Ready to have your mind blown? Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged in the music industry with its very first producer! SKYGGE might look like your average up-and-coming artist on Spotify, with just a couple of tracks to the name. It's actually a part-human-part-computer duo between French producer Benoit Carré and the AI program called Flow-Machines. An AI co-producer is behind two new tracks, "In the House of Poetry," and "Hello Shadow" featuring Jack Ü collaborator Kiesza.

In an effort to make its mountains of data available to musicians and their managers, Spotify just launched the Spotify for Artists app that provides mobile access to analytics--everything from which playlists are generating new fans to how many streams they are getting overall. Think Google Analytics for musicians. It was originally launched in a web version earlier this year, but the mobile app allows musicians to access the info from the tour bus and the geographic streaming data can be instrumental to musicians and their teams to plan tours more effectively. Artists also have more control over their presence on Spotify including selecting the "artist's pick," and they can update their bios and post playlists.

Q: I have an Amazon Echo and I am really concerned that Amazon is listening all the time. Does the Echo have any privacy settings? A: Ever since Echo hit the market, people have wondered how much the little glowing tower hears -- and remembers. Is Echo silently eavesdropping on our conversations, even between "wake phrases"? So far, Echo hasn't caused any mass hysteria, and most people are pretty content with the performance of their virtual assistant.

The way we create and consume visual content has changed significantly with the advent of both digital and mobile cameras. Today, algorithms bring on the next wave of innovation and evolution in the space. AI technologies are increasingly good at classifying, organizing and understanding images, changing the way both brands and creators think about visuals. Cheaper and faster hardware, along with an abundance of rich data sets, has led to the visual computing revolution this past decade. The gap between mobile cameras and professional gear is quickly decreasing, giving everyone the ability to create photos and get their photos discovered.

AI is increasingly finding its way into music videos, and not necessarily in obvious ways. Intel has revealed that the promo clip for Chinese pop star Chris Lee's "Rainy Day, But We Are Together" is the first music video to lean on its AI technology. Director Timothy Saccenti and Intel's producers created dramatic special effects on the songstress' face (such as trickles of water and twinkling stars) by training a machine learning system to instantly reconstruct a face in 3D and track its movements in real time, including facial expressions. Instead of asking Lee (aka Li Yuchun) to wear tracking markers or the camera crew to shoot a specific way, the creative team could focus on capturing scenes that lined up with their artistic goals.

New robot to help online students learn better - Scientists have developed an innovative robot that can help online students more engaged and connected to the instructor and students in the classroom. Stationed around the class, each robot has a mounted video screen controlled by the remote user that lets the student pan around the room to see and talk with the instructor and fellow students participating in-person....

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a "massive" role in health care, a technology entrepreneur told CNBC on Thursday. Naveen Jain, the founder of health technology firm Viome, said that there is a big wave of AI coming into the health sector. "This is a tsunami that's coming," Jain told CNBC in a TV …

"The reason no other animals evolved like humans, is they watched what we did. Then instead of doing that, they concentrated on the important things, like their basic needs and expanding their minds, to eventually speak telepathically, all the while unbeknown to us. It was quite brilliant in its subtlety." That's not from the story which follows, but it's a good introduction and from another one I'm writing. Like that, this is about animal sentience. So I imagined the young character from my children's book, with her talking dog and cat.

AI is the buzzword on everyone's lips these days. But how might musicians respond to themes of machine intelligence? We're calling this year's theme "The Hacked Mind." Inspired by AI and machine learning, we're inviting artists to respond in the latest edition of our MusicMakers Hacklab hosted with CTM Festival in Berlin. In that collaborative environment, participants will have a chance to answer these questions however they like.

THAT a computer program can repeatedly beat the world champion at Go, a complex board game, is a coup for the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence (AI). Another high-stakes game, however, is taking place behind the scenes, as firms compete to hire the smartest AI experts. Technology giants, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Baidu, are racing to expand their AI activities. Last year they spent some $8.5 billion on deals, says Quid, a data firm. That was four times more than in 2010.