Day: February 14, 2022

DOHA, Qatar, Feb. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Qatar Tourism reveals how travellers can enjoy a holiday for two in Qatar and take advantage of exclusive hotel and spa offerings.

Rich in art, culture and tradition, Qatar is a country waiting to be discovered. It is centred around the generous hospitality characteristic of the local culture and the world’s best hotel and restaurant brands have created an oasis of luxury in the heart of the Middle East. Travellers can immerse themselves in the destination, home to an extensive range of five-star hotels and resorts, world-class spas and wellness centres, and restaurants with Michelin-star chefs.

Couples can unwind during a spa treatment at a world-class resort, such as Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som, the largest wellness destination in the region, soak up the sights of Qatar like never before in a hot air balloon, then dine at one of Qatar’s many international restaurants, such as Nobu Doha, the largest Nobu restaurant in the world, offering idyllic views of the Arabian Gulf.

Chief Operating Officer of Qatar Tourism, Berthold Trenkel, said: “Qatar is a country where cultural authenticity means modernity, where the sand meets the sea, where people come together to experience unique offerings in culture, wellness and entertainment. We welcome travellers to the country to relax, unwind and spend quality time together.”

To make the most of a special getaway in Qatar, check out how to spend a three-day visit below:

Day 1
Morning	Afternoon
Visit the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) for an immersion in Qatar’s history and culture	Enjoy a stroll around MIA Park to soak up Doha’s skyline, before taking a dhow boat cruise to see panoramic views of the city’s glittering skyline End the evening wandering around Souq Waqif
Travellers can either dine at Jiwan, located at NMoQ, which offers a menu influenced by Qatar’s nature and rich traditions, or visit one of the many restaurants and cafes at Msheireb Downtown Doha	With spectacular views of the Arabian Gulf, visit Nobu Doha, at the Four Seasons Hotel Doha, for sushi and other continental masterpieces with an oriental twist
Day 2
Morning	Afternoon
The Venetian-inspired Qanat Quartier at The Pearl-Qatar is known for its funky, Instagrammable architecture. The neighbourhood even has its own version of the Rialto bridge, ideal for a photo backdrop	Sunset tour of Khor Al Adaid, also known as the ‘Inland Sea’, one of the very few places in the world where the sea meets the desert
Spa treatment at one of Qatar’s world-class spa and wellness resorts, such as Sharq Village & Spa, Sisley Paris Spa, W Doha or the Four Seasons Hotel Doha	Book a stay at Regency Sealine Camp, known for its glamourous camping, including air-conditioned accommodation and meals at a Bedouin camp
Day 3
Morning	Afternoon
Al Hazm, which means ‘the higher ground’, is built in Italianate style with shops, cafes and restaurants. Combining art, culture and gastronomy, Al Hazm embodies luxury and is an ideal destination to spend a lazy morning in Qatar	Head to Msheireb Downtown Doha to wander around the world’s first sustainable downtown regeneration project. Visit the multiple museums, restaurants and cafes, then take a ride on the free tram
Take in the sights of Qatar in a hot air balloon for a one-of-a-kind experience. Guests will enjoy the open-air views from high in the sky.	A luxury experience to finish the trip in Qatar, enjoy a wellness treatment followed by dinner under the stars, at the helipad at Marriott Marquis Doha.

For those looking for a last-minute romantic getaway, here are some of the top deals available now:

Hotel	Deal Name	Deal Details	Price	End Booking Date
Sharq Village & Spa, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel	An Ode to Romance	Deluxe Suite with sea view, rose petals upon arrival, Persian dinner for two at Parisa Sharq Village and daily breakfast	Starting from 2,100 QAR per night	29 February 2022
Banyan Tree	Romantic Package	Book a suite and enjoy breakfast in bed, special four-course set menu, 20% spa discount and early and late check out	Starting from 2,399 QAR per night	31 March 2022
Sharq Village & Spa, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel	Bed of Roses	80-minute massage and 30-minute ‘Get glowing’ facial	QAR 999 per person	28 February 2022
Sharq Village & Spa, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel	Romantic Journey	30-minute couple bath, 80-minute stress relief massage and 50-minute youth renewing facial	QAR 2,750 for two persons	28 February 2022
The St. Regis Doha	Romantic Getaway	Lavish breakfast spread at Vine from 6am to 11am, 20% off final food and beverage fill in Si Restaurant, Vine or Sarab Lounge and special in-room amenities	Rates per room, per night and based on availability	28 February 2022
Banana Island Resort Doha by Anantara	Dine-around	Book a stay on Banana Island and enjoy daily breakfast in Azraq restaurant, daily set-menu dinner at any restaurant and boat transfers	From 1605 QAR per person	31 October 2022

For more information on the new travel procedures and future updates, please visit the website of the Ministry of Public Health (www.moph.gov.qa) or http://www.visitqatar.qa/en/plan-your-trip/travel-tips.

For media-related inquiries, please contact Qatar Tourism’s Press Office on:

+974 7774 7863 | pressoffice@visitqatar.qa 

About Qatar: 

Qatar is a peninsula surrounded by the Arabian Gulf in the heart of the Middle East, with 80% of the earth’s population within a six-hour flight. Ranked the safest country in the world in 2022 by Numbeo, Qatar welcomes all travellers, and guests from over 95 countries can enter visa-free. Qatar has an incredible variety of easily accessible tourist attractions, a plethora of fauna and flora including Whale Sharks and the majestic national animal the Arabian Oryx, and most experiences are a unique combination of cultural authenticity and modernity. From iconic museums to high-rise restaurants, from thrilling desert adventures to world-famous events including none other than the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, there is something for all types of travellers and budgets. Travellers set to transit through Qatar should turn one holiday into two with the world’s best value stopover packages, launched by Qatar Airways and Discover Qatar and supported by Qatar Tourism.

About Qatar Tourism: 

Qatar Tourism is the official government body responsible for the development and promotion of tourism in Qatar, facilitating the sector’s exponential growth. Qatar is a destination where people of the world come together to experience unique offerings in arts, culture, sports, and adventure, catering to family and business visitors, rooted in Service Excellence. Qatar Tourism seeks to boost the entire tourism value chain, grow local and international visitor demand, attract inward investment, and drive a multiplier effect across the domestic economy. The Qatar Tourism Strategy 2030 sets an ambitious target to attract over six million international visitors a year by 2030, making Qatar the fastest growing destination in the Middle East.

Web: www.visitqatar.qa

Twitter: @VisitQatar

Instagram: @VisitQatar

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Sonantic, a leader in hyper-realistic text-to-speech technology, demonstrates groundbreaking advancements in emotional speech synthesis with amorous AI video.

LONDON, England, Feb. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sonantic, a leader in developing fully expressive AI-generated voice software for film and gaming studios, has produced a video in collaboration with a Hollywood client entitled “What’s Her Secret?” The video surprises viewers when it’s revealed that, while the woman on screen is a real person, the main character speaking is an AI. Launched on Valentine’s Day, the video aims to demonstrate how entertainment studios can leverage AI to create hyper-realistic romantic encounters.

More Emotional Than Ever Before: Innovation in AI Voice Tech
“What’s Her Secret?” marks both a significant milestone for Sonantic as the company releases their latest breakthroughs of subtle emotions and non-speech sounds, while opening up creative possibilities for studios. The voice models, known for expressing a wide range of human emotions from happiness to sadness, can now convey subtleties such as flirty, coy and teasing, amongst other new “Style” options. Sonantic has also developed the ability to capture non-speech sounds such as breaths, scoffs, and laughs. Together, these advancements in speech synthesis make Sonantic’s platform more comprehensive than ever before. These latest capabilities stem from Sonantic’s proprietary technology, which helps entertainment studios create life-like performances in record time.

“Human beings are incredibly complex by nature and our voices play a critical role in helping us connect with the world around us. At Sonantic, we are committed to capturing the nuances of the human voice, and we’re incredibly proud of these technological breakthroughs that we have brought to life through ‘What’s Her Secret?,’” said Zeena Qureshi, CEO, and John Flynn, CTO of Sonantic. “From flirting and giggling to breathing and pausing, this is the most realistic romantic demo we’ve created to date, helping us inch closer to our vision of being the CGI of Audio.”

The Psychology of Voice, Attraction & Connection
Dr. Maggie Vaughan, a New York City-based psychotherapist who specializes in romantic relationships, said there are key elements in speech patterns, tone and pacing that make or break a flirtatious conversation, all of which are featured in “What’s Her Secret?”

5 Qualities of an Attractive Voice

• Manage your tempo: slow down to create suspense; speed up to create excitement.
• Gently smile when speaking, which subconsciously helps you sound more likable.
• Take a deep breath and clear your throat so the words flow smoothly.
• Keep a smooth, consistent pace to create a strong sense of control and confidence.
• Speak in a slightly lower tone than usual; humans prefer soft spoken over loud.

Interviews with Sonantic or Dr. Vaughan are available upon request.

About Sonantic
Founded in 2018, Sonantic has built a best-in-class AI-powered platform that creates compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voice models. This innovative technology is poised to revolutionize text-to-speech capabilities like never before. Sonantic is committed to bridging the worlds of creative expression and advanced technology.

To learn more, visit www.sonantic.io.

Press Contacts
UK
Paula Keve
paula@intrapr.com
+44 7804 626547

US
Arianna Imperato
arianna@intrapr.com
+1 347 224 9940

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Sonantic Launches AI That Can Flirt

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Announces Marketing Partnership with CBC Co in Japan

MILPITAS, Calif., Feb. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AlphaICs, a leading AI fabless semiconductor company that develops edge inference and edge learning technologies, has announced the availability of engineering samples of ‘Gluon’ – an 8 TOPS Edge AI inference co-processor to customers in surveillance, industrial, retail, auto, and Industrial IoT verticals which carries best-in-class FPS/Watt performance.

Gluon will be shipped with a complete (Software Development Kit) SDK that enables easy deployment of neural networks. The advanced edge inference chip delivers the capability for customers to add AI capability in the current X86 / ARM-based systems, resulting in significant cost savings.

Gluon provides the best fps/watt performance in the market for classification and detection Neural Networks – 32 Frames Per Second (FPS)/watt for Yolo-V2, a leading object detection model & 22 Frames Per Second (FPS)/Watt for VGG-19, a leading classification model.

Gluon is currently being sampled to for early customers to enable the development of their vision applications. It is engineered for OEMs and solution providers targeting vision market segments, such as surveillance, industrial, retail, Industrial IoT, and edge gateway manufacturers.

To accelerate its market foray into highly demanding silicon markets, AlphaICs has established a channel partner relationship with CBC Co. Ltd, a Japanese enterprise offering video surveillance products for their customers.

“CBC has been working with AlphaICs for close to two years and we are excited to be its marketing partner in Japan. Gluon was showcased at Japan AI Expo in October 2021 and generated great interest from Japanese customers for vision applications based on its superior performance. AlphaICs co-processor strategy is well received, and we are very excited to take this technology to our customers,” said Kazuhiko Kondo, Executive Officer, CBC Co., Ltd. 

AlphaICs CEO Pradeep Vajram said “We are pleased with our Gluon silicon results and are now demonstrating the innovative technology to our customers. Our team worked very hard to design this high-performance, industry resonating deep-learning co-processor. Gluon is future-ready and is well-positioned to address the AI vision applications for surveillance, retail, industrial, and smart city markets.”

Early last year the company raised $8 million to advance the development of Gluon based on the proprietary architecture RAP^TM. AlphaICs’ highly scalable and modular architecture uses a specialized Instruction Set Architecture that is specifically optimized for AI.

How different is Gluon from the current generation of edge inference Chip?

Gluon, an 8 TOPS Edge AI co-processor, is produced using the 16nm FinFET process at TSMC. This chip accelerates Deep Learning Neural Network models for classification, detection, and segmentation and is focused on vision applications. Gluon incorporates PCIe and LPDDR4 interfaces to enable high-speed transfers to host processors and DRAM, respectively.

Based on many innovations, Gluon provides best-in-class benchmarks:

• 153 frames per second with Yolo-V2, a leading object detection model (416x416x3 image size) in 4.73 watts.
• 79 frames per second with VGG-19, a leading classification model (224x224x3) in 3.6 watts.

To know more about the Gluon, visit AlphaICs through https://www.alphaics.ai or write to info@alphaics.com.

About AlphaICs:

AlphaICs is a leading AI technology company that develops edge inference and edge learning technologies to enable AI at the edge. AlphaICs has developed a next-generation AI architecture, called Real AI Processor (RAP^TM). Architecture provides high performance, low power, and minimal latency, enabling best-in-class edge AI inference processors. RAP^TM architecture also supports edge learning to reduce training data requirements, enables auto labeling and continuous learning at the edge. The company is led by a team of technology experts and successful serial entrepreneurs committed to putting forth the true potential of AI at the edge. The company has operations in Milpitas, US, and Bangalore, India. AlphaICs is currently a company in the Silicon Catalyst Incubator. Learn more at https://www.alphaics.ai

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AlphaICs’ Pradeep Vajram and Prashant Trivedi unveiling Gluon Chip and Gluon Board

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HONG KONG, Feb. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brand New Vision Ltd, the company behind BNV.ME, the leading platform taking fashion into Web3.0 through 3D Product Creation, NFT sales, and Future Wearability, has successfully completed a US$4 million Series A funding round led by Animoca Brands.

Animoca Brands is a global leader in gamification and blockchain with a large portfolio of over 150 investments in NFT-related companies and decentralized projects that are contributing to building the open metaverse.

This raise will enable BNV.ME to further expand its capabilities for creating elevated NFT experiences across the metaverse offerings that already exist and those that are under development, as well as growing its visibility and presence across the worlds of fashion, gaming, and crypto communities. BNV’s aim of true interoperability and the strong pipeline of high-quality AAA metaverse products and games under development indicate there is an exciting future for digital fashion.

In addition to Animoca Brands as lead investor, this funding round also included a number of influential funds and individuals including AngelHub, K3, Arkstream Capital, Sparkle Ventures, Grizzly Capital, Meteorite Labs, Startive Ventures, and MyAsiaVC Web3 Fund. Also participating were Cube Entertainment from Korea, Miss Bitcoin (the leading crypto evangelist in Japan since 2011), Michael Kazam (Paris-based founder of Le Book), and Alex Moukas (the founder and CEO of Wappier), plus other funds and private investors.

Richard Hobbs, the founder of BNV, said: “It’s great to have the support of Animoca Brands, a value-add investor which contributes powerfully to our vision of bringing digital fashion into the open metaverse. In addition to the new investors we have already named, there are also others from the wider crypto and fashion worlds that are joining us on this journey and we welcome them all.”

Hobbs continued: “The funds we raised will allow an expansion of the teams at HQ and around the world. Fashion is a global business and we will be adding to the current representation we already have in London, New York, LA, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Seoul and Hong Kong.”

Speaking about upcoming initiatives, Hobbs said: “We will be introducing a series of new NFT drops with amazing designers and brands on BNV.ME in the coming weeks, particularly leading up to events around the next series of Fashion Weeks in the major capitals. We will also be announcing our first social token which will give holders access to multiple experiences and opportunities, not just in virtual worlds but in the physical one too.”

Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, commented: “The opportunity for digital fashion is significant, and BNV has built an industry-trusted team to help fashion brands enter the world of digital property rights and NFTs. We are pleased to lead this investment, which will help to introduce more participants to the concept of the open metaverse.”

Morgan Stanley predicts the metaverse will be a US$8 trillion commercial opportunity; digital fashion will play a significant part and BNV plans to be at the forefront of that sector. BNV is already a trusted partner to fashion brands and designers who recognize the opportunity of the metaverse but need help navigating the fast-moving Web3.0 world.

About Brand New Vision Ltd

Brand New Vision Ltd operates bnv.me, the premium platform for fashion NFT sales. BNV launched in April 2021 and is headquartered in Hong Kong. The founding team is a combination of long-standing fashion industry business operators with experience in luxury, streetwear, action sports and outdoor and active brands, covering all aspects of the fashion business from design to retail. Along with young talent in the digital world and a team of experienced software engineers and blockchain developers, BNV is uniquely positioned to be the leading fashion NFT platform and gateway to the metaverse for fashion brands and designers. For more information visit bnv.me or follow on Instagram, Telegram, Twitter or Discord.

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Contact:
team@bnv.me