Latest / AI.pt / HoneCraft MILAE calls isolated elderly, Apple Siri arrives Portugal delayed, Morais Leitão trains AI on legal docs
Transcript
- Maya: Hey everyone! Here's what's on the radar today on AI.pt. HoneCraft's MILAE phones isolated elderly people for municipalities, Apple's AI Siri may reach Portugal five months late, and Morais Leitão built its own legal AI. I'm Maya. James: And I'm James. Let's get into it. Maya: So HoneCraft, a Portuguese startup, built an AI system called MILAE that phones residents who live alone. No internet, no smartphone, no app. The person just answers and talks, according to Executive Digest. James: That phone-first choice is the right call, Maya. Founder Tiago Nunes says thousands of people never open apps or portals, but they answer the phone. Executive Digest puts five hundred seventeen thousand people over sixty-five living alone nationally. Maya: Exactly right, James. MILAE holds a conversation, and if a call turns up a problem, the responsible professionals get notified. Two limits: it always identifies itself as artificial intelligence, and it is not an emergency service. James: It won the Excellence in Data and AI twenty twenty-six award, presented in Lisbon on the twenty-ninth of September. HoneCraft now wants to take it to more municipalities and public services. Maya: Onto Apple. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says the AI-powered Siri could reach Portugal five months behind other markets, and that is the best case. Apple has set no date for the European Union, per The Mac Observer. James: That five-month figure has a precedent, Maya. Apple Intelligence hit the EU about five months after its US debut. The new Siri started beta on US iPhones in mid-September, so repeating that gap points to mid-February twenty twenty-seven. Maya: And that is a projection, not an Apple commitment. Gurman considers a longer wait possible. The buyer takeaway: a new iPhone 18 Pro does not guarantee the assistant Apple showed at the announcement. James: On the why, they disagree. Apple blames the Digital Markets Act, saying its rules block the same conditions offered outside the bloc. The Commission rejects that and says the decision belongs to Apple. Talks continue. Maya: Last one. Morais Leitão, a Portuguese law firm, built a generative AI platform called ML One AI with Xpand IT. Lawyers ask questions in plain language and check the sources behind each answer, ECO reports. James: What stands out, Maya, is the grounding. It runs on Microsoft Azure, Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI, over more than fifty-four thousand internal documents. About four hundred fifty professionals use it, with monthly usage above seventy-five percent. Maya: Exactly, and partner Carlos Coelho says commercial tools could speed up tasks but did not carry the firm's accumulated knowledge, so they built their own. It sits as an access layer, with answers tracing back to sources under confidentiality rules. Maya: That's your AI.pt daily brief. Check ai.pt for the full stories.