Sony joins Facebook, Amazon and Google in chase for AI developers

tokyo — Sony Corp opened up access to its deep-learning software tools, joining Google, Facebook and Amazon.com in a push to attract artificialintelligence developers.

The Japanese company made its Neural Network Libraries available under a free license that lets programmers distribute, modify and use the software for any purpose without paying royalties. The shift to open source aims to “enable the development community to further build on the core libraries’ programs,” Sony said in a statement on Tuesday.

Google has led the way in opening up AI development tools with the 2016 release of its TensorFlow platform. That set off a rush of companies giving away software in hopes of getting more AI experts trained on the same tools and seeking their input to improve and expand the code. Since then, Facebook

The shift to open source aims to enable the development community to further build on the core libraries’ programs Sony Corp

has backed Caffe and Torch, Amazon chose MXNet, while Microsoft Corp released its Cognitive Toolkit.

Last year, the Tokyo-based company made a rare investment into a brand new US-based startup Cogitai, which is focused on a cutting-edge AI technology known as reinforcement learning. That same year, Sony chief executive officer Kazuo Hirai told investors the company needs to be more open to cooperating with outside talent in order to keep up with developments in robotics and AI. — Bloomberg