According to CNET, Nest has announced today that Marwan Fawaz will no longer be its CEO. As part of his departure, Nest will now be folded into Google's home and living room products team. In a joint interview with Fawaz, Rishi Chandra, vice president of product management for Google's home and living room products, said that the combination would make it easier for Google to integrate some of its machine learning technology and artificial intelligence into Nest products. This move comes six months after Nest merged with Google's hardware division. Nest co-founder Matt Rogers left soon after as well.

For the past couple of years, financial institutions have explored how AI can help them in several areas, such as reducing costs, enhancing revenue, eliminating fraud and improving the customer experience. One of the most recent AI efforts is Bank of America's Erica, a virtual assistant focused on the customer experience when launched three months ago. The financial services player claims it is the first widely available AI-driven virtual assistant of its kind in the industry. The bank recently announced 1 million mobile banking users have accessed Erica's features to search for transactions, view balance information and bills, get their credit scores and their account numbers. While that figure represents only 4 percent of the bank's 25 million-plus mobile banking clients, at least one industry analyst deemed it as progress from Bank of America.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be a good thing for the digital workplace. Despite concerns about job redundancies and shifting enterprise priorities, recent research from global auditing company PwC suggests that, far from hindering employees or even making some jobs obsolete, AI will help workers achieve business objectives quicker and more effectively. To do that, however, organizations will need to invest in different types of AI. The research, part of PwC's Economic Outlook for 2018, predicted the main contributor to the UK's economic gains between 2017 and 2030 will come from consumer product enhancements stimulating consumer demand (8.4 percent). The research identified AI as a key factor in this growth, by driving a greater choice of products, increasing personalization and making those products more affordable over time.

There is a pending boom of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and organizations will capitalize on them as AI continues to scale, evolve and mature. Over time, AI adoption at the enterprise level will cause an incremental upending of traditionally known roles, skills and talent composition within every single business function. According to the 2018 Human Capital Trends Report, "The transition to digital business tools is at the top of the strategic agenda for many businesses today." If mobile, social and cloud computing were some of the biggest platform shifts and technological investments that dominated the beginning of the 21st century, AI investments will be considered the next wave of major technological shifts. Forrester predicts that most (if not all) technology functions will be augmented or replaced by AI.

A new study by CapGemini finds that consumers are ready to embrace AI support, and that AI interactions, if properly designed, can enhance the personal connection they feel to brands. The study is comprehensive – it is based on surveys of 10,000 consumers from 10 different markets and covers all ages, income groups and employee status. It is current, as the surveys were conducted this May. These surveys were supplemented with three virtual focus group discussions with 8-10 consumers per focus group in the U.S., France and Germany. Research for the report included interviews with several key industry stakeholders and academics.

In fact, according to a recent Forbes Insights survey of 300-plus executives--63% of whom were in the C-suite--95% believe that AI will play an important role in their responsibilities in the near future. The deep data that AI allows companies to tap into is providing insights to help solve challenges in everything from better neuroscience diagnoses to producing kegs of beer. The power of AI is understood by business leaders regardless of company size: The Forbes Insights survey drew detailed responses from companies with annual revenue over $10 billion to as low at $250 million, with remarkable consensus across business size and sectors. All told, 99% of executives in technical positions say their organizations are going to boost their AI spending in the coming year, a level of funding increases likely unmatched anywhere else in the corporate world. Implementation of AI is just getting started in business, but make no mistake: Change comes quickly.

Tinder does not allow its users to send photographs to their matches, the better to prevent…well, you can guess. But as of Tuesday, the dating app is allowing users in Canada and Mexico to use images from the personalized-avatar app Bitmoji on Tinder, allowing them to slide into each other's DMs with flirtatious cartoons. Tinder users can message each other within the app, but the company's ban on sending images to keep out explicit content does have a significant downside: Tinder users are limited to seeing only a few carefully curated photos of other users on the site. Users can select anywhere from one to nine images of themselves to attach to their profile, which others can view when swiping through the app. Beyond that, it may be a bit of a mystery what another person on Tinder really looks like.

We've only posted one sale on the Instax SP-2 when we saw it briefly drop during the holiday season, so while this isn't a huge drop, it's a nice savings that you can use on more film. The Fujifilm INSTAX SHARE SP-2 Smart Phone Printer is an also great pick in our guide to the best instant camera. "If you want to keep shooting with your smartphone but like the idea and look of an old-school, tangible print, the Fujifilm Instax Share SP-2 is the best instant printer available," Erin Lodi wrote. "You can easily connect your phone to the printer via Wi-Fi and share access to your library of images with the free Instax Share app, which you can then use to do some minor editing and add a filter or a custom border. Press the print button, and the SP-2's high-resolution 320 dpi print is ready in just 10 seconds."

Google is no stranger to serving up contextual info and commands when they're relevant. But wouldn't it be nice if could curate and organize that info in a way that could help with a jam-packed schedule? The search firm is currently trotting out a "visual snapshot" for Assistant on mobile devices that provides the info and controls the AI helper believes you'll need to make it through the day. It prioritizes navigation, but scrolling down will show you your itinerary, reminders, reservations (such as flights and movies) and eventually less essential content like stock prices and Assistant action suggestions. As you'd expect, the data will vary based on the time of day, where you are and your recent history with Assistant.

If you've been waiting to pick up the Sonos Beam soundbar, now's your chance. The speaker is now on sale for $399 on the Sonos website and at retailers. When we reviewed Beam, we gave it a score of 85, given its excellent sound quality, solid price point and support for AirPlay 2. Unlike the Playbar and Playbase soundbars, this one has Amazon Alexa built in, which you can use to control your TV with your voice (Google Assistant support should arrive later). Beam also has a night mode feature which boosts the volume of quiet sounds while suppressing louder ones, meaning you might no longer need to wear headphones for late-night movie watching. In addition, the speaker can enhance speech to make dialogue easier to hear.