In 2018 smart speaker ownership has doubled in the UK. The most popular voice assistant is Amazon Alexa which is part of the Alexa Echo device, followed by Google Assistant which powers Google Home and Google Home Mini, Apple's Home Pod and Sonos One. At the moment people mainly use voice assistants to play music, answer questions, set alarm and reminders. Is there an opportunity there for marketers? Alexa provides a set of built-in capabilities, called skills.

How close have we really come to the world in the movie Blade Runner, Rick Deckard, replicants and off-world colonies? Incessant rain deluges LA, creating mirrored surfaces on every street and decaying building. CRISPR technology has now entered human trial phase and could begin to re-code and improve human DNA in 2019. Flying cars: Several designs have entered production Police in Dubai started trials in 2018. Autonomous vehicles: Tesla is probably the best known example of US-based vehicles.

Artificial intelligence has been heralded as a revolutionary technology. The finance, healthcare, HR, and marketing industries are the first ones that will be disrupted by AI. Artificial intelligence and its accompanying technologies, such as machine learning and deep learning, have ushered in an era of intelligent automation and human-level recognition. Long-standing fields, such as finance, healthcare, human resources (HR), and marketing have begun to feel the disruptive effect of AI. Artificial intelligence has taken up the mantle of the most used buzzword in modern solutions, being billed as a revolutionary method of providing labor. These technologies have enabled a new level of low-cost and accurate labor for companies all over the world. In addition to this, they are also able to create new value opportunities for enterprises through analytics.

A few months ago, while lying in bed one night, a thought flashed through my head -- "If voice is the future of computing interfaces, what about those who cannot hear or speak?". I don't know what exactly triggered this thought, I myself can speak and hear and have no one close to me who is either deaf or mute, nor do I own a voice assistant. Perhaps it was the countless articles popping up on the proliferance of voice assistants, or the competition between large companies to become your voice activated home assistant of choice, or simply seeing these devices more frequently on the counter tops of friends' homes. As the question refused to fade from memory, I knew it was an itch I needed to scratch. It eventually led to this project, a proof of concept where I got an Amazon Echo to respond to sign language -- American Sign Language (ASL) to be more precise, since similar to spoken language there are a variety of sign languages as well.

Picture this – you have an interview tomorrow for a machine learning role you have been aspiring to for a long time. Everything needs to go as per schedule otherwise plans might get messed up. You didn't need to move or spend time typing all of this. All you did was speak to your virtual assistant and the machine learning algorithms powering that system went to work! This isn't some futuristic scenario where machines have a human-level psyche – this is now! We are living in the midst of a truly global revolution thanks to advancements in computational power and thus machine learning applications. So, let's look at the most common use cases of machine learning we deal with in our day-to-day lives (sometimes without even realizing it's machine learning at play). Did you know that machine learning powers most of the features on your smartphone? From the voice assistant that sets your alarm and find you the best restaurants to the simple use case of unlocking your phone via facial recognition – machine learning is truly embedded in our favorite devices.

Apple customers can now opt out of having their conversations with Siri listened to by human "graders" and delete any clips that have already been uploaded, three months after the Guardian revealed the practice based on a whistleblower report. In the latest software updates for Apple's products, including iOS 13.2 and macOS 10.15.1, users have the option to disable the grading feature while still using Siri as normal. The preferences are not particularly prominent. To opt out of future grading on iOS, in the settings app, under the heading privacy, users can tap on "Analytics & Improvements" then disable the preference to "improve Siri dictation". To delete their uploaded clips, they go to Siri & Search in the settings app, tap on Siri & Dictation History, and then hit a red button marked "Delete Siri & Dictation History".

Artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions have taken over the enterprise sector. Smart automation, intelligent business decisions, and recommendation engines have changed the way companies do business today. Companies that have adopted artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in their operations have seen great success. Apart from freeing up human labor from mundane tasks and automating repetitive ones, AI has fundamentally changed the way some companies operate. Let's look at some companies that were highly successful in adopting AI. Why Is AI Adoption on the Rise?

YouTube Music is getting a pair of small but helpful updates today: full support for Siri, and support for being installed as a desktop web app. If you're on an iOS device, you'll now be able to ask Siri to play songs straight from YouTube Music. For the longest time, Siri only supported Apple's own music sources. But in iOS 13, Apple added the ability for Siri to tap into third-party apps with a long-overdue update. Spotify added support for this feature earlier this month, and now YouTube is following suit with support from its own music streaming service. Today's other new feature, desktop web app support, means you can now have a standalone YouTube Music app on your computer, instead of having to visit the site in your browser.

Since 2008, HGTV has built--and given away--12 brand new houses outfitted with the latest smart home products. Located in Roanoke, Texas, a 33-mile drive from Dallas, the 2019 HGTV Smart Home is valued at over $1.2 million. Step inside of the Old World oasis, and the home you'll find is anything but archaic. The impressive smart home is loaded with dimmers, switches, light bulbs, shower systems, toilets, and more--all of which can be controlled by voice, tablet, or smartphone. Although a winner for the latest HGTV Smart Home has already been selected, there's no reason you can't create your own "smart home" with the help of the right products.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iPad on January 27, 2010, in San Francisco. When I hustled out of CNET headquarters in San Francisco on May 26, 2010, and slipped into a rental car with two of my co-workers to head to a meeting across the Bay, one of them slipped me a copy of The Wall Street Journal and pointed to a headline that announced Apple had passed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable tech company. "What do you think of that?" she said. "Unreal," I responded, shaking my head. Just over a decade earlier, Apple had nearly been on its deathbed and needed a $150 million investment from Microsoft simply to stay alive. But then the iPhone arrived in 2007, and Apple rewrote the playbook on the mobile revolution.