Move over Alexa… there's a new virtual assistant in town. Passengers on board MSC Bellissima, which will be launched by godmother Sophia Loren in Southampton next month (March 2), will meet MSC's newest crew member Zoe – the cruise industry's answer to the voice-activated digital assistant. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Zoe can speak seven languages and answer over 800 of the most commonly asked questions – with thousands of different variants of each query – providing information about on-board services, suggestions for activities, and even help in booking a specific service. She's easy to use too: all guests need to do is say, "OK Zoe", and she's ready to help. Developed in partnership with HARMAN and Samsung Electronics, Zoe will be able to interact with in-cabin TVs to offer further guidance to passengers and, as with at-home devices, passengers will be able to connect their phones directly to the device via Bluetooth in order to access personal music and podcasts.

As a futurist, some patents really stand out. Here is one I'm really bullish on, as we enter a post-mobile world of Voice-AI controls and hand gestures. What if there was an invisible button between your thumb and index finger, what could it do? What AI-assistant or dashboard could it summon? Alphabet's Google unit won approval from U.S. regulators to deploy a radar-based motion sensing device known as Project Soli.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Amazon acquired another startup this week, the maker of the beloved tech product Eero, a mesh router that improves dead Wi-Fi spots in the home. To that, you might have said, OK, so? But, more importantly, it's an indication of how Amazon wants to go further than just making our homes "smart." It wants to turn our dwellings into the "Amazon Home."

Apple has acquired a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup called PullString that specializes in helping companies build conversational voice apps, according to a report from Axios. Pullstring was founded back in 2011 by former Pixar employees -- its CEO, Oren Jacob, is Pixar's former chief technology officer. Up until now, PullString was most well known within the tech industry as the software backbone behind voice systems for popular toys, like Mattell's talking Hello Barbie doll. It's not clear what Apple will be getting out of the deal, which is said to be worth under $100 million, but well over the $44 million in venture capital funding PullString has amassed thus far. But beyond toys, PullString has also worked on the enterprise end to help companies build skills and apps for Amazon's Alexa platform and Google Assistant.

Scientists have developed an algorithm that can spot dating scams. A team of researchers trained AI software to'think like humans' when looking for fake dating profiles. While the algorithm has only been deployed in a research setting, it could one day be used to protect users on popular dating services like Tinder and Match.com. Scientists have developed an algorithm that can spot dating scams. A team of researchers trained AI software to'think like humans' when looking for fake dating profiles Romance scams, where criminals create phony profiles to trick love-lusting victims into sending them money, are on the rise.

Dating is hard enough without the added stress of worrying about your digital safety online. But social media and dating apps are pretty inevitably involved in romance these days--which makes it a shame that so many of them have had security lapses in such a short amount of time. Within days of each other this week, the dating apps OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, and Jack'd all disclosed an array of security incidents that serve as a grave reminder of the stakes on digital profiles that both store your personal information and introduce you to total strangers. "Dating sites are designed by default to share a ton of information about you; however, there's a limit to what should be shared," says David Kennedy, CEO of the threat tracking firm Binary Defense Systems. "And often times these dating sites provide little to no security, as we have seen with breaches going back several years from these sites."

Synchrony Financial, a bank and a provider of cobranded credit card programs, is deploying artificial intelligence in myriad ways: It's using machine learning to detect fraudulent transactions, robotics process automation to handle mundane operations tasks, and a virtual assistant named Sydney to answer basic questions by text chat. "We'll see AI across the company," Margaret Keane, Synchrony's CEO, said in an interview. "We've taken an active stance and worked with McKinsey to study the areas of our company that could be most impacted." At the same time, Keane says, the company is trying to be conscientious about how these deployments will affect employees. "Some people are saying 40% of jobs will go away," she said.

A data breach may have affected over 6 million app users looking for love. The company sent an email to users Thursday to address the issue. In the email, the company said that it learned an unauthorized party acquired some user data on Feb 11. It said the breach affected users' names and email addresses prior to May 2018. It did not say how the breach occurred, but emphasized that no financial information or passwords were compromised.

Apple has just bought up the talent it needs to make talking toys a part of Siri, HomePod, and its voice strategy. Apple has reportedly acquired PullString, also known as ToyTalk, according to Axios' Dan Primack and Ina Fried. The company makes voice experience design tools, artificial intelligence to power those experiences, and toys like talking Barbie and Thomas The Tank Engine toys in partnership with Mattel. Founded in 2011 by former Pixar executives, PullString went on to raise $44 million. Apple's Siri is seen as lagging far behind Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, not only in voice recognition and utility, but also in terms of developer ecosystem.

A popular dating app has become the latest victim of a major data breach after hackers exposed the details of 6 million of its users. Hacked information of Coffee Meets Bagel users appeared in a huge cache of data that appeared on a popular dark web marketplace earlier this week. The previously undisclosed breach has since been acknowledged by the dating app. Coffee Meets Bagel revealed details about the hack in an email to its users on Valentine's Day, explaining that members' names and email addresses had been exposed. "We recently discovered that some data from your Coffee Meets Bagel account may have been acquired by an unauthorised party," the email stated.