“As a segment of the marble business, sculpture is dwarfed by the industrial side, which slices slabs by the millions of tons each year. Robots help these companies mill countertops and shower stalls for markets around the world. But fine art sculpture is big business too, worth billions of dollars a year.

The first robot sculptor appeared in Carrara in 2005. Now there are about 30, and the total worldwide is around 100. Two men play outsize roles in this rapidly evolving business. One is Massari, the more evangelistic of the two. His corporate mothership, publicly traded Litix SpA, trumpets Massari’s vision of the future on the first page of a slick marketing brochure. ‘We Don’t Need Another Michelangelo: In Italy, It’s Robots’ Turn to Sculpt,’ proclaims the newspaper headline he reproduced from a New York Times piece on his company.

The other man is a bluff Midwesterner named Jim Durham… He was the biggest producer of fine art stone sculpture in America, and now, with his Franco Cervietti purchase, the world.”

From Bloomberg.

“Parisians and tourists flocked to take a dip in the Seine River this weekend after city authorities gave the green light for it to be used for public swimming for the first time in more than a century.

The opening followed a comprehensive clean-up programme sped up by its use as a venue in last year’s Paris Olympics after people who regularly swam in it illegally, lobbied for its transformation.

The outgoing mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, also helped to champion the plans, jumping in the river herself before the Olympics.

About 1,000 swimmers a day will be allowed access to three bathing sites on the banks of the Seine for free, until the end of August.”

From The Guardian.

“As AI continues to grow, experts say that the wine industry is proof that businesses can integrate the technology efficiently to supplement labor without displacing a workforce. New agricultural tech like AI can help farmers to cut back on waste, and to run more efficient and sustainable vineyards by monitoring water use and helping determine when and where to use products like fertilizers or pest control. AI-backed tractors and irrigation systems, farmer say, can minimize water use by analyzing soil or vines, while also helping farmers to manage acres of vineyards by providing more accurate data on the health of a crop or what a season’s yield will be.

Other facets of the wine industry have also started adopting the tech, from using generative AI to create custom wine labels to turning to ChatGPT to develop, label and price an entire bottle.”

From Associated Press.

“AI-enabled horticulture will be on display at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Garden designer Tom Massey and architect Je Ahn will helm the Avanade ‘Intelligent’ Garden, which uses sensors and AI to track plant welfare. Based on the theme of an urban forest, the garden will contain tree species with various horticultural requirements. Sensors measure characteristics such as soil moisture, the movement of sap in tree trunks, and the amount of light filtering through canopies — ‘things that a human gardener wouldn’t be able to see in real time,’ says Massey.

AI will help gardeners make sense of this data via a text interface similar to a chatbot, which visitors will be able to see on screens inside a mycelium-covered pavilion. ‘You’ll be able to have a conversation with the tree and say, ‘What do you need?’ or ‘How are you feeling?’ says Massey. ‘And the tree will respond.’

The idea is that this kind of data gathering and feedback makes for more efficient allocation of increasingly precious resources such as water. It should also improve plant resilience; one in 10 urban trees dies within a year of planting, says Ahn, and by the time you notice wilting branches and crispy leaves it may be too late. Massey hopes data from the show garden could feed into an app that home gardeners would use to track the health of their own plants. Users could manually input data, such as when they last watered a plant, to keep tabs on its condition.”

From Financial Times.