In the latest attempt to fulfill sci-fi movie fantasies, tech firms have been lining up to provide you with a virtual assistant. From well-known voice-powered AIs such as Apple's Siri to upstarts like Viv, the goal is to quicken the actions you already take on your phone and other devices, growing ever-more efficient at the job by learning from your behavior. But like any hired help, each of these AI assistants has different skills, blind spots, and quirks. Bio: A voice-driven assistant that talks back to you--invoked by long-pressing the iPhone or iPad home button--and proactively recommends actions to take. Recently took up residence on Apple TV and Apple Watch.

At Retail Assist, we understand the importance of always having one eye on technology, in order to stay ahead of the curve. We've been researching the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to bring you our opinion on consumer adoption of AI. In the news recently, we've noticed that the makers of Apple's iconic digital assistant, Siri, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, have released a new AI platform, Viv. The key difference between their "next generation" tool and other AI platforms is that it isn't constrained by service provider, i.e. Being cross channel, it can "speak" in a device agnostic manner to vendors and third party suppliers in order to provide the most relevant information based on the request, i.e. to purchase relevant goods at the cheapest price.

If you look at all the tech giants - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon - there is one area all of them are keenly interested in. Personal assistants and bots which work on the basis of artificial intelligence (AI). Admittedly, Apple, Google and Microsoft have been in this space for a couple of years, but 2016 is the year when these technologies could start to have a telling impact on the way people use their gadgets and services. In fact, for many including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, "Bots will be the new apps." More than the biggies, start-ups are doing some unique and disruptive things. On Monday (May 9) night, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Dag Kittlaus, co-founder and CEO of Viv, showed his new AI-based personal assistant which seemingly was a step above what Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google's Search or even Amazon's Alexa are capable of doing.

Both theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk have warned that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to destroy humanity. Established geniuses as they are, their words don't seem to have resonated with Dag Kittlaus, the brains behind Siri, the beloved virtual assistant for iPhone. Ignoring words of caution pertaining to pending doom, the Norwegian, along with his team, have given birth to yet another AI, Viv. Dubbed "The Global Brain", this cloud-based virtual assistant is being called the next generation AI assistant. But the question is, is it?

A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 2:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday, concluding a successful International Space Station resupply mission. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- A SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just before 3 p.m. ET Wednesday to wrap up a month-long visit to the International Space Station, returning to Earth with more than 3,700 pounds of equipment and science research. "The Dragon spacecraft has served us well," British astronaut Tim Peake radioed to mission controllers in Houston after the Dragon floated from the outpost in darkness at 9:19 a.m., released by its robotic arm. "It's good to see it departing full of science, and we wish it a safe recovery back to planet Earth." Among the 1,300 pounds of experiment on board were more than 1,000 tubes of blood, urine and saliva collected from former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly before his year-long ISS mission ended in March.

VIV is defined by its founders as the simplest way for the world to interact with devices, services and things everywhere. Behind the scene are the founders of Siri, the famous vocal assistant bought by Apple in 2010. We were recently talking about vocal recognition on the blog and introducing the possibilities brought by Echo. Viv goes one step further. It is able to understand common natural language requests but also complex questions.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule seen after its arrival at the International Space Station on April 10, 2016, two days after its launch from Cape Canaveral. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- An unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule is on its way back to Earth, headed for a Pacific Ocean splashdown at 2:55 p.m. Eastern Time. The capsule carrying 3,700 pounds of equipment and experiments floated away from the International Space Station in darkness at 9:19 a.m., after being released by a 58-foot robotic arm controlled by British astronaut Tim Peake, while the spacecraft flew about 260 miles southwest of Adelaide, Australia. "The Dragon spacecraft has served us well," Peaked radioed to NASA mission controllers in Houston. "It's good to see it departing full of science, and we wish it a safe recovery back to planet Earth."

"We're going to use this technology to breathe life into the inanimate objects and devices of our life through conversation," said Siri co-founder and CEO Dag Kittlaus. Viv (which means "life" in Latin) offers an experience akin to the AI in the film Her. When Kittlaus asked, "Will it be warmer than 70 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge, after 5 p.m., the day after tomorrow?" Viv quickly retrieved the correct hourly forecast from the Weather Underground app. When I posed the same question to Siri on my iPhone 6S, it pulled up the daily forecast from San Francisco for the next week, but it's unclear if it actually gave me predicted temperatures after 6pm.

It was the first return load from the station in a year, following a SpaceX launch accident in June 2015 that destroyed another Dragon capsule. The company's Dragon capsules are currently the only ships that can return cargo from the station, a 100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. SpaceX resumed Dragon flights to the station last month. On Wednesday, ground controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston used the station's robot arm to pluck the unmanned capsule from its berthing port at 7:02 a.m. and position it for release into space. British astronaut Timothy Peake, working from inside the space station's cupola module, then commanded the crane to free its grip at 9:19 a.m. as the station sailed over Australia so Dragon could begin its ride back to Earth.

The team behind Apple's voice assistant Siri have revealed their latest independent project "Viv", an AI bot that lives on your phone and aims to be "the intelligent interface for everything." Viv was unveiled at Techcruch's Disrupt conference, where a 20-minute demo wowed the audience with a real-time demonstration of its capabilities. The company behind Viv has dubbed it "The Global Brain", and its strength lies in tight partnerships with popular services, and a unique way of understanding human queries. Unlike Siri, Viv's approach is much closer to Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third-party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase goods or book reservations. "Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?"