As workplace knowledge spreads across chats, AI firms are building systems that can structure, retrieve and preserve it over time.
Updated
May 11, 2026 5:24 PM
A messaging app on a phone. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
Votee AI, an enterprise AI company headquartered in Hong Kong, has partnered with its Toronto-based research lab Beever AI to launch Beever Atlas. The new platform is designed to turn workplace chats into searchable knowledge that AI systems can retrieve and understand.
The release focuses on a growing issue inside organisations. Much of today’s workplace knowledge now exists inside chat platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord and Telegram. Important discussions, project decisions and technical information often disappear into long message histories that are difficult to search later.
Beever AI developed the platform to organise those conversations into a structured system for AI assistants. The software connects with Telegram, Discord, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams and Slack, then converts conversations into linked records of people, projects, files and decisions.
The collaboration combines Votee AI’s enterprise infrastructure work with Beever AI’s research around AI memory systems. The companies are releasing two versions of the product. The open-source edition is aimed at individual developers, researchers and creators. The enterprise edition is designed for banks, government agencies and larger organisations with stricter security requirements.
The release also reflects a broader shift happening across the AI industry. Companies are increasingly looking at how AI systems store and retrieve long-term knowledge, rather than relying solely on large context windows or search-based retrieval.
Earlier this year, OpenAI founding member and former director of AI at Tesla Andrej Karpathy discussed the growing need for what he described as “LLM Knowledge Bases.” He argued that AI systems need structured and evolving memory rather than depending only on context windows and vector search.
Beever Atlas approaches that problem through workplace communication. Instead of focusing mainly on uploaded files, the system is designed around conversations that happen daily across team chat platforms. It can also process images, PDFs, voice notes and video files within the same searchable system.
The companies say the software is designed to work directly with AI assistants and coding tools such as Cursor, AWS Kiro and Qwen Code. Integrations for OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are expected later in 2026.
Pak-Sun Ting, Co-Founder and CEO of Votee AI said: "Hong Kong has always been known for property and finance. Beever Atlas is proof that world-class AI infrastructure can emerge from an HK-headquartered company and be shared openly with the world. Every growing organization faces the same silent liability: conversational knowledge loss. Beever Atlas turns this perishable resource into a compounding organizational asset."
A large part of the enterprise version focuses on privacy and access control. The system mirrors permissions from Slack and Microsoft Teams so users can only retrieve information they are already authorised to access. Permission updates are reflected automatically when access changes inside company systems.
The enterprise edition also includes audit logs, encryption controls and data retention settings for organisations handling sensitive internal data. Companies can run the software entirely inside their own infrastructure using Docker and connect it to their preferred AI models through LiteLLM.
The companies argue that organising information is more useful than simply storing chat archives. Jacky Chan Co-Founder and CTO of Votee AI said: "The key technical decision was to treat agent memory as a knowledge engineering problem, not a retrieval problem. Structure beats similarity — a typed graph of who works on what is more useful to an AI than vector search over a Slack archive."
The software also includes protections against prompt injection attacks and systems designed to reduce hallucinated responses. According to the companies, the AI is designed to return “I don't know” with citations when confidence is low instead of generating unsupported answers.
As workplace communication becomes increasingly fragmented across chat platforms, companies are beginning to treat internal conversations as information that AI systems can organise, retrieve and build on. Beever Atlas reflects a broader push to turn everyday workplace communication into long-term organisational memory.
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A smartphone that moves, tracks and responds in real time—but is it real utility or just a marketing gimmick?
Updated
May 1, 2026 2:25 PM
HONOR Robot Phone, with its camera arm extended. PHOTO: HONOR
Smartphones today feel more familiar than new. Each year brings better performance and better cameras, but fewer real surprises. So when a company unveils something called a “Robot Phone”, it’s bound to get attention.
HONOR did exactly that at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this year. While most smartphone brands are focused on software upgrades, HONOR is trying something different with hardware. Its Robot Phone is built to move and adjust on its own. The camera sits on a motorized system that can tilt, track motion and shift angles automatically. It almost looks like a small robotic head, following whatever is happening in front of it. It can pick up sound, recognize motion and stay visually aware of its surroundings. This result feels less like using a regular phone and more like interacting with something responsive.
So what makes HONOR’s Robot Phone different from the smartphones we already use? Here’s a closer look at its camera system, AI features and design, and whether it is truly something new or simply smart marketing.
At its core, the Robot Phone still works like a regular smartphone. What makes it different is the camera system. It has a 200MP camera that sits on a motorized arm with a three-axis gimbal, which extends when in use and folds back into the phone when not needed. The compact motor gives the camera physical movement, while motion control allows it to sense, track and follow a person or object in real time. That means it can keep a subject in frame without constant manual adjustment.
The camera also adds a more playful side to the experience. It can respond with simple gestures, such as nodding or shaking its head, and it can even move in sync with music.
This setup could be particularly useful for content creators. As CNET tech journalist and YouTuber Andrew Lanxon pointed out, it removes the need to carry a separate gimbal. Since the robotic camera module can easily fold into the body of the phone, it is easier to carry around and more convenient for filming or taking photos on the go.
The Robot Phone also has the practical advantage of a smartphone display. It gives users a bigger screen than a standalone camera for framing, monitoring and reviewing footage. Since it runs on Android, the process of recording, editing and sharing content is also more direct.
The most impressive part of the HONOR Robot Phone design is how it fits a moving camera system into the body of a smartphone without needing external attachments.
To make this possible, HONOR uses a custom micro motor that is 70% smaller than mainstream competitors. The company also says it is the industry’s smallest four-degrees-of-freedom (4DoF) gimbal system. To support the stable movement of the camera module, the internal structure uses high-strength materials such as steel and titanium alloy. These materials help the mechanism stay durable as it shifts and repositions over time.
Battery life is another obvious question. HONOR has not revealed the battery capacity of the Robot Phone itself, but it did showcase its Silicon-Carbon Blade Battery technology at MWC 2026. The company says this battery is designed to increase energy density while keeping devices slim, and that it could support capacities of 7,000 mAh and beyond in future foldable devices.
That is not specific to the Robot Phone, but it does hint at the kind of battery improvements that may be needed for smartphones with moving parts and more advanced camera systems.
The AI features in Honor’s Robot Phone are focused on how the device sees and responds to its surroundings in real time. At the most basic level, the phone can track what is happening in a scene and adjust itself without constant user input.
On the functional side, the system keeps subjects framed and in focus automatically. Its AI Object Tracking ensures subjects stay centred, while AI SpinShot enables controlled 90° and 180° rotations for smoother transitions, even when the phone is used one-handed. It can also detect motion and recognize sound, which lets it respond to activity as it happens instead of reacting frame by frame.
The AI becomes more noticeable in the way the device behaves. When activated, the camera module unfolds and the screen displays a pair of animated eyes that track the user’s face and gaze. Honor calls this “embodied AI”, meaning the assistant expresses itself through movement rather than only voice or text. The camera module can adjust its angle during video calls, which makes it feel a little more physically present.
According to Thomas Bai, AI product expert at Honor, the goal is to move beyond passive assistance. By combining sensing, movement and real-time processing, the device is designed to interact with its environment in a more continuous way. In practice, that could mean interpreting its surroundings and responding as situations change, such as when someone is moving through an unfamiliar space.
The Robot Phone has sparked curiosity, but there is still a lot we do not know. For one thing, it is still a prototype, with a release expected later this year. Early signs also suggest it may be expensive, partly because of rising memory chip costs. Some of its more playful features also feel uncertain. In demos, the phone can move along to music, but with only a handful of pre-set tracks, it is hard to tell whether that feature will be genuinely useful or remain more of a showcase moment.
Then there are the practical questions. A motorized camera system could make the phone heavier and more top-heavy, which may affect comfort during daily use. Running a motor alongside continuous AI tracking will also likely put pressure on battery life. These are not dealbreakers, but they are trade-offs that will matter outside of a demo.
Privacy is another concern that is hard to overlook. Some of the AI features rely on cloud processing, which means certain data is sent to external servers instead of being processed fully on the device. That is common in many AI systems today, but it feels more significant here because the phone is built to actively track movement and reposition its camera in real time. For some people, that level of autonomy may feel intrusive rather than helpful. It also raises bigger questions about what sensors are built into the device and how much data they collect during everyday use.
So, is the HONOR Robot Phone a real step forward, or just a clever idea packaged well?
The answer depends on who it is for.
For content creators, the appeal is obvious. Early indications suggest it could make video capture easier by reducing the need for extra gear. Honor’s collaboration with cinema camera company ARRI also suggests a serious push toward more cinematic smartphone footage.
For everyone else, the value is less clear. Outside of content creation, it is still hard to see how these features would translate into everyday use in a meaningful way.
For now, the Robot Phone sits somewhere between promise and experiment. Whether it turns into a genuinely useful new kind of smartphone or fades away as a novelty will only become clear once it moves beyond controlled demos and into real life.