We first heard about Harman Kardon's smart speaker earlier this month, but haven't gotten a chance to try it out or even see what it looks like in person. The Cortana-powered Echo rival made an oh-so-brief appearance here at Microsoft's keynote for Computex 2017. Even though we still couldn't physically touch it, we were at least able to take some (very few) close-up pictures of the device. We also caught a fleeting look at an upcoming HP Cortana speaker that looked sort of like a white Echo Dot, but that was only a picture on a slideshow -- the device itself was nowhere to be found at the event. We'll surely hear more about it soon enough, though.

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Artificial Intelligence research advances are transforming technology as we know it. The AI research community is solving some of the most technology problems related to software and hardware infrastructure, theory and algorithms. Interestingly, the field of AI AI research has drawn acolytes from non-tech field as well. Case in point -- prolific Hollywood actor Kristen Stewart's highly publicized paper on Artificial Intelligence, originally published at Cornell University library's open access site. Stewart co-authored the paper, titled "Bringing Impressionism to Life with Neural Style Transfer in Come Swim" with American poet and literary critic David Shapiro and Adobe Research Engineer Bhautik Joshi.

It may be a common sight in the world of Star Wars, but so far laser weapons have struggled to make it onto a real battlefield. However, that could soon change as Department of Defense bosses have revealed a new $3.2m project with Clemson University engineers to investigate the science behind laser weapons. The military has already deployed some lasers as defensive weapons to shoot down incoming missiles and drones, but the two new projects will address underlying issues with making them more widespread. The two new projects are based on helping develop the fundamental technology that could see laser weapons such as those seen here in Star Wars: The Force Awakens become a reality. John Ballato and Lin Zhu are taking two different but complementary approaches to creating a high-energy laser that could be used as a weapon.

We've all heard the rumours: artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to take our jobs and our lives. But what impact will machine learning have on the content marketing industry? And can it really master the nuance and artistry of the written word? While still in their infancy, automated content writers are no longer unique to the realm of science fiction; they're real and available to the masses. As marketing becomes increasingly digitised, the war between human and machine is set to rage across the blogosphere.

Buying paint is always an enlightening affair. The names that companies come up with for their pigments are usually worth a chuckle or two, at least. Browsing through the color swatches, you're likely to stumble upon some curious choices, like a soft lilac color called Potentially Purple, a light blue known as Salty Tear, or maybe just a nondescript Gray Area. Even so, humans may no longer have a monopoly on the esoteric color-naming game. Janelle Shae, famous for using neural networks to come up with Death Metal band names like "Verk" or "Chaorug," or cake and cookie recipes featuring novel ingredients like horseradish and chicken, has programmed software to create new paint colors and give them names.

Terence Broad's Blade Runner sometimes looks a lot like the classic 1982 film. Sometimes it looks completely different. His autoencoded version of Blade Runner is the film as a computer sees it – or, more specifically, as a computer sees it, remembers it, and then regurgitates it. The film is being shown as part of the Barbican's science fiction exhibition-meets-festival, Into The Unknown. And it's perhaps the most cutting edge of all the work featured there – not only being about science fiction, but being created in a way that sounds like it comes straight out of the work of Philip K Dick.

You might have been too busy drooling over Overwatch's lunar gorilla rampage to notice that Season 5 of Competitive Play starts this week. The fourth season of Blizzard's insane shooter just ended, but it seems like the Overwatch team wants to give players as little downtime as possible. Overwatch Season 5 will start at 8 p.m. EDT on May 31, according to Game Informer. This isn't a guarantee, Blizzard has been known to release important patches whenever they see fit. If you just bought the new Game Of The Year edition and are new to Overwatch Competitive Play, here's some stuff you really need to know.

What if Fox News decided to address its gender and racial discrimination issues by entrusting personnel decisions to an algorithm? It's a fascinating thought experiment -- and one that helps illustrate the dangers of putting too much trust in big data. The channel's problems won't end with the passing of founder Roger Ailes, who resigned last year amid abundant allegations of sexual harassment. Just last week, a racial harassment complaint claimed yet another Fox host, and three more women filed suit saying that sexist and racial discrimination derailed their careers. There's a widespread belief that algorithms can help address such human foibles.

Last Thursday (May 18), music industry executives and potential investors flocked to Los Angeles's El Rey Theatre for a glimpse of the potential future of the music-tech industry. Inside was a demo day concluding the first-ever Techstars Music startup accelerator program. Headed by Bob Moczydlowsky, the former head of Twitter Music, the program invited 11 startups to work on their products from out of Techstars' LA office over the course of three months. Each company received a $120,000 investment, access to a hundreds-large pool of mentors (including members of program partners Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Sonos, and Harmonix), and lifetime support in exchange for six percent equity. The incubation period was, as Moczydlowsky told Billboard, "designed to be a year's worth of work in three months."