Walmart-backed Flipkart has just issued a challenge to Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. The home-grown e-commerce giant today announced that it has acquired Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Liv.ai, which has developed a platform that converts speech-to-text in nine regional languages apart from English. With this move, the e-tailer hopes to soon offer an end-to-end conversational shopping experience for its users. "Given the complexities in typing on vernacular keyboards, voice will become a preferred interface for new shoppers. One does understand that building a voice interface is complex, and is especially challenging in Indian context given multiple languages and accents," Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in a statement.

Get my free AI Demo! Advances in technology and the resulting volume of data that PR and comms personnel have to work with has increased exponentially. Big data means people are spending more time managing information, rather than taking actions based on the insights it creates. In most industries, it isn't a question of if artificial intelligence should be implemented, but when. Competition in the information age is fast and fierce. If you're able to harness the potential of AI, you're going to grab that much needed edge. First, you need to know what artificial intelligence is. The term artificial intelligence was first used in 1956, as part of the Dartmouth Workshop. On a simple level, it describes a computer that reproduces human functions.

This article is the second part (click here for part one) in our series about the role of AI in customer support. The explores how digitization, digital self-service, and distributed digital advisors are disrupting a series of industries and creating a series of business opportunities to realize transformative value propositions, business models, services, and new revenue streams. The second-part delves further into the impact of AIOps and machine automation on a range of different careers and considers how we can prepare further for the occupational changes of the future. Many of the critical building blocks of computing -- microchip density, processing speed, storage capacity, energy efficiency, download speed, etc. -- have been improving at exponential rates over the last decade According to the authors of The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: "We've also recently seen great progress in natural language processing, machine learning (the ability of a computer to automatically refine its methods and improve its results as it gets more data), computer vision, simultaneous localization and mapping, and many of the other fundamental challenges of the discipline." Administration tasks have evolved to largely self-service over the last few decades with technology removing the need for typing pools, copyists, and mailroom clerks.

Google Assistant wants to tell you some good news. A new skill aims to give users a reprieve from the oft-depressing daily news cycle by making it easier for them to find more uplifting headlines. Now, users can ask Google Assistant to'Tell me something good,' and it will trigger a'daily dose of good news,' according to the search giant. Google says the skill is launching as an'experimental feature' that's now available on any devices that are equipped with Assistant, such as phones, smart displays and the Google Home, the firm's voice-activated smart speaker. Assistant will serve up stories that are primarily focused around people who are doing things to help their communities and the world, Google explained.

Amazon is eager to get more bright minds working on voice technology, so it's expanding the Alexa Fellowship program to 14 more universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M and Cambridge. The fellowships are financed through Amazon's $200 million Alexa Fund. Other schools joining the roster include University of Texas at Austin, Dartmouth, Arizona State and the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad, India. The latest additions take the number of schools in the program to 18, joining the previous quartet of Carnegie Mellon, University of Southern California, Johns Hopkins and Waterloo. The program comprises two different fellowships: Alexa Graduate Fellowship and Alexa Innovation Fellowship.

A version of Alexa won't tell kids where babies come from or spill the beans about Santa. It also won't explain some things kids might have heard on the news - like what Stormy Daniels does for a living. Amazon updated its voice assistant with a feature that can make Alexa more kid-friendly. Achild holds his Amazon Echo Dot in Kennesaw, Ga. Amazon updated its voice assistant with a feature that can make Alexa more kid-friendly.

In principle, the debate we're having is how to make Artificial Intelligence more human, more ethical, and how to treat it once it's achieved that. How do we get computers to live up to our standards? But the experience we are actually living seems to be going in the exact opposite direction. The AIs coming to market are designed to help us remove the burden of our humanity. That doesn't require them to "think" – it requires them to help us to stop thinking.

The vast majority of interactive AIs (chatbots, conversational interfaces etcetera) operate on the principle of conversation trees – making them functional but uninspiring to interact with. In most cases, the programmer defines questions and a list of possible responses that the AI can return – in a similar way that Alexa Skills and Google Home Actions are built. These chatbot programs then use natural language processing to parse consumer responses, determine the nearest applicable answer they are programmed with and return this. However, the future of customer interaction will require AIs to rise above conversation trees and become at least a little more human. In order to fulfil their apparent destiny and render the human-staffed customer service department obsolete, they will need to be able to parse intent and emotion as well as meaning.

Facebook is reportedly working on an Amazon Echo and Google Home killer, codenamed Aloha, which would pair a video chat service with an AI assistant. Now, thanks to some clever reverse engineering, we've got a sense for what this will look like. Jane Manchun Wong, a prodigous reverse engineer who has uncovered hidden gems in popular apps like Slack and Facebook, stumbled across this feature within the standard Android Facebook Messenger app. The only thing that works is the UI, along with some pretty rudimentary speech-to-text recognition. Speaking to TNW, Manchun Wong hypothesized that Aloha's full features are only available to those who can authenticate with a Facebook employee account.

The news has always played an essential role in our lives, keeping us informed about the world and the issues we care about. But the fact is, while there is a sea bad news, there is also a plethora of "good news" happening where people are making progress solving real issues. The Google Assistant is now making this kind of news easier to find. "Tell me something good" is a new experimental feature for Assistant users in the US that delivers your daily dose of good news. Just say "Hey Google, tell me something good" to receive a brief news summary about people who are solving problems for our communities and our world, the company said in a blog post.