Book a flight now, and Google Flights' says they'll make sure you get the best price. The indictment filed by the U.S. attorney's office in San Jose, California, is an offshoot of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer spun off from Google. Uber agreed to pay Waymo $245 million to settle the case last year, but the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit made an unusual recommendation to open a criminal probe after seeing enough evidence to conclude a theft may have occurred. Uber considered having self-driving technology crucial to survive and counter potential competitive threats from Waymo and dozens of other companies working on robotic vehicles. Uber wants to build self-driving cars so it can eliminate the need to have a human behind the wheel, one of the biggest expenses in its still-unprofitable ride-hailing service.

JERUSALEM – The long shadow war between Israel and Iran has burst into the open in recent days, with Israel allegedly striking Iran-linked targets as far away as Iraq and crash-landing two drones in Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut. These incidents, along with an air raid in Syria that Israel says thwarted an imminent Iranian drone attack, have raised tensions at a particularly fraught time. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to project strength three weeks before national elections, while Iran has taken a series of provocative actions in recent months aimed at pressuring European nations to provide relief from crippling U.S. sanctions. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, vowed to retaliate after a drone crashed on the militant group's Beirut media office and another exploded midair early Sunday. Israeli forces along the border with Lebanon are on high alert, raising fears of a repeat of the 2006 war.

The BBC is preparing to launch a rival to Amazon's Alexa called Beeb, with a pledge that it will understand British accents. The voice assistant, which has been created by an in-house BBC team, will be launched next year, with a focus on enabling people to find their favourite programmes and interact with online services. While some US-developed products have struggled to understand strong regional accents, the BBC will this week ask staff in offices around the UK to record their voices and make sure the software understands them. The BBC currently has no plans to launch a standalone physical product such as Amazon's Echo speaker or a Google Home device. Instead, the Beeb software will be built into the BBC's website, its iPlayer app on smart TVs, and made available to manufacturers who want to incorporate the public broadcaster's software.

StyleSnap is Amazon's latest attempt to use machine learning to peddle fashion. How it works: Announced at Amazon's AI and robotics conference re:MARS 2019, the tool lets you upload photos and screenshots of clothes and accessories you like. It then uses machine-learning algorithms to match them to similar items on Amazon. Accredited "influencers" for Amazon are encouraged to get their followers on social media to use StyleSnap to take a screenshot of outfits they've modeled. The influencer will then earn commission on any subsequent sales. The big picture: It's the company's latest crack at one of the few areas it has yet to dominate in retail.

If you stumble over your grammar, take comfort in this: Tech companies are supercharging their digital grammar editors with artificial intelligence and machine learning in an attempt to make clear, persuasive writing easier than ever. Google became the latest to enter the game last week, when the tech giant announced it would be adding an artificial intelligence-powered tool that offers automatic detection of grammar mistakes while composing messages in Gmail, as well as auto-correction of some common spelling mistakes. The company introduced a similar AI-driven function to documents in G Suite earlier this year. While some education experts applaud the advancement of high-tech grammar tools as a way to help people more clearly express their thoughts, others aren't so sure. Artificial intelligence, according to the contrarians, is only as smart as the humans who program it, and often just as biased.

The same artificial intelligence method used in facial recognition systems could help improve the prediction of hailstorms and their severity, according to researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) researchers have found that the same artificial intelligence method used in facial recognition systems could help improve the prediction of hailstorms and their severity. The researchers used machine learning to train a convolutional neural network to recognize features of individual storms that affect the formation of hail. The model was trained on images of simulated storms, along with information about temperature, pressure, wind speed, and direction. Once trained, the model was able to determine which features of the storm correlate with whether or not it will hail, and how big the hailstones are likely to be.

Robotics teams from all over the country compete in Pennsylvania in the Subterranean Challenge to see whose robot performs best in a simulated mine disaster scenario.

Not long after the invention of computers in the 1940s, expectations were high. Many believed that computers would soon achieve or surpass human-level intelligence. Herbert Simon, a pioneer of artificial intelligence (AI), famously predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do"--to achieve general AI. Of course, these predictions turned out to be wildly off the mark. In the tech world today, optimism is high again.

Hey, Google, enough is enough already. Google was caught having contractors listening in to our conversations from its personal assistant, which sounds bad until you realize Google wasn't alone in this. Apple and Facebook were doing the same thing. And this week, Microsoft got stung by Vice's Motherboard, and now admits it, too, listens. The companies, which also include Amazon, have said they do this on a limited basis to learn and make their assistants better.

Robots powered by artificial intelligence have been popping up in hotels, airports and shopping malls. Now, they're showing up at assisted living homes, too. With names like Stevie, Paro and Pillo, these robots can do everything from keeping the elderly company to reminding them to take their medication at the right time. "Robotics has the potential to play a huge role in elder care facilities and hospitals to enable people to do more with less," says Conor McGinn, a roboticist and assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin. Watch the video above to learn more about how robots are being used in elderly care.