International Focus: Russia
March 3, 2017
March/April 2017
More articles in this issue:
The 25-year old Russian entrepreneur and CEO of Prisma Labs, Alexey Moiseenkov explained to Business Insider that the app relies heavily on artificial intelligence and deep learning, to stylize the image as quickly as an Instagram filter, making it ready to share.
Popular Russian Photo App Uses AI
Prisma, a stylistic photography app from Moscow-based Prism Labs, has enjoyed explosive popularity since launching in 2016, with users downloading the app and filtering more than one billion photos. The app takes a user’s photo and stylizes it. For example, filters can make a photo look like a painting by Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh. The 25-year old Russian entrepreneur and CEO of Prisma Labs, Alexey Moiseenkov explained to Business Insider that the app relies heavily on artificial intelligence and deep learning, to stylize the image as quickly as an Instagram filter, making it ready to share.
Moscow Hosts Electronics Recycling Event
Moscow will host the Eurasian Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment Solutions Congress in late March. The event is the second of its kind focused on electronics recycling in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) nations – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. According to Moscow-based Ruslom and Rusmet, the event’s organizers, the EAEU is “a new and fast growing recycling market that generates about 1.5 million tonnes of electronic scrap per year with a value of more than €400 million (USD $430 million).”
Russian Social Network Vs. Data-Mining Firms
Vkontakte, a Russian social network with 88 million registered users in Russia and 143 million worldwide, has sued two companies, Double Data and the National Bureau of Credit Histories, for what the company claims is unauthorized collection of users’ information. Vkontakte claims the unauthorized collection slows the social network’s speed, and wants compensation. Vkontakte is the second most popular website in Russia in terms of daily users, trailing search engine Yandex.
LinkedIn Removed From App Stores in Russia
Smartphone owners in Russia can no longer download the LinkedIn app from the iTunes and Google Play app stores, after the app ran afoul of local laws that require companies to store data on Russian citizens within the nation’s borders. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has several million users in Russia. “It denies access to our members in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses,” said Nicole Leverich, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn.
Russian Delegation Visits Belarus to Invest
A Russian delegation visited Belarus in February, looking for potential opportunities for venture financing. “We have created a new way to finance innovative projects,” said Chairman of the State Science and Technology Committee of Belarus Alexander Shumilin. Potential targets for investment include radio electronics, information technologies, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, according to Shumilin.
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