A CEO sends a town hall presentation via video link. It’s smooth, any awkward pauses or filler words sanded away by AI detection. And if the viewers are in, say, the Tokyo office, the CEO might be speaking in effortless Japanese, her voice and cadence preserved even if her lips don’t match the words.

This vision of internal workplace communication is one area where Vimeo sees a market for generative AI video tools like voice-cloning translation, script generation, and interactive chat that draws on information from videos.

In a space rife with uncanny-valley phantasms, Vimeo’s aims around AI-powered video have so far been comparatively modest. Once a YouTube competitor, the two-decade-old platform now wants to carve out a niche as a host to enterprise videos and quality content from professional creators.

GenAI is front and center to that mission, but Vimeo’s tools focus more on automating away production and distribution tasks than whole-cloth generation, according to Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer.

“We’re not focused on the generation as much—we’re focusing on how we help the creator, maker accelerate their job,” Moyer told Tech Brew at the company’s first video AI conference in New York last week. “Our whole goal is not replacement or the generative side as much as the management, enhancement, and distribution side.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Ride-hailing services and public transit might seem like natural rivals, but one robotaxi company is helping users catch their train.

Alphabet-backed Waymo earlier this month unveiled a pilot program under which it will offer $3 credits for future rides when users in the Bay Area hail a Waymo robotaxi to take them to or from certain transit stations. The program runs through November 15 and the credits will be available to use through the end of the year.

“This is a pilot program that will enable us to better understand how people use Waymo One to connect to public transit, and to explore ways in which we can make Waymo One even more useful as a method of zero-emissions travel,” Adam Lenz, Waymo’s head of sustainability and environment, told Tech Brew.

Waymo recently surveyed its riders in San Francisco and found that 36% use Waymo One, the company’s robotaxi service, to connect to public transit.

“We thought that was a fantastic starting point and we wanted to lean into it more,” Lenz said.

Keep reading here.—JG

Walmart is integrating new technologies into its e-commerce plan as part of a larger reset.

This includes adding a nutty chatbot to manage customer service to selling Walmart goods on gaming platform Roblox.

“A standard search bar is no longer the fastest path to purchase, rather we must use technology to adapt to customers’ individual preferences and needs,” Suresh Kumar, CTO and CDO of Walmart, said in a press statement.

The announcements come at a time when the “every day low price” retailer’s e-commerce business is growing and thriving.

“At the heart of our platform strategy is developing common global core capabilities that are built once and deployed across Walmart US, Sam’s Club, and Walmart International,” Kumar added.

Walmart dubbed these features as “adaptive retail” technologies when it first shared its plans at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Customer support chatbot: One thing that stands out about Walmart’s customer service chatbot is that it is designed to actually take actions like “cancel order,” and “initiate refund,” on behalf of shoppers with the help of generative AI, Derek Schatz, group director for technology operations at Walmart, told Retail Brew at a company preview event last week called Retail Rewired.

Keep reading here.—VC