Pre-orders for the iPhone X in the U.S., Taiwan and Singapore were not as strong as expected, according to a report by DigiTimes. The iPhone X reportedly had a tight supply in other markets, including Japan. Apple released the iPhone X early November, weeks after it launched the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The iPhone X comes with an edge-to-edge OLED display and the TrueDepth camera system for the new Face ID and Animoji features. The iPhone X prices start at $999 for the 32GB model and $1,149 for the 256GB version.

An AI program named Shelley writes horror stories. And in October, a robot won citizenship in Saudi Arabia. The applications of AI seem limitless, and will eventually impact almost every aspect of our personal and professional lives. So why not tumble down this proverbial rabbit hole together? What could AI possibly have to do with accounting?

Japanese researchers have developed a humanoid robot that is sportier than many human beings. He can play push-ups, pull-ups, badminton and even sweat. Because they really want me to feel like the lazy person I am, robots can now also do sit-ups, push-ups and something called back extensions. I had to look up the latter. Researchers from the University of Tokyo have described in the journal Science Robotics their humanoid, which looks amazingly lifelike in its appearance and movements.

Google today announced that its Lens AI is being rolled out for Google Assistant in Pixel and Pixel 2 smartphones. Lens uses computer vision to do things like detect landmarks or extract phone numbers, email addresses, and text from real-world objects like billboards or marquees. Lens can also scan barcodes and recognize video games, movies, books, and other works of art. In the weeks ahead, Lens will roll out in Google Assistant for English speakers in Canada, India, Singapore, the U.K. and the United States, Google assistant product manager Ibrahim Badr said today in a blog post. Lens with Google Assistant was pointed out by Android Police in recent days.

I don't trust robots and I didn't trust robots long before I read Asimov and Dick and Piercy. Watching the active mechanization of human tasks has always been eerie and apocalyptic. Plus, I'm in favor of the human soul--forget opposable thumbs, souls make us the superior species. So you can understand my disbelief when all this changed recently, in Singapore, when a robot cooked me breakfast. The robot's name is AUSCA, an acronym for Automated Service Chef Associate. It's employed by the Millennium & Copthorne Hotels group, at the M Social, their Singapore River-adjacent property marketed toward millennials.

The AI lab will work in the areas of futuristic digital technologies including AI Chatbot Services, Smart Process Automation, NLP (Text Analytics), Image Recognition & Processing, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics. With this, both the firms aim to deliver unique and comprehensive set of services to their clients in the Greater China region starting from strategy to implementation and enabling clients in their Digital Transformation journey. The collaboration aims to play a significant role in transforming local Chinese as well as multinational enterprises to move to the next levels of digitalization powered by AI. The lab aims to create unique IPs and Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to address not only industry specific business challenges but also create newer revenue streams for companies, specifically in Automotive, Healthcare, Hightech and Retail segments. "China has become breeding ground for the adoption of new technologies and innovation in recent years. We are operating our engineering services business for more than 15 years in China with 500 engagements and we feel that we can provide solutions to the complex problems of our customers," said Karthikeyan Natarajan, Sr. Vice President and Global Head of Integrated Engineering Solutions, Tech Mahindra.

Global IT services and consulting major Accenture on Thursday said artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, lifting the country's income by 15% in 2035. A study titled'Rewire for Growth' also estimates that AI could add $957 billion to the Indian economy by changing the nature of work to create better outcome for businesses and the society. "AI's transformative power can be compared to the advent of computing itself, and there's strong early evidence that AI can play a key role in unlocking socio-economic value in India. With the right investments AI can create a flywheel effect'liberating' people to create long-term economic and societal value," said Rekha Menon, senior managing director and chairman of Accenture India. The research was done by Accenture Research in collaboration with Frontier Economics. The report also explores the strength of the country's AI innovation ecosystem relative to other G20 economies across five key pillars -- universities, start-ups, large businesses, policy makers and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo has created what appears to be the most advanced humanoid robot yet--actually two of them, one called Kenshiro the other Kengoro. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the team describes working to make robots that are as similar to humans as possible and demonstrates what their two latest models can do. As robotics has advanced, most robots have evolved to become near single-purpose machines. Some are designed to paint cars, for example, others to carry supplies for soldiers. But some are of another class altogether, and are called humanoids because their purpose is not necessarily to accomplish a task, but to mimic the abilities of human beings.

Artificial intelligence could add $957 billion to the Indian economy and will lift the country's income by 15% in 2035, a new research report from Accenture showed. AI has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, the report, called'Rewire for Growth', estimated. "The economic boost will be driven by innovative AI technologies that enable people to make more efficient use of their time and do what humans do best – create, imagine and innovate new things. What's needed is a clear, long-term vision, and a multi-stakeholder action plan that balances growth with the ethical questions posed by AI," Rekha M Menon, senior managing director and chairman, Accenture India, said. AI startups have witnessed higher than average growth in India since 2011, the report said.

China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) in July 2017 began implementing the Planning for Development of New-generation AI (artificial intelligence) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on December 13 announced the Three-year (2018-2020) Action Plan to Promote Development of New-generation AI Industry. Planning for Development of New-generation AI sets forth main goals in three steps: China's development of AI technologies and application will reach an overall level abreast of the world's leading level in 2020; China will become a leading country in development of AI technologies and application in 2025, with AI to become a force driving the country's industry upgrades and economic transformation; China will become the global AI center in 2030. The MST lists 13 projects of developing cutting-edge AI technologies, with completion scheduled for 2021. One of them is to develop neural network chips with performance 20 times that of Nvidia Tesla M40. MIIT's 3-year plan is mainly to realize Planning for Development of New-generation AI and Made in China 2025 policies.