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AI salespeople aren’t better than humans… yet

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Artificial intelligence is changing how we shop online, but when it comes to selling products through livestreams, humans still have the edge.

A new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows that AI-powered “digital streamers”—virtual salespeople who appear in livestreams to promote products—don’t perform as well as human streamers. In fact, they barely outperform having no streamer at all.

“People assume that if businesses are using digital streamers, they must be doing well. But they aren’t, at least not in their current incarnation,” said UBC Sauder associate professor Dr. Yanwen Wang, a co-author of the study in Information Systems Research.

The research team looked at sales data from a popular fashion retailer on Tmall.com, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms. They compared sales of 328 products before and after the retailer introduced digital streamers. Of those, 72 were promoted by digital streamers, 74 by human streamers, and 182 had no streamer at all.

The results were clear: Human streamers significantly boosted sales. Digital streamers, on the other hand, showed only a small improvement over having no streamer—and far less than their human counterparts.

But the researchers didn’t stop there. They wanted to understand why digital streamers were falling short and how they could be improved.

On the left, a more human-looking digital avatar and on the right, a more cartoon-like avatar, used in the study. Credit: Yanwen Wang.

In a second part of the study, they worked with a new online grocery retailer on Tmall that also used digital streamers. The team tested different versions of the streamers, starting with a basic cartoon-like avatar and gradually adding features to make them seem more human, such as realistic voices and the ability to answer questions in real time.

They found that two things made the biggest difference: form realism (how human the streamer looks) and behavioural realism (how well the streamer interacts with viewers).

The most effective upgrade was giving the digital streamer the ability to answer questions in real time. This feature led to a 25-per-cent increase in the number of products sold and an 86-per-cent jump in revenue. Adding a lottery feature—where viewers could win prizes during the livestream—also helped, boosting sales by 17 per cent and revenue by 70 per cent.

“Human-like voices and improved visual appearances also contributed to gains, but to a lesser degree,” said Dr. Wang. “Only enhanced real-time Q&A interactions allowed the digital streamers to achieve sales performances on par with human streamers.”

This suggests that timely, interactive engagement is a key to driving sales.

Dr. Wang says the best future approach may be a mix of human and AI. For example, a human could monitor several AI streamers at once, stepping in to answer questions when needed.

Digital streamers do have one big advantage: cost. Unlike humans, they can livestream 24 hours a day without breaks or salaries. But businesses need to understand what works and what doesn’t before relying on them.

“When businesses are choosing digital streamers, they hope they’ll work as well as human streamers,” said Dr. Wang. “But our study shows there’s no lift in sales at all—unless you improve how they interact with customers.”

The study is the first to offer real-world evidence of how digital streamers affect sales, and how their design can be improved. It was co-authored by Dr. Wang, Dr. Yahui Liu of Nanjing Audit University, Dr. Shuai Yang of Donghua University and Dr. Lei Wang of Indiana University.



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Microsoft Revamps File Explorer with Artificial Intelligence

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Redazione RHC : 12 September 2025 17:58

Microsoft has begun testing new AI-powered features in File Explorer in Windows 11. These features will allow users to interact with images and documents directly from File Explorer, without having to open files in separate apps.

The new feature is called “AI Actions” and currently works with JPG, JPEG, and PNG images, allowing you to do the following:

  • Remove Background in Paint: Quickly cut out the background of an image, leaving only the Subject;
  • Remove Objects with the Photos app: Remove unwanted elements from photos using generative AI.
  • Blur Background using the Photos app: Focuses on the subject while blurring the background.
  • Search Images with Bing Visual Search: Visual Search with Bing finds similar images, objects, landmarks, and more across the web.

“AI Actions in File Explorer make working with files faster and easier—just right-click, for example, to edit an image or get a summary of a document,” say Microsoft representatives Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc.

These new features are available in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27938. Along with these, another useful feature has been introduced: under Settings > Privacy & Security > Text & Image Generation, you now see a list of third-party apps that have recently used Windows local generative AI models.

You can view this activity and manage these apps’ access to AI features.

In early May, Microsoft also introduced AI agents, intelligent assistants that can change Windows settings with a voice or text command. These features are now available on Copilot+ PCs and Snapdragon processors.

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The editorial team of Red Hot Cyber consists of a group of individuals and anonymous sources who actively collaborate to provide early information and news on cybersecurity and computing in general.

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AI Research Healthcare: Transforming Drug Discovery –

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the pharmaceutical industry. More and more, AI is being used in drug discovery to predict which drugs might work and speed up the whole development process.

But here’s something you probably didn’t see coming: some of the same AI tools that help find new drug candidates are now being used to catch insurance fraud. It’s an innovative cross-industry application that’s essential in protecting the integrity of healthcare systems.

AI’s Core Role in Drug Discovery

The field of drug discovery involves multiple stages, including initial compound screening and preclinical testing to clinical trials and regulatory framework compliance. These steps are time-consuming, expensive, and often risky. Traditional methods can take over a decade and cost billions, and success rates remain frustratingly low. This is where AI-powered drug discovery comes in.

The technology taps machine learning algorithms, deep learning, and advanced analytics so researchers can process vast amounts of molecular and clinical data. As such, pharmaceutical firms and biotech companies can reduce the cost and time required in traditional drug discovery processes.

AI trends in drug discovery cover a broad range of applications, too. For instance, specialized AI platforms for the life sciences are now used to enhance drug discovery workflows, streamline clinical trial analytics, and accelerate regulatory submissions by automating tasks like report reviews and literature screenings. This type of technology demonstrates how machine learning can automatically sift through hundreds of models to identify the optimal one that best fits the data, a process that is far more efficient than manual methods.

In the oncology segment, for example, it’s responsible for innovative precision medicine treatments that target specific genetic mutations in cancer patients. Similar approaches are used in studies for:

  • Neurodegenerative diseases
  • Cardiovascular diseases
  • Chronic diseases  
  • Metabolic diseases
  • Infectious disease segments

Rapid development is critical in such fields, and AI offers great help in making the process more efficient. These applications will likely extend to emerging diseases as AI continues to evolve. Experts even predict that the AI drug discovery market will grow from around USD$1.5 billion in 2023 to between USD$20.30 billion by 2030. Advanced technologies, increased availability of healthcare data, and substantial investments in healthcare technology are the main drivers for its growth.

From Molecules to Fraud Patterns

So, how do AI-assisted drug discovery tools end up playing a role in insurance fraud detection? It’s all about pattern recognition. The AI-based tools used in drug optimization can analyze chemical structures and molecular libraries to find hidden correlations. In the insurance industry, the same capability can scan through patient populations, treatment claims, and medical records to identify suspicious billing or treatment patterns.

The applications in drug discovery often require processing terabytes of data from research institutions, contract research organizations, and pharmaceutical sectors. In fraud detection, the inputs are different—claims data, treatment histories, and reimbursement requests. The analytical methods remain similar, however. Both use unsupervised learning to flag anomalies and predictive analytics to forecast outcomes, whether that’s a promising therapeutic drug or a suspicious claim.

Practical Applications In and Out of the Lab

Let’s break down how this dual application works in real-world scenarios:

  • In the lab: AI helps identify small-molecule drugs, perform high-throughput screening, and refine clinical trial designs. Using generation models and computational power, scientists can simulate trial outcomes and optimize patient recruitment strategies, leading to better trial outcomes and fewer delays and ensure drug safety.
  • In insurance fraud detection: Advanced analytics can detect billing inconsistencies, unusual prescription patterns, or claims that don’t align with approved therapeutic product development pathways. It protects insurance systems from losing funds that could otherwise support genuine patients and innovative therapies.

This shared analytical backbone creates an environment for innovation that benefits both the pharmaceutical sector and healthcare insurers.

Challenges and Future Outlook

The integration of AI in drug discovery and insurance fraud detection is promising, but it comes with challenges. Patient data privacy, for instance, is a major concern for both applications, whether it’s clinical trial information or insurance claims data. The regulatory framework around healthcare data is constantly changing, and companies need to stay compliant across both pharmaceutical and insurance sectors.

On the fraud detection side, AI systems need to balance catching real fraud without flagging legitimate claims. False positives can delay patient care and create administrative headaches. Also, fraudsters are getting more sophisticated, so detection algorithms need constant updates to stay ahead.

Despite these hurdles, the market growth for these integrated solutions is expected to outpace other applications due to their dual benefits. With rising healthcare costs and more complex fraud schemes, insurance companies are under increasing pressure to protect their systems while still covering legitimate treatments.

Looking ahead, AI-driven fraud detection is likely to become more sophisticated as it learns from drug discovery patterns. And as healthcare fraud becomes more complex and treatment options expand, we can expect these cross-industry AI solutions to play an even bigger role in protecting healthcare dollars.

Final Thoughts

The crossover between AI drug discovery tools and insurance fraud detection shows how pattern recognition technology can solve problems across different industries. What started as a way to find new medicines is now helping catch fraudulent claims and protect healthcare dollars.

For patients, this dual approach means both faster access to new treatments and better protection of the insurance systems that help pay for their care. For the industry, it’s about getting more value from AI investments; the same technology that helps develop drugs can also stop fraud from draining resources. It’s a smart example of how one innovation can strengthen healthcare from multiple angles.





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Research Tip Sheet: AI and Heart Failure Plus Recent Headlines

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LOS ANGELES (Sept. 12, 2025) — An artificial intelligence (AI) program created by Cedars-Sinai may reduce hospitalizations in people diagnosed with heart failure, a new study reports.

The study, published in JACC: Heart Failure, included 50 people who had been diagnosed with a condition called heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, in which the heart’s main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, becomes too weak to circulate blood throughout the body.

For three months, patients used a smartphone app to transmit home blood pressure readings to their cardiologists. The blood pressure readings were analyzed by an AI program that generated prescribing recommendations to the cardiologists, such as whether a new drug should be added or a dosage changed. The software, named HF-AI (for heart failure AI) was trained using data from Cedars-Sinai patients with heart failure between 2020 to 2022 and incorporates national and international heart failure guidelines.

Cardiologists accepted HF-AI medication and dose recommendations 90.8% of the time. This meant they more than doubled their use of guideline-directed heart failure medications. The program also dramatically decreased hospitalizations. Among the 50 enrolled patients, 23 were hospitalized in the six months before enrolling in the trial. In the six months after the intervention, only six were hospitalizeda 74% reduction. 

Investigators plan to use and study the program with more Cedars-Sinai patients.

“People with heart failure are among our most fragile patients, with extremely high risk of hospitalization and death,” said first author and co-inventor Raj Khandwalla, MD, division chief of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Group and director of Digital Therapeutics at the Smidt Heart Institute. “By translating home blood pressure data into treatment advice, HF-AI lets us fine-tune medications sooner and keep more patients out of the hospital.”

This study was funded by Cedars-Sinai Technology Ventures.

“This research is a testament to the mission of Cedars-Sinai Technology Ventures to invest in innovative technology and improve clinical outcomes for patients,” said James Laur, JD, chief intellectual property officer for Technology Ventures.

Other Cedars-Sinai authors of the study include Alex Shvartser, MS; Raymond J. Zimmer, MD; Merije Chukumerije, MD; Michael Share, MD; Ronit Zadikany, MD; Michael Farkouh, MD; Yaron Elad, MD; and Michelle Maya Kittleson, MD, PHD.

Gregg Fonarow, MD, of UCLA Medical Center also authored the study.

Declaration of interests: The paper describes software that is the subject of U.S. Provisional Patent Application number 63/314,207, filed by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on February 25, 2022. Dr. Fonarow has done consulting for Abbott, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cytokinetics, Eli Lilly, Johnson and Johnson, Medtronic, Merck, Novartis, and Pfizer. All other authors have reported that they have no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose.

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