It was one of those amazing "we're living in the future" moments. In an October 2013 press release, IBM declared that MD Anderson, the cancer center that is part of the University of Texas, "is using the IBM Watson cognitive computing system for its mission to eradicate cancer." Well, now that future is past. The partnership between IBM and one of the world's top cancer research institutions is falling apart. The project is on hold, MD Anderson confirms, and has been since late last year.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Were you impressed with the mobile trends last year? Between Pokemon Go's AR, the chatbot craze, Amazon Echo's AI and Facebook Live's live streaming taking over, there was a lot going on.

Artificial intelligence has a new job: setting a good example for your kids. It seems that children's behaviour can be influenced by the personality of a robot companion – playing with an enthusiastic or attentive robot, for instance, made them engage more and work harder. Researchers ran a series of experiments with Tega, a companion robot that looks like a cross between a Furby and a Teletubby. To test how the robot's personality could affect the children's behaviour, they programmed the robot with different responses. "The goal is to have a companion that has all of the behaviours that we want to instil and promote in the child," says team member Goren Gorden at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Investing in start-ups trying to make video games has fallen out of favor in much of the venture capital community. They're difficult-to-predict businesses, driven more by characters and animation than by novel technology and often have limited potential buyers if they don't work out as well as expected. But Xsolla, a Sherman Oaks company that helps game makers offer virtual goods and process payments, needs more developers to thrive to keep its own business healthy. So its founder is stepping in to help fund small gaming companies. Alex Agapitov and two business partners pooled their personal money along with cash from other wealthy individuals to form Xsolla Capital. None of the money is from Xsolla's profits, Agapitov said.

Twitter has reportedly started "ghost-deleting" tweets as part of its crackdown on offensive content. The company recently announced a new set of safety features designed to protect users from online abuse, including something called'safe search'. This hides tweets containing "potentially sensitive content" and tweets from blocked and muted accounts from users' search results, though Twitter said that the content will continue to exist. However, according to Twitter user @SuperNerdCow, the site has gone a step further, hiding one of his tweets from all users, even when they enter the update's URL. Twitter has ghost-deleted my Tweet.

Amid rumors that the iPhone 8 will incorporate advanced facial recognition features, the Hebrew-language website Calcalist (via Times of Israel) is reporting that Apple recently acquired Realface, an up-and-coming Israeli startup with impressive real-time facial recognition software. Lending credence to rumors that the iPhone 8 may forgo the use of Touch ID in favor of facial recognition, Realface's software is said to be sophisticated enough such that it can reliably be used as a foundation for mobile-based biometric authentication. As is often the case when Apple acquires a company, Realface's web presence has already been wiped from the web. Still, thanks to the magic of Google, we were able to poke around and dig up some intriguing nuggets of information about the company's promising technology. Realface boasts that it's AI software rests upon deep learning methods and is so reliable and quick that the end-result is an absolutely seamless user experience.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is leaving no stone unturned in wooing startups in India to its cloud platform Azure. On Monday, the Redmond-headquartered tech giant announced that Flipkart, India's e-commerce marketplace, will adopt Microsoft Azure as its exclusive public cloud platform. Nadella, who is in his maiden visit to Bangalore as the CEO of Microsoft, is in talks with other startups as well to understand their technology needs. He's pitching Azure cloud platform to users as the company looks to catch up with Amazon Web Services in India. Amazon started Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2003 after experiencing the need for cloud services first hand.

And it all feels a little familiar. The company has re-invented the status tool – which until now has only offered the option to put a piece of text next to your name, like "at the gym" – so that it takes one of Snapchat's most central and celebrated features. And it is just the latest Facebook company to do so – with everything from Instagram to Facebook's own app taking its competitors innovations. People will now be able to share photos and videos as "statuses", in a similar way to how stories work on Snapchat and now Instagram. Rather than simply posting text, they will be able to add pictures that will show for all their friends – until they are automatically deleted.

Amazon is bringing the next generation of its excellent Fire TV Stick to the UK, updating the device with Alexa, expanded voice search capabilities and a new user interface. The addition of Alexa support is undoubtedly the most notable upgrade. The artificial intelligence assistant is widely recognised as the best in the game, powering Amazon's Echo speakers, and is set to land on a range of new product categories in the near future, including cars, phones, fridges and TVs. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Self-driving cars wearing a Hyundai badge will hit the road inside three years, with the company confirming it will debut an autonomous driving system for highway usage by 2020. The announcement makes Hyundai the car brand with the most affordable range of products to have communicated its roll-out of technology that can drive without human input. However unlike some competitors it has placed caveats on its system. Hyundai Motor Company senior research engineer Byungyong You told Drive that the initial release of its system will be able to accelerate, brake, steer, change lanes and detect any obstacle automatically for an extended period of time, but on highways only. "We are aiming to do highway first and next we will expand it to the urban driving conditions," he said.