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Wise F&I’s Amy Counts Named 2026 NAMAD Woman of the Year

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ST. LOUIS, Aug. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AD). Wise F&I is proud to announce that Amy Counts, Regional Vice President of Client Success, has been named the 2026 NAMAD Woman of the Year by the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers (NAMAD). The annual award recognizes outstanding female leadership, dedication, and impact within the automotive industry, honoring women who champion minority dealers, build meaningful industry relationships, and promote diversity and inclusion.

“I’m incredibly honored to receive this recognition from NAMAD. Throughout my career, I’ve had the honor of building relationships with many incredible industry leaders. I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue supporting and advocating for the people who make this industry so special,” said Amy Counts.

Counts has built a distinguished career in the automotive industry spanning three decades. She began her career with The Reynolds and Reynolds Company in 1996, where she spent 17 years and earned numerous honors, including four inductions into the 300 Sales Club and recognition as Variable Operations Specialist of the Year for the Central Area Market in 2012. She also received the company’s Core Value Award and a NAMAD Appreciation Award in 2004.

In 2015, Counts joined Wise F&I, where she currently serves as Regional Vice President of Client Success. With over 10 years at Wise F&I, she has played an integral role in building strong relationships and supporting the success of dealers and industry partners.

“Amy’s impact reaches far beyond her role at Wise F&I,” said Matt Croak, President and CEO of Wise F&I. “She has spent her career investing in people, building meaningful relationships and creating opportunities for others to succeed. What makes this recognition so special is that it reflects the person Amy has always been, an exceptional leader, a dedicated advocate and someone who genuinely believes in giving back. We couldn’t be more proud to see her recognized for the impact she has made throughout her career.”

Beyond her professional career, Counts has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to education, leadership and community service. From 2017 to 2023, she served on the Missouri State University Board of Governors, becoming the first woman of color to serve as Board Chair in 2022. She continues her service to the university as a member of the Missouri State University Foundation Board of Trustees, where she serves on the Executive Committee. Her philanthropic efforts include the creation of the Amelia Counts Scholarship and an estate commitment establishing the Amelia Counts Chair in the College of Natural and Applied Sciences.

Counts currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. and Great Southern Bank, a $5.7 billion financial institution headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. She began her service on the boards in January 2024, bringing her extensive leadership experience and industry perspective to the organization.

In addition, Counts is also a passionate advocate for women’s leadership and student success. She has been an active member of Bears WIN (Women’s Impact Network) since 2022 and will assume the role of Chair this year. In 2024, she served as Vice Chair of the Missouri State University Presidential Search Committee and was recognized as Volunteer of the Year by the Missouri State University Alumni Association.

Her commitment to community extends to the St. Louis area, where she has served for 17 years on the Board of St. Louis ArtWorks, supporting programs that provide diverse teens with life skills, confidence and paid creative work experience. She is also a member of FOCUS St. Louis, a network of civic leaders working to advance a thriving and equitable region.

Across her career and community service, Counts has consistently demonstrated the leadership, generosity and commitment to inclusion that the NAMAD Woman of the Year award represents.

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SOURCE Wise F&I

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USI Launches AI Smart Camera Solution to Accelerate Smart Manufacturing

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NANTOU, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — USI today announced its next-generation AI Smart Camera solution, a comprehensive edge AI and vision platform that empowers manufacturers to accelerate digital transformation through AI-driven quality inspection, process automation, logistics optimization, and smart factory initiatives.

Moving beyond conventional camera hardware, USI’s AI Smart Camera integrates a high-performance, low-power edge computing platform, high-resolution imaging technology, and proprietary AI vision software to deliver real-time image analysis and actionable insights at the edge. Designed for modern manufacturing environments, the solution enables automated inspection, early defect detection, and faster, more consistent quality decisions. By reducing inspection costs, improving production efficiency, and enhancing product quality, it helps manufacturers accelerate their transition toward smarter and more autonomous production operations.

For manufacturers, the journey to AI-powered vision extends beyond object detection and defect identification. Success depends on turning AI from a proof-of-concept project into a production-ready solution that delivers consistent performance, scales efficiently, and seamlessly adapts to evolving manufacturing requirements.

USI addresses this challenge with an integrated AI Smart Camera platform that supports the complete AI development lifecycle—from data collection and dataset generation to model training and deployment. Its no-code/low-code AI model training platform further simplifies development, enabling customers to develop and deploy vision applications with greater efficiency and less dependence on specialized AI expertise.

Key features of USI AI Smart Camera include:

Real-Time Edge AI Processing: Performs image analysis and AI inference at the edge, enabling fast visual decisions and timely responses without relying solely on centralized computing.High-Quality Imaging for Industrial Inspection: Combines a high-resolution, low-lux-capable camera module with powerful Edge AI computing to support demanding inspection and machine vision applications.Faster AI Deployment: Integrates hardware, embedded software, and AI vision development tools into a production-ready platform, helping customers shorten development cycles and accelerate the transition from proof of concept to production.Flexible AI Vision Applications: Supports object detection, defect identification, OCR, key-part positioning and tracking, assembly verification, product classification, and operation behavior detection and analysis.Seamless Integration with Industrial Environments: Ruggedized design with industrial-grade interfaces, including Ethernet, Power over Ethernet (PoE), HDMI, and MicroSD, ensuring seamless compatibility with existing equipment, machine vision systems, and automation platforms.

By automating visual inspection and defect identification, the AI Smart Camera can reduce reliance on manual QA operations while improving inspection consistency. Its real-time visual intelligence can also provide actionable data to help manufacturers quickly identify process deviations, reduce defect rates, and lower production costs. The platform can further serve as an intelligent visual decision layer for automated production, providing real-time visual guidance and feedback to robotic systems. This enables manufacturers to move beyond inspection automation toward more responsive and autonomous production processes.

“Demand for AI-powered vision applications is growing rapidly across the manufacturing sector. Today’s manufacturers are seeking more than just camera hardware. They need complete, end-to-end solutions that can be deployed quickly and deliver measurable business value,” said Justin Chang, Director of the Vertical Mobility Solution Center at USI. “By combining advanced Edge AI capabilities with our integrated vision platform, we enable customers to accelerate the adoption of smart manufacturing, quality inspection, and industrial automation applications. Our solution helps bring AI from proof of concept to production faster and more efficiently.”

As a global ODM partner, USI combines expertise in product design, manufacturing, and Edge AI integration to deliver complete solutions tailored to customer requirements. The AI Smart Camera is already deployed within USI’s own manufacturing operations, providing a production-proven reference platform for industrial AI vision applications.

Building on this experience, USI can customize AI vision solutions around customers’ specific production environments and business requirements, helping shorten development time, reduce implementation risks, and accelerate their smart manufacturing journey.

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/usi-launches-ai-smart-camera-solution-to-accelerate-smart-manufacturing-302871089.html

SOURCE USI

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Media’s future tense in AI-driven world

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BEIJING, Sept. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — This is an op-ed from China Daily.

Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel Ubik imagined a door that demands payment before opening — a fantasy then, but eerily prescient in today’s AI-driven world. While Elon Musk predicts AI will bring global abundance, for traditional media that abundance has already arrived — with devastating consequences.

The question is no longer whether AI changes media, but what role professional journalism can play when information is plentiful, yet truth, context and reality grow scarce.

Dick’s own life — overlooked, depressed and penniless — belied his extraordinary foresight. In The Man in the High Castle, he imagined alternate realities. Today, personalized algorithms, misinformation and AI-generated content make such alternate realities all too real.

Yet Dick’s vision also offers hope through an unexpected link with the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes). Both suggest reality is not fixed, but a pattern of ever-shifting possibilities. The I Ching asks not “What will happen?” but “What situation am I in, and how should I respond to its changing pattern?” That, arguably, is precisely the role media must adopt in the AI age: providing orientation, credibility and meaning when information itself has lost its scarcity and economic value.

Not all sci-fi is dystopian. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics embodied faith that humans could impose rules on technology — yet today’s AI race is far more complex. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek imagined a moneyless, post-scarcity civilization; AI may be bringing that closer, just as Google’s free search and maps once upended the world.

So where does this leave traditional media? In a Dickian dystopia, media could become a modern-day I Ching — helping people navigate uncertainty, distinguish illusion from reality, and make informed choices when no single truth prevails. In a Roddenberry-esque future, media could guide humanity on how to live wisely with AI-driven abundance.

The practical challenge remains: financing itself in the first scenario and inspiring itself in the second. As Dick warned in The Man in the High Castle, humanity’s “destiny lies in the hands of a few men.” We can only hope some of them are traditional media editors.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/medias-future-tense-in-ai-driven-world-302871740.html

SOURCE China Daily

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New agentic AI platform sounds death knell for manual presentation tools

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Sembly AI launches Sembly 3.0 in biggest evolution since 2019

SYDNEY, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Sembly AI launches Sembly 3.0, an agentic AI platform that transforms an organisation’s documents, meetings, and CRM content into finished, fully branded presentations, proposals, case studies and reports in minutes in over 45 languages.

The launch marks the company’s biggest evolution since it was founded in 2019, repositioning Sembly as an “AI execution layer” for businesses. It turns everyday business knowledge into the finished materials companies use to sell, deliver and communicate.

Users simply need to specify their goal (eg, “Sell my services”) and the client’s website, then watch Sembly get to work: pulling information from business materials, deriving appropriate branding, researching the customer, and producing a bespoke on-brand pitch deck.

“Prompts make people think about how to talk to AI. But dialogue lets them focus on what they want to accomplish,” said Gil Makleff, CEO and co-founder of Sembly AI. “That makes creating business documents faster and more efficient, turning time saved into real business impact.”

“Manually creating presentations is a thing of the past,” said Artem Koren, Chief Product & Technology Officer and co-founder of Sembly AI. “Business materials are the substrate of decision-making: they are how companies communicate, persuade and decide. Sembly 3.0 changes how they are made entirely.”

“Your customers want to hear how you serve them in their specific world and their specific situation, and Sembly makes that possible for every customer,” Koren added. “With Sembly 3.0, your results are as good as how clearly you can state your goal. That’s all you’re limited by.”

Early users of Sembly 3.0 report saving two to three weeks of work on reports and presentations that traditionally pass through multiple hands before they are delivery-ready.

Heorhii Tulchyi, Chief Technology Officer at market research company, Bell & Holmes, is one of those early users of Sembly 3.0.

He said: “Sembly has fundamentally changed how I prepare presentations and client communications. It has saved my team and me weeks of work and dramatically accelerated how we turn ideas and information into polished deliverables. I haven’t seen anything else on the market quite like it.”

Sembly 3.0 is available from today at www.sembly.ai.

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SOURCE Sembly AI

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