Latest news with #Clarify
CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
German startup DeepL says latest Nvidia chips lets it translate the whole internet in just 18 days
DeepL on Wednesday said it was deploying one of the latest Nvidia systems that would allow the German startup to translate the whole internet in just 18 days. This is sharply down from 194 days previously. , DeepL is a startup that has developed its own AI models for and competes with Google Translate. Nvidia is meanwhile looking to expand the customer base for its chips — which are designed to power artificial intelligence applications — beyond hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Amazon. It also highlights how startups are using Nvidia's high-end products to build AI applications, which are viewed as the next step after foundational models, such as those designed by OpenAI. The Cologne-based company is deploying an Nvidia system known as DGX SuperPOD. Each of the DGX SuperPOD server racks contains 36 B200 Grace Blackwell Superchips, one of the company's latest products on the market. Nvidia's chips are required to train and run huge AI models, such as the ones designed by DeepL. "The idea is, of course, to provide a lot more computational power to our research scientists to build even more advanced models," Stefan Mesken, chief scientist at DeepL, told CNBC. Mesken said the upgraded infrastructure would help enhance current products like Clarify, which the company launched this year. Clarify is a tool that asks users questions to make sure context is incorporated in the translation. "It just wasn't technically feasible until recently with the advancements that we've made in our next-gen efforts. This has now became possible. So those are the kinds of advances that we continue to hunt for," Mesken said.
WIRED
02-04-2025
- Health
- WIRED
This Startup Says It Can Clean Your Blood of Microplastics
Apr 2, 2025 7:00 AM The elective medical industry is cashing in on plastic pollution fears, but the evidence of harm from microplastics is still deeply uncertain. Photograph: Courtesy of Clarify Clinics This is a non-exhaustative list of places microplastics have been found: Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, Antarctic snow, clouds, plankton, turtles, whales, cattle, birds, tap water, beer, salt, human plancentas, semen, breast milk, feces, testicles, livers, brains, arteries, and blood. My blood, specifically. In early March I milked a few drops out of my fingertips and sent the sample to be tested for microplastics. I was in the London office of Clarify Clinics—a firm that offers to cleanse your blood of microplastics, forever chemicals, and other toxins, in treatments that start at £9,750 ($12,636). Each week around 10 to 15 people walk into the basement clinic just off Harley Street—a road famed for its private clinics and wealthy clientele. After a consultation, the patients settle down in an armchair for the treatment. Blood is drawn from a cannula into a machine that separates out the plasma from blood cells. That plasma is filtered through a column that is supposed to trap microplastics and other undesirable chemicals, before being mixed back with the blood cells and pumped back into the patient. All-in-all the process runs for up to two hours—enough time to process 50 to 80 percent of the blood plasma volume. 'Once it's running, you feel nothing. It's very comfortable,' says Yael Cohen, CEO of Clarify Clinic. 'Patients take calls, do Zooms, watch movies, sleep. The ones who sleep are my favorite.' They come for all kinds of reasons, Cohen says: Some are suffering with chronic fatigue, others with brain fog or long Covid. The clinic also runs treatments marketed toward people on Ozempic-style weight-loss drugs, looking to conceive, or ward off dementia. What Clarify sells them is the hope of easing their symptoms by ridding their blood of microplastics, or other potential contaminants such as PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and pesticides. But the science on how microplastics affect our health is still far from conclusive. A 2022 WHO report into microplastics concluded that there wasn't yet enough evidence to figure out whether they posed a risk to human health. We don't know microplastics are safe, the report concluded, but we also don't know the risks they might pose. 'The dose makes the poison,' says Frederic Béen, an environmental contaminants researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment. 'That's the reason why it is important to determine accurately how much microplastics or any other type of environmental contaminants humans are exposed to.' There have been an onslaught of scientific papers that have tracked microplastics to every inch of the Earth's surface and deep within our bodies, but very few attempt to tease out the impact these have on our health. A 2022 review article found that microplastics were associated with harm to human cells, but didn't examine actual health outcomes in living humans. A study in 2024 found that people who had microplastics in the fatty plaque within their carotid arteries had a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes than people who didn't have microplastics in their arteries. But the 2024 study didn't establish any causal link between microplastics and health. The study was only observational, so it couldn't prove that the presence of microplastics caused the higher risk of death for certain patients. There were also differences between the two groups studied—patients with microplastics in their arteries were more likely to be men, have cardiovascular disease, and smoke. It could be that these factors—or another unknown influence—were actually causing the difference in risk of death between the two groups. The same uncertainties apply when it comes to measuring microplastics. I wasn't particularly scientific when I milked that blood from my fingertip. Plastic fibers from my clothing or packaging could easily have made their way into my sample, and the same is true when any sample is analyzed, whether it's from the environment or a human body. Béen and his colleagues go to extreme lengths to try to avoid contamination when they're analyzing blood samples for microplastics. All of the equipment they use to take samples is plastic-free, the air in their lab is filtered, and they only wear cotton when working with the samples. 'What we do is to make sure there is no plastic contamination, or to minimize it as much as possible given that microplastics are everywhere.' We live in such a plastic-saturated world that it's difficult to measure microplastics accurately, let alone link them to health outcomes. But Cohen says that her patients report higher energy levels or better sleep after trying the treatment. Cohen tracks her sleep quality on an Oura ring and says that before the treatment a score of 70 would be good for her, but in the six weeks after she tried the treatment she hadn't dropped below 90—which, according to the Oura website, indicates 'optimal' sleep. Most of the patients come to the clinic through word of mouth. 'People are posting it, they're talking about it,' Cohen says. Patients post their blood microplastic results online before and after the treatment. 'I think it's a badge of honor to be doing your future self a favor,' she says. Blood microplastic cleansing is just the latest in a long line of treatments based on uncertain evidence targeting wealthy individuals worried about their health. In the Bahamas, people pay tens of thousands of dollars for stem cell injections of unproven benefit. Longevity influencer Bryan Johnson has touted the benefits of total plasma exchange—removing plasma from the blood and supplementing it with proteins and antibodies on a regular basis. 'He's a big platform, and he is spending a lot of time and energy finding the things that move the needle the most,' says Cohen. In extreme cases of exposure to pollutants, some form of blood cleaning can be necessary. Earlier this year, residents of Jersey, an island in the English Channel, were recommended bloodletting after firefighting foams containing PFAS polluted drinking water supplies. High levels of PFAS exposure have been linked to some cancers and issues with brain development and thyroid function. Bloodletting would clean the blood over time by removing contaminated blood and allowing the body to replenish the blood naturally. But for most people we simply don't know what their blood microplastics levels are, or whether they are anything to worry about. My fingerprick test found around 190 microplastic particles per milliliter of blood, a result which apparently put me at the low end of the range of possible results. I emailed Cohen to tell her I was pleased with my results. 'Glad you were pleasantly surprised, but that's still around a million particles in your circulatory system!' she responded.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DeepL launches Clarify, introducing groundbreaking interactivity for superior business translations
"Clarify" brings next-level personalization to DeepL's Language AI platform, addressinggrowing demand among its 200k+ business customers NEW YORK, March 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- DeepL, a leading global Language AI company, today announced the launch of Clarify, a groundbreaking feature bringing interactivity to AI translations, powered by its next-generation LLM. Clarify transforms the user experience by actively engaging throughout the translation process, serving as an interactive AI companion and language expert that resolves ambiguities and provides greater control over translations. This results in a more personalized, engaging experience that yields higher quality, nuanced translations — driving seamless cross-border communication for DeepL's rapidly expanding network of over 200,000 business customers worldwide. "AI is increasingly becoming an essential sparring partner in our professional lives, which is what we're introducing with Clarify – a more personalized approach to interacting with the DeepL platform throughout the translation process. Its role is similar to that of a colleague, proactively engaging with users and helping them fine-tune translations to achieve the high quality required for business communication," said Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and Founder, DeepL. "This powerful addition brings an added layer of personalization and accuracy to the DeepL experience, so that our customers can get even greater value out of our platform. Businesses want to trust AI for the right answers, so shifting from a static, one-way experience to more of a dialogue with the technology will become the norm." AI investment is booming, surpassing $184 billion in 2024, with 72% of business leaders aiming to incorporate AI into their daily operations in 2025 and 92% planning to boost their AI budgets in the next three years. Focus is now moving from excitement over the possibilities of AI to whether deployments can deliver results — driving a shift away from general models towards highly specialized solutions that can be customized and personalized to meet specific business needs. A quarter of global businesses are looking to invest in AI for specialized tasks, like translation, over the coming year. Moreover, human-AI collaboration is often considered key to the successful deployment of AI in businesses, especially for applications that require deep contextual understanding, such as translation, and in high-stakes, highly regulated environments like legal and manufacturing. For example, 51% of in-house legal teams see AI as a key tool for enhancing translations, combining AI solutions with human expertise and oversight. While DeepL's specialized Language AI platform is already trusted for its accurate, context-aware translations — proven to require 2-3 times fewer edits than Google Translate and ChatGPT-4 to achieve the same quality — and leverages the expertise of thousands of human translators to train its models, the launch of Clarify elevates the user experience by introducing interactive human-AI collaboration for the first time. Clarify allows professionals and knowledge workers to engage more deeply throughout the translation process, ensuring their specific context and requirements are met. The feature can also identify nuances that non-native speakers may overlook or find challenging, ensuring that translations always achieve the highest levels of accuracy and clarity essential for business-critical use cases. How Clarify works Once text is entered into DeepL Translator, Clarify proactively seeks to clarify context, prompting users with questions on topics such as multiple meanings, gender references, names, numbers, idioms, cultural references, abbreviations, and specialized terms. After users respond, Clarify then adapts the translations to ensure proper syntax, tense, and grammar. Clarify knows the right questions to ask because it is designed specifically for translation use-cases, powered by DeepL's highly specialized LLMs trained by professional language experts. And in contrast to other AI tools that rely on user-driven interaction — where users type a prompt, receive a response, and iterate until achieving a desired result — Clarify can save users time by operating in a system-driven manner, intuitively identifying the necessary context and prompting users accordingly. "This is a tremendous milestone for our company from a technological perspective and is just the beginning of many exciting innovations we have coming to the DeepL Language AI platform to enhance its interactivity," said Sebastian Enderlein, CTO, DeepL. "Our goal is to ensure our fast-growing network of customers – which has now surpassed 200,000 businesses worldwide – are equipped with the highest quality, most secure and cutting-edge solutions to meet their evolving language and communication needs." The launch of Clarify coincides with a period of significant growth for DeepL, as the company has established itself as the leading Language AI solution provider for businesses worldwide. Over the last year, DeepL's global customer network has grown significantly, now totaling over 200,000 businesses across sectors ranging from manufacturing to legal, retail, healthcare and more — including notable brands like Softbank, Mazda, Harvard Business Publishing, The Ifo Institute, Panasonic Connect and more. This success stems from the company's market-leading innovation, which combines exceptional quality, reliability, and security in its comprehensive Language AI platform, featuring advanced written and spoken translation tools, writing solutions, and the DeepL API. Clarify is now available for DeepL Pro users worldwide via the DeepL Translator web interface, for English and German translations – with more languages coming in the future. The feature maintains the same enterprise-grade security and compliance standards as the rest of the DeepL Pro experience. For more information and to try out DeepL Pro for your business today, visit About DeepL DeepL is on a mission to break down language barriers for businesses everywhere. Over 200,000 businesses and governments and millions of individuals across 228 global markets trust DeepL's Language AI platform for human-like translation in both written and spoken formats, as well as natural, improved writing. Designed with enterprise security in mind, companies around the world leverage DeepL's AI solutions that are specifically tuned for language to transform business communications, expand markets and improve productivity. Founded in 2017 by CEO Jaroslaw (Jarek) Kutylowski, DeepL today has over 1,000 passionate employees and is supported by world-renowned investors including Benchmark, IVP and Index Ventures. Logo - View original content: SOURCE DeepL
