The main reason most people get an Amazon Echo, with its onboard AI servant Alexa, is convenience. But, after a family in Oregon found out Alexa recorded at least one private conversation and sent it to a contact in their address book, you might want to sacrifice convenience for privacy and personal security. Or, maybe you should at least keep the microphone turned off when not in use. Not very convenient, I know. Danielle (who identified herself only by her first name) and her family were going about their normal lives when her husband's employee unexpectedly called them and urged them to turn off all the Amazon devices in their home.

Hinge, the dating app that promised a better set of prospects by suggesting matches who share Facebook friends, is about to radically change its course: it's ditching its requirement that users log in with Facebook. The change will go into effect on Monday, June 5th on Android, followed by a June 12th release on iOS. While the option to use Facebook won't be fully removed, users will instead be able to choose to authenticate using their phone number, the company says. The decision was prompted by ongoing requests from users who have asked for a non-Facebook login option, Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod says. This is especially important to the company as people "move away from Facebook and onto other platforms," he notes.

Alexa, Google Home, and other rapidly advancing digital assistants have increased customers' willingness to engage with machines as they have come to not only expect, but appreciate their conversational nature. This attitude shift is transforming how traditional call centers should be doing business – using conversational AI bots to deliver positive user experiences and operational savings. Identifying where and how to implement Artificial Intelligence is one of the biggest challenges companies face when considering self-service. Read on to see how SmartAction has solved this issue, and many more, to enable true integration of AI into call center operations. SmartAction was founded as an artificial intelligence research company and has since evolved into the leading provider of AI-powered customer self-service solutions.

Analysts believe Apple will try to inject more artificial intelligence and other new powers into Siri to make it more competitive with Google's digital assistant and Amazon's Alexa. Apple just gave its HomePod smart speaker new features, including calendar reminders -- something Google and Amazon devices have long offered. Apple has been emphasizing the HomePod's high-fidelity acoustics, including the ability to pair two devices in stereo mode, in an effort to distinguish its product from Google's and Amazon's speakers, which primarily serve as hubs for those companies' voice-activated assistants. Monday's preview could include more on that front.

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. We considered more than 20 smart-light-bulb systems and then spent eight weeks testing 10 contenders, confounding a family of four by constantly changing how their lights worked. After all that, we determined that the Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 is the best all-around smart LED bulb. Hue lets you change your lighting color easily and does everything other smart light bulbs do, and it's also part of a larger product and app ecosystem, allowing for more flexibility and creativity than any other smart bulb we tested. It's not the cheapest bulb we tested, but its reliable performance and wide compatibility make it a solid choice for any smart-home enthusiast or newbie. Adding a set of smart light bulbs is an easy way to get started building a smart-home system. We researched all the standard A19-style smart bulbs (the kind that fit traditional lamps and fixtures), and then tested more than 10 models and the systems they work with. In the end, the first popular smart bulb is still the one that outshines (sorry about that) all the others. Unless you already have an Echo Plus, the Hue system requires the use of a separate Hue Bridge, which supports a home of 50 bulbs (available individually) but does add to the overall cost. The Philips Hue setup is simple (we recommend the White and Color Ambiance A19 Starter Kit, which packages a Hue Bridge and either three or four bulbs), and the bulbs' wide interoperability with other apps and smart-home systems makes the Hue series the most flexible and feature-rich smart bulb available. If you're set on a color-changing bulb but insist on more light output, the LIFX Gen 3 beats any color-changing bulb we tried. An individual LIFX bulb is a little more expensive than a Hue, but each LIFX is brighter, so you might be able to get away with fewer bulbs to color-wash your room.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next week, beginning with a big keynote speech at 10 a.m. This event, a five-day conference at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, focuses on developers and the changes in Apple's software that will affect their work. Apple's other big annual event typically occurs in September and focuses on the unveiling of new iPhones and Apple Watches. Often Apple executives also take time during WWDC to update people on certain new services and products outside of smartphones and smartwatches. For example, last year Apple unveiled its HomePod smart speaker, the iPad Pro 10.5, updates to the MacBook line, updates to the iMac line, and an all-new iMac Pro.

LG's S9-rival, the G7 ThinQ, has arrived in the US and is now available at various retailers and major carriers. The G7 ThinQ is one of the Korean phonemaker's latest premium devices that comes infused with AI features -- there's also the V30S ThinQ and the V35 ThinQ, which shares many of the G7's characteristics and could make LG's lineup a bit confusing. It boasts the first dedicated Google Assistant button found on an Android phone, so you don't need to say "OK, Google" to summon the voice assistant. That button can also conjure up Google Lens, which can detect text, landmarks, media and other real-life objects, giving you a way to quickly translate foreign signs or to look for info on various objects. The device's star features, however, are its AI-powered cameras: it has one wide-angle and one standard 16-megapixel cameras on the back, as well as a 5-megapixel front cam.

Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. Vacuuming is one of the most loathed household chores. While it doesn't come with the ick factor of cleaning the toilet or the tedium of dusting, pushing and dragging a noisy, cumbersome vacuum is its own kind of torture. No wonder most of us only break it out the bare-minimum-recommended once a week.

Amazon is training its voice assistant to be able to tell which skill will most suit your needs if you have no idea which one to summon. The e-commerce giant has launched the beta version of a feature called CanFulfillIntentRequest, which will allow skill-makers to tell Amazon the kinds of questions their creations can answer. That way, when you ask Alexa a vague question with no particular voice app in mind, it can run it through multiple skills and use the one that can most likely answer you. For instance, if you say "Alexa, where is the best surfing today near Santa Barbara?" the assistant will use CanFulfillIntentRequest to ask various surfing skills if they have the capacity to answer that. The assistant will then use a machine-learning model to surface the best skill for the task without having to invoke it with one of its keywords or phrases.

We unwittingly encounter AI in our daily life, in simple form observed in spelling correction to more complex form as in personalized content consumption. Our world as we know it, is running on artificial intelligence. Siri manages our calendars, Facebook suggests our friends, Computers trade our stocks. We have cars that park themselves, and air traffic control is almost fully automated. So, virtually every field has benefited from advances in artificial intelligence.