cart recovery, sales lead generation – there are tech tools for all that and more. The trouble is many businesses are just not equipped to derive insights from these tools or act on them. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) especially can’t afford to hire high caliber data scientists to make the best use of the tools for customer retention or sales closure.

That’s where Lucep comes in. This startup based in Singapore and India is using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate a lot of what goes into generating leads and then acting on them fast. Sales Gorilla is the name of its AI engine behind the Lucep app....