Commonwealth Bank of Australia is developing artificial intelligence technology to help with cyber security, fraud detection and regulatory compliance, in a sign banks are attempting to put the power of big data to use in reducing risk. CBA's chief information officer David Whiteing told The Australian Financial Review that so-called machine learning technology will be used to help the bank make sense of large sets of "noisy" data and alert management to areas requiring their attention. The work will come alongside a broader program of innovative projects investigating the possibilities of technologies such as the internet of things, quantum computing and the blockchain. "When you have a large data set and people can't see the signal for the noise, machine learning capability will sift out and provide you with the top five things that are worthy of further investigation," Mr Whiteing said.

Amazon today announced three new artificial intelligence-related toolkits for developers building apps on Amazon Web Services. At the company's AWS re:invent conference in Las Vegas, Amazon showed how developers can use three new services -- Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, Amazon Rekognition -- to build artificial intelligence features into apps for platforms like Slack, Facebook Messenger, ZenDesk, and others. The idea is to let developers utilize the machine learning algorithms and technology that Amazon has already created for its own processes and services like Alexa. Instead of developing their own AI software, AWS customers can simply use an API call or the AWS Management Console to incorporate AI features into their own apps. AWS CEO Andy Jassy noted that Amazon has been building AI and machine learning technology for 20 years and said that there are now thousands of people "dedicated to AI in our business."

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Andrew Greenstein, an app developer from San Francisco, started journaling a few months ago. He tries to write for five minutes every day, but it's challenging to set aside the time. Still, he's read that journaling reduces stress and can help with goal-setting, so he's trying to make it a habit. At the Disrupt London Hackathon, Greenstein and his team built The Emotion Journal, a voice journaling app that performs real-time emotional analysis to detect the user's feelings and chart their emotional state over time. By day, Greenstein is the CEO of SF AppWorks, a digital agency.

All the big tech companies are making a play in artificial intelligence. You can now undoubtedly count Uber among them. Uber announced on Monday that it acquired AI startup Geometric Intelligence, which will form the core of its new AI Labs. "The formation of Uber AI Labs, to be directed by Geometric's Founding CEO Gary Marcus, represents Uber's commitment to advancing the state of the art, driven by our vision that moving people and things in the physical world can be radically faster, safer and accessible to all," Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden wrote in a blog post. Holden pointed out a few particular problems that AI could help solve, including matching riders for uberPOOL, UberEATS and, of course, self-driving cars -- and even the flying cars that Uber teased earlier in the year.

Microsoft is experimenting with a new, tamer chatbot. Months after the company's first chatbot Tay went viral for all the wrong reasons, Microsoft quietly rolled out a new bot that looks to be far less controversial than its predecessor. SEE ALSO: Microsoft's CEO wants bots and AI in every home Named Zo, the latest chatbot appeared on chat app Kik and is still "early access," according to Microsoft, though anyone with Kik can start messaging the bot now. In our limited testing, much of what the bot says is similar to the bland and sometimes nonsensical musings spouted by other bots. Of course, after the public relations nightmare that was Tay, it's understandable that Microsoft would be careful with its next chatbot.

Uber's ride-hailing service is set to get smarter. The company announced on Monday that it bought New York-based AI start-up Geometric Intelligence and will soon launch its own AI research lab, creatively named Uber AI Labs. Geometric Intelligence's 15 specialists in machine learning will help drive Uber's research in self-driving cars (confirmed by Geometric Intelligence CEO Gary Marcus to the The Wall Street Journal). Autonomous vehicles are a hot research area for the automotive industry right now, and Uber is keen to make its mark on the cutting-edge technology, along with carmakers like BMW and technology titans like Google. While Uber's own fleet of self-driving cars tool around San Francisco (I've seen them), pick up passengers in Pittsburgh and go on the occasional beer run, it needs to do much more to not be left behind in the dust. In addition to machine learning, Uber can also use AI to help calculate the most efficient route, better match carpool riders and more accurately tell customers when their car will arrive, chief product officer Jeff Holden wrote in Uber's blog post announcement.

Uber is coming closer to its self-driving cars goal. The ride-sharing company announced Monday it launched Uber AI Labs, a new department based in San Francisco which will focus on research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Uber also revealed it has acquired the AI research startup Geometric Intelligence. The 15 members of the startup will form the primary core of the AI Labs team. With the company's new moves, Uber is betting that artificial intelligence could improve its services.

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Most of today's commercially available drones have four rotors and more or less look the same (other than that one that's foldable). So if you wanted to own a drone that had, say, five copters or a completely different design altogether, you'd probably have to make your own, which can be a really tedious process. If you don't know where to start customizing your flying masterpiece, MIT's new system could be your first stop. The institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)'s latest project is what it says is the first platform that lets you design, simulate and build your own drone. Through the project interface, you can pick your own propellers, rotors and rods from MIT's database, as well as determine the size, shape and structure of your device.