So much of our financial activity is automated these days. We take a set-it-and-forget-it approach to paying bills, tackling savings goals, contributing to retirement funds. It was only a matter of time before reducing our regular expenses could be put on autopilot as well. That is the unique proposition of Trim. Trim isn't an app, but rather an AI assistant that analyzes your financial transactions and finds ways to save you money.

When you ask a voice assistant a question it doesn't have an answer for, that's usually the end of the story unless you're determined to look up the answer on another device. Amazon doesn't think the mystery should go unsolved, though. It's trotting out an opt-in "Answer Update" feature for Alexa that notifies you when the AI helper has an answer to a previous question it couldn't address. The trick is limited to factoids, a spokesperson told TechCrunch, but that could still prove helpful if your curiosity is still rampant months later. Answer Update is reaching Alexa devices over the course of the next week, so you'll have to be patient if you aren't part of the first wave.

Facebook is reportedly aiming to cash in on the £11billion lonely hearts industry with a dating app to rival the likes of Tinder. The social media giant is internally testing the service with Facebook employees, according to a Twitter user who appeared to leak screenshots of the app on Twitter. The screenshots show that'Facebook Dating' would offer users a choice of five genders: woman, trans woman, man, trans man and non-binary people. The app also appears to allow users to prevent their current Facebook friends from seeing their profile or only match with people who they have mutual friends with. Dating apps like Bumble already ask users to sign in using their Facebook accounts in a bid to spot mutual friends – and avoid making embarrassing connections with family members or close friends.

Facebook is testing a dating feature for its users. But only employees of the social network can currently sign up for it. The feature appears to be integrated into Facebook's normal social network and allows them to search out dates from among their network. The testing process of the new feature, known as'dogfooding', is designed to uncover any bugs or issues before it is officially launched for all users. Most of us are Facebook friends with some people we don't actually care about, and there are several ways to keep their updates off your News Feed.

Today, so-called smart homes and IoT devices can make life easier, if you know how to use them. In short, just about every electronic device in your home can take orders from you and coordinate with others. You can make yours into a smart home like George and Judy Jetson's while keeping you safe using these gadgets. But, it helps to understand what IoT and smart devices are. Now, IoT and smart devices get used for creating smart home environments once only possible on television or in movies.

When it works, controlling your TV with Amazon's Alexa digital assistant can feel like magic. Using voice commands avoids thumbing through menus and can get to what you want to watch much faster. But using Alexa as your TV remote requires a bit of know-how. Alexa won't understand everything you might want to do, and controlling your actual television and sound system requires specific equipment. To avoid potential frustration, we'll go through what you can and can't do with Alexa on Fire TV and other television devices, and explain how to set it all up.

The speaker orders Google Assistant to book him a hair-cutting appointment. Google Assistant places a call to a nearby salon. The reception picks the call. Google Assistant talked its way out with the receptionist and in a very human manner asked it to book an appointment, which she obediently did. All this happened during Google's annual keynote event I/O 2018 in the front of thousands of people.

The Internet changes rapidly, which means marketers and business leaders must hurry to change with it. While most Internet searches were once done on laptops and desktops, people are now using their smartphones with similar devices to conduct searches for information, local businesses, products, and services. That shift was closely followed by another somewhat more distinctive shift called artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted voice search. In the past, a smartphone user would need to type a question or phrase into Google or another search engine to get a set of results to sift through. Now, AIs like Siri and Alexa – which reside in smart speakers and on smartphones, tablets, and laptops – have changed the way users are searching for the information, products, and services they need.

When Amazon announced the Echo Show, it had a simple premise: The device would be an Amazon Echo with a screen. Now, the Show seems to be among the first in a new category of connected home devices called smart displays. The latest to debut is Lenovo's Smart Display, a Google Assistant–imbued countertop gadget with an 8- or 10-inch display and a proportionally large front-facing speaker grille. The device, like the Echo Show, is designed to give users news and information as quickly as they can speak a query out loud. Unlike a traditional smart speaker, which can only read back stats or information via audio, a smart display can also pull up text, imagery, and video to answer your questions.

Artificial intelligence is proving integral to the digital products of tomorrow, and nowhere is that more true than in the marketing space. A new wave of startups are leveraging AI in their marketing platforms, and industry heavyweights are beginning to take notice as well. Companies like Amazon and Apple are even leveraging artificial intelligence to conduct voice-based marketing through devices like their Alexa and Siri platforms, respectively. This is only one use case of AI, but it's illustrative of how the technology can help shape consumers' buying behavior and help them make better purchase decisions. A year or two ago, artificial intelligence was seen as a novelty by marketers, and not many were integrating the technology into their own applications.