If you're following tech news, you'll see mentions of IBM Watson nearly everywhere in the past few weeks. Is it HAL 9000, a Turing test waiting to be passed? Or is it a collection of standard-ish machine learning tools paired with professional services implementations and a top-class sales/marketing org? IBM is consciously choosing to brand this varied work as Watson. It might confound tech pros who know that Jeopardy and chatbots are very different domains.

Since winning Jeopardy! in 2011, IBM's Watson has apparently found employment as a dress designer, a chef, and a movie director. The latest news is that IBM is doing deals with GM, Slack, and Pearson that will see Watson helping, respectively, with roadside assistance, business messaging, and education. Even if you follow developments in AI closely, though, it can be hard to keep track of all the things Watson can do. It raises a question: what is it, exactly? TV ads that portray Watson as some sort of super-smart Siri don't exactly help.

IBM Watson may be coming soon to an enterprise iOS app near you, the company announced at the IBM World of Watson 2016 event on Tuesday. In a first-of-its-kind move, IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps can now integrate Watson technology to enhance decision-making, productivity, and the employee experience. With Watson's cognitive and conversational capabilities, these enterprise apps will be able to understand, reason, and learn using data analytics, according to a press release. "Apple and IBM set out more than two years ago to define the enterprise mobility market, ensuring that professionals could finally enjoy at work the same experience they'd come to expect as consumers," said Mahmoud Naghshineh, general manager, Apple partnership at IBM, in a press release. "We are taking that to a whole new level by combining the power of Watson with the new speech framework of iOS 10. The combinations and possibilities are virtually endless."

Slack Technologies Inc., a business messaging provider, is the latest company to partner with International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.62 % to add artificial intelligence to its service. Slack plans to improve Slackbot, its customer-service bot, using IBM's Watson, a collection of artificial-intelligence software delivered as cloud-computing services, the two companies said on Wednesday. The messaging company will use Watson Conversation, an IBM service that processes natural language, to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the bot, which helps Slack users troubleshoot problems. These and other enhancements will be available to users early next year, Slack said.

Slack's attempts at small talk are about to get a whole lot better - it's just been announced the cloud-based workplace messaging system will incorporate IBM Watson's smarts to its own bots, and those built by its ever-growing pool of outside developers. The coworking platform, which has just reached four million daily active users, was designed as a means for better collaboration and communication at work. However, it has opened up its software to outside businesses, leading to a directory of more than 400 Slack-related apps. These add-ons provide Slack tools like lists, or bots tailored for specific purposes. Slack's mission to'kill email': firm invests in 11 new startups in just seven months There is even an entire section dedicated to health, as WIRED writer Rowland Manthorpe discovered when he sought out a therapist from TalkLife Connect on the platform.

Facebook recently announced a rather scenically named system, Big Sur, designed around Nvidia's Tesla compute cards aimed at helping their neural networks, and obviously machine learning, become faster and more versatile. They are, of course, not alone. IBM Watson has similar visions as does Microsoft. Big Data and analytics have long staked claim to the holiday shopping season, but I sense that this 2015 holiday shopping season the real big winner will be Machine Learning. The big gun in the Machine Learning camp is the aforementioned IBM Watson.

Want to watch this again later? Need to report the video? This feature is not available right now. What does a world with IBM Watson look like? With Watson, the world is getting healthier, safer, cleaner, more creative and even more personal.

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General Motors gm and International Business Machines ibm on Tuesday said they would combine IBM's artificial intelligence software Watson with the carmaker's OnStar system in order to market services to drivers in their vehicles. The feature, called OnStar Go, is set to debut early next year in more than 2 million GM vehicles with 4G service, IBM and GM said in a joint statement. IBM's Watson, which beat two previous winners of the quiz show "Jeopardy!" in 2011, will sift through data in order to recognize a driver's habits, allowing third-party marketers to deliver targeted offers, whether nearby coffee shops, reminders about shopping-list items, or paying for fuel from their dashboards. Carmakers have been adding connected services into their vehicles to duplicate the convenience of smartphones, which can suggest nearby restaurant offers, or point the way to a gas station. Data generated from connected vehicles is valuable to automakers, although some consumers have been wary of privacy and data security issues.

General Motors said Wednesday it had reached a partnership to integrate tech giant IBM's artificial intelligence platform into its vehicle infotainment system, giving it the ability to make dining recommendations and order prescriptions. The Detroit-based automaker will pair IBM's Watson with its popular safety and connectivity system in more than 2 million 4G LTE-connected vehicles to create OnStar Go. The company said examples of how the pairing could bear fruit include getting dining recommendations, reminders about the need to buy household items and help retrieving prescriptions from the pharmacy. Among the first applications: Drivers will be able to use the "cognitive mobility platform" to locate ExxonMobil gas stations and pay on screen in the vehicle, GM said. They will also be able to use the OnStar Go system to get customized music playlists from mobile app iHeartRadio.