Barely four months after ChatGPT captured the world’s imagination, Microsoft and Google have introduced the new-look Bing, Bard and their AI-assisted productivity programs. Alphabet and Meta offer a tool that generates ad campaigns based on advertisers’ objectives, such as boosting sales or winning more customers. Microsoft is making OpenAI’s technology available to customers of its Azure cloud platform. Thanks to partnerships with model-makers such as Cohere and Anthropic, AWS users can tap more than 30 large language models. Google, too, is wooing model-builders and other AI firms to its cloud with $250,000-worth of free computing power in the first year, a more generous bargain than it offers to non-AI startups. It maynot be long before AI.Music and Credit Kudos appear in Apple’s music-streaming service and financial offering, or an Amazon chatbot recommends purchases uncannily matched to shoppers’ desires.

(选自2023年某期经济学人)

1. barely用来表示某个动作、状态或情况出现的程度非常低或几乎没有。例如：

I could barely hear what she was saying over the noise in the background. （背景噪音非常吵，我几乎听不清她在说什么）

"Barely"还能用来表示某种状态刚刚超出某个临界点或极限。

The temperature is barely above freezing today. (今天的温度只是略高于冰点)

2. woo 表示追求或谋求得到某人的好感或爱情。通常用于正式场合或描述真诚的行动，而不是轻浮的行为。例如：

"He is really good at wooing women" （他追求女性很有一套）

"The company is wooing top talent from rival firms"（公司正在转移竞争公司的顶级人才）

4.   Cohere成立于2019年，开发人员可以使用该公司创建的自然语言处理软件为企业构建人工智能应用程序，包括聊天机器人工具和其他可以理解人类语音和文本的功能。2023年4月，Cohere入选福布斯AI  50榜单。Anthropic 是一家旨在利用人工智能技术解决人类面临的重大问题的创新公司，推出了一款可以媲美 ChatGPT  的聊天机器人Claude。

5. It may not be long before that…通常是用来表达一个可能发生的情况正在迅速逼近，具有一定的预警意味。

It may not be long before that company goes bankrupt.（那家公司可能快要破产了。）

该固定用法并不是用来描述一件必然会发生的事情，而是一种可能性，因此不应该在表述确凿事实时使用。另外，由于语气带有一定的预警意味，也需要注意在使用时保持恰当的用语和语气以避免造成负面影响。

6. AI.Music一家创业公司，可利用人工智能制作定制音乐，2022年2月被苹果公司收购。Credit Kudos是一家英国信用评分初创公司，2022年3月被苹果公司收购，当时估值约1.5亿美元。

7. uncannily意思是“出奇地，非常地，神奇地”。通常用来形容某些特殊的或超自然的经历或现象，具有一定的程度或者方式上的不寻常。

The coincidence was uncannily similar to something I had just read in a book.（这个巧合非常神奇，和我刚读的一本书中描述的相似。）

8. 翻译：

Barely four months after ChatGPT captured the world’s imagination, Microsoft and Google have introduced the new-look Bing, Bard and their AI-assisted productivity programs. Alphabet and Meta offer a tool that generates ad campaigns based on advertisers’ objectives, such as boosting sales or winning more customers. Microsoft is making OpenAI’s technology available to customers of its Azure cloud platform. Thanks to partnerships with model-makers such as Cohere and Anthropic, AWS users can tap more than 30 large language models. Google, too, is wooing model-builders and other AI firms to its cloud with $250,000-worth of free computing power in the first year, a more generous bargain than it offers to non-AI startups. It maynot be long before AI.Music and Credit Kudos appear in Apple’s music-streaming service and financial offering, or an Amazon chatbot recommends purchases uncannily matched to shoppers’ desires.

在ChatGPT吸引全世界目光仅仅四个月后，微软和谷歌分别推出了新外观的Bing、Bard和人工智能生产力辅助程序。Alphabet和Meta提供的工具可以根据广告客户目标(如提高销售额或获得更多客户)生成广告活动。微软正向其Azure云平台客户提供OpenAI技术。由于与Cohere和Anthropic等人工智能模型公司的合作，AWS用户可以利用30多个大型语言模型。谷歌也在用第一年价值25万美元的免费算力吸引模型和其他人工智能公司上云，这比提供给非人工智能初创公司的条件更加优惠。也许用不了多久AI.Music和Credit Kudos就会出现在苹果音乐流媒体服务和金融产品中，而亚马逊聊天机器人推荐的商品则与购物者愿望惊人地匹配。