We are pleased to announce that in "The Forrester New Wave: Conversational Computing Platforms, Q2 2018,"[1] IBM Watson Assistant is named as a Leader in conversational computing. It has become increasingly important for businesses to build engaging interactions that deliver value to their customers, and IBM is proud to offer technologies that help developers and enterprises enhance those experiences. The report evaluated the most significant conversational computing platforms, diving into each vendor's current offering and strategy and including customer feedback. IBM was cited for its developer-friendly tools and enterprise expertise requirements, which give developers access to the tools and technologies they need while providing industry and enterprise support for their businesses. Our customers also appreciated IBM's thorough understanding of enterprise requirements and Watson Assistant's readiness for integration into a broader architecture.

Today, we are enhancing our product to accelerate the value of AI in your companies and announcing Watson Studio. IBM Watson Studio is an integrated environment designed to make it easy to develop, train, manage models and deploy AI-powered applications and is a SaaS solution delivered on the IBM Cloud. IBM Services has already been using Watson Studio to train business patterns. In specific client situations, we are able to train business patterns and encode into end user applications in a few hours. Our consultants now embed Watson-powered AI across all processes in our client business with simplicity and speed, so our consultants spend more time creating incremental value, rather then coding applications.

Christina Cardoza is the News Editor of SD Times. She is responsible for the oversight of the daily news published to the website as well as the company's weekly newsletter, News on Monday. She covers agile, DevOps, AI, machine learning, mixed reality and software security. She is an undeniable nerd who loves Marvel comics and Star Wars. On Follow her on Twitter at @chriscatdoza!

Watson won't be wearing anything fancy to the Grammys this weekend, but that's not going to keep it from judging everyone else's outfit. For the 60th anniversary of the music awards, the Recording Academy is partnering with IBM to bring its artificial intelligence to the red carpet. On Sunday night, IBM will deploy its AI platform to analyze videos and photos of nominees and attendees as they arrive at the ceremony in New York. In addition to identifying each person, Watson will be able to understand styles, learn about this year's fashion trends and compare them to those of previous years. People will then curate those findings, along with a selection of the many photos and videos taken by photographers, and upload them to the Grammys website for fans to learn more about their favorite musicians along with those honored decades ago.

IBM has been showing off its new voice and text based Watson assistant, based on its famous AI platform - aimed at cars, smart homes, hotels and businesses. Companies will be able to take the voice tech and customise and brand it up themselves - so we won't be saying "OK Watson" to every bit of connected tech we encounter. And IBM is also talking up its privacy policy when it comes to personal data compared to rival assistant makers. The demos IBM showed at its Think conference included a couple of interesting ideas. In a connected hotel room, and with an electronic key sent to your smartphone, Watson would be able to adjust the lighting, temperature and music to your preferences as well as display emails and calendar info on a dashboard for when you arrive. Harman is also showing off a Watson powered car dashboard for a concept Mitsubishi, and IBM says that the AI assistant in the car will be able to talk to the smart home and hotels.

Recent tech news report that IBM's Watson has already been employed as a dress designer, a chef, and a movie director. But what is it exactly? IBM Watson is a question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language based on cognitive computing. To replicate a human's ability to answer questions, Watson accesses 90 servers with a combined data store of over 200 million pages of information, which it processes against six million logic rules. You might also want to watch official IBM's video about how Watson works: Please press the clap button and help others find this story. Did you know you could give up to 50 claps?

The scale and time pressures involved in effectively meeting HR goals today can feel insurmountable, even in moderate sized organizations. However, across industries, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are helping to relieve this burden, freeing up time for HR professionals to focus on strategic initiatives. Analysts predict that AI augmentation will recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity by 2021 and that one in five workers engaged in mostly non-routine tasks will rely on AI to do a job by 2022. But you shouldn't wait until then to prepare your team for AI in HR – there are steps you can take now. AI works like most objective and analytical human minds, but at a scale and speed that humans alone cannot match.

IBM has just become the latest tech giant to tackle the voice assistant market. On Tuesday, IBM launched Watson Assistant, an AI service that companies can integrate into a variety of platforms, like cars, hotel rooms and home appliances, among other things. Don't expect IBM to launch its own smart speaker anytime soon, however. IBM's Watson Assistant is a digital assistant that can be molded into a variety of products, like Harman's digital cockpit (pictured), which learns about the driver with each interaction Watson Assistant is designed to be different from Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple's Siri in that it isn't tethered to a specific device. What's more, IBM describes Watson Assistant as an'enterprise assistant,' meaning that it's aimed at helping companies improve their consumer experience.

Discover new ways to build intelligence into your iOS apps. With IBM Watson Services for Core ML, it's easy to build apps that access powerful Watson capabilities right from iPhone and iPad, so you can provide dynamic, intelligent insights that improve over time. Your apps can quickly analyze images, accurately classify visual content, and easily train models using Watson Services.

One of IBM's first partners Harman will demonstrate Watson Assistant at the event through a digital cockpit aboard a Maserati GranCabrio, though the companies didn't elaborate on what it can do. In fact, IBM already released a Watson-powered voice assistant for cybersecurity early last year. You'll be able to access Watson Assistant via text or voice, depending on the device and how IBM's partner decides to incorporate it. So, you'll definitely be using voice if it's a smart speaker, but you might be able to text commands to a home device. Speaking of commands, it wasn't just designed to follow them -- it was designed to learn from your actions and remember your preferences.