You don't need a Facebook account to sign up for Bumble anymore. Starting tomorrow, you can use your phone number to register for a new account on the dating app, according to Wired. Like Tinder, Hinge and countless other apps and services, Bumble streamlined the process of setting up a profile and adding photos by offering Facebook as a login option. Last week Tinder users had trouble logging in due to a glitch with Facebook privacy settings. In the wake of Cambridge Analytica (CA) and Mark Zuckerberg's congressional testimony, Bumble's VP of international marketing and communications Louise Troen said "many" of its over 30 million users were looking for a different sign-up/log-in method.

Alexa and Google Assistant have been taking over homes for a few years now, so it's probably easier to name the companies that haven't made a smart speaker. The options are seemingly endless. Audio gear that harnesses a virtual assistant comes in all shapes and sizes, with some making big claims about the quality of sound they get out of such small devices. Panasonic is doing just that with its $250 SC-GA10; however, the company's promise of "premium hi-fi sound" failed to make a lasting impression. As you should expect, Google Assistant works just fine here to deliver a "smart" speaker experience.

Voice-enabled assistants are the newest buzz among consumers across industries with Google, Amazon, Apple, and other giants rolling out AI-infused gears functioning primarily through conversational voice interfaces. Globally, the number of customers using voice-assistants is increasing with a CAGR of 29.4% and is estimated to reach 1.83 billion by 2021. Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have all become an integral part of a millennial's day. From setting up reminders, checking the weather, to shopping – these voice-enabled digital assistants have covered most of the bases heavily influencing the mobile-tech experience. Financial services have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of such innovations around mobile tech and IoT.

The 2017 holiday shopping season trended better for online U.S. retailers with an estimated 16.6 percent jump in e-commerce sales compared to the same period last year. With a successful holiday season behind them and consumer confidence up, retailers are starting 2018 optimistic. But what can retailers learn from this past holiday season? When we talk to our customers, the biggest challenge in this new era of retailing is just keeping up with customer expectations. Bringing new, differentiated experiences to market is a monumental task.

Thanks to the massive increase in available data, we are seeing major advances in cognitive computing in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive data analytics. A number of firms in financial services are taking advantage of this to cut costs and to find new, profitable strategies. While prop trading firms and hedge funds remain the biggest adopters, there are a few robo-advisors utilizing AI methods. But it's getting harder to identify the fakers from the makers in such an overcrowded market. As competition heats up, firms are cavalierly tossing out buzzwords: risk management, artificial intelligence, tax loss harvesting, re-balancing.

She sits patiently in millions of homes, an unremarkable cylinder commonly referred to as Alexa. But Amazon's new'virtual assistant' has been touted as nothing short of technological revolution. In response to spoken commands, she answers questions which previously required an internet search, can perform mundane domestic tasks such as turning on lights, and makes online purchases – through Amazon, obviously. Can it all be as innocent as it seems, particularly in an age rife with internet snooping? Some users have even reported'bone-chilling' cackles emanating from their speakers at random moments.

As big data gradually comes into play in the world of business, machine learning has become one of the most important tools for companies to solve various kinds of problems. Firms across various industries are all trying to incorporate this rising technique into their business and get a competitive edge in understanding their consumers better. In fact, Google, Apple, Facebook and other major tech firms have been in a race to acquire AI startups focusing on machine learning. In May 2017, Apple acquired a California-based startup Lattice.io for around $200 million. The startup specialized in using machine learning techniques to make "dark data" machine readable. This only goes to say how the industry leaders too believe in the power of machine learning.

Google uses AI for services like search, translation and face detection, but its AI chips, which it calls tensor processing units, run in data centers. Now AI chips are spreading to phones, PCs, cars and more. You've likely seen artificial intelligence technology spread into apps, devices and services, doing things like recognizing your friends' faces in photos and endowing smart speakers with human-sounding voices. Well, good news: The processor industry has noticed, too. That means we'll see a slew of new chips that should speed up AI tasks not just on your phone or laptop but also in your car or home security camera.

Artificial Intelligence in smartphones is changing the way enterprises do business as well as the way they reach out to consumers. This is a trending new technology which has great potential and is impacting both B2B as well as B2C companies. Let's take a glimpse of how smartphone AI is evolving and bringing about changes in the business world. It matters how intelligently a business is placed to live up to the technological advancements. If you would visualize something online which you like, you would most likely look for it in an actual physical store before you actually decide to order it.

Hype over artificial intelligence reached its zenith in 2017, with CIOs, consultants and academics touting the technology as potentially automating anything from business and IT operations to customer connections. Yet through the first calendar quarter of 2018 several media organizations reported on the dangers of AI, which involves training computers to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. "There's been so much hype in the media about it and this is just journalists trying to extend the hype by talking about the negative side," says Thomas Davenport, a Babson College distinguished professor who teaches a class on cognitive technologies. Perhaps, but the concerns are hardly new and very persistent, ranging from fears about racial, gender and other biases to automated drones running amok with potentially lethal consequences. Get the latest insights with our CIO Daily newsletter.