Shopping shouldn't feel like a chore. It should be fun and convenient, delighting the customer at every turn. The next generation of AI will anticipate your needs before you do. Imagine the perfect blazer arriving to your doorstep just-in-time for your cocktail reception. This may seem like a hi-tech fantasy, but thanks to the powerful combination of artificial intelligence and mobile technology, seeing is more than believing, it is a mechanism for brands to drive value-based shopping experiences.

First revealed at CES 2018, Google Assistant is now live on LG's AI TV lineup with ThinQ AI, and LG has more details about how it works. The new tech is available on all of LG's OLED and Super UHD TVs with Thinq AI, including the Signature W8, C8, E8 and B8 OLED lineup and SK9500, SK9000 and SK8000 Super UHD TVs. The ThinQ tech is more about controlling your TV and connections. For instance, you can use it to change the picture mode, turn the TV off at a set time or switch to a game console or soundbar by saying "connect to soundbar." You can also search for content, channels, and desired films by title, name of an actor and other parameters, or give commands like "search for the soundtrack of this movie."

Yesterday was the first day of the Microsoft Build Conference and artificial intelligence(AI) was front and center of the keynotes. In the last few years, Microsoft has established itself as one of the top AI platform providers in the market competing head to head with Google and Amazon for providing the most comprehensive suite of AI products for developers and data scientists. Technologies such as Azure Machine Learning, WinML, Cognitive Services, Cortana and others combines with a world class AI research organizations have catapulted Microsoft to a leadership position in this super competitive field. Yesterday, the Redmond giant announced a series of new additions and extensions to its AI suite of products that expand its vision of AI-first platforms. Let's recap some of the key announcements: One of the coolest announcements yesterday was the release of Project Brainwave which represents Microsoft's entrance in the AI-first hardware space.

For getting things done, we've got Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana--your mileage may vary as to just how useful and/or responsive any of them are. But what about an A.I. companion designed to support you spiritually by helping you strengthen mindfulness? A couple of ex-Google employees have recently released Maslo, a "voice journal with personality and smarts" that "interacts with empathy and playfulness." "We encourage personal curiosity and believe in growing into identities that are bigger versions of who we are now," say the developers, Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter. Could Maslo become your digital bestie?

Be it a conversation about the latest model of cell phones, television sets, school curricula, job opportunities, disruptive start-ups, seasoned firms or data breach controversy – all of them are abuzz with tech jargons. Terms like Big Data, IoT, AI, ML or crypto seem to be all pervasive. Let's take a look what they all mean. Big data is the large volume of data that is generated on a day-to-day basis. "Data" can mean anything from databases to photos, videos and sound recordings to written text and sensor data.

We live in a world of talking digital helpers, from Siri, to the Google Assistant, to Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft's version, Cortana. While Amazon and Microsoft announced back in August of last year that the two companies would be collaborating to make their two virtual assistants work together, today we saw a version of that in action. If you're imagining Alexa and Cortana freely talking to each other like two robotic hosts in Westworld, you are out of luck. However, what they showed was still interesting. Meghan Saunders, general manager for Cortana at Microsoft, and Tom Taylor, a senior vice president for Alexa at Amazon, joined each other on stage for a demonstration.

Google has been rolling out news at a steady rate since last week, in what feels like a bit of a last-minute clearinghouse ahead of tomorrow. The company's already taken the wraps off of news about Android TV, Google Home, Wear OS Assistant, you name it. If this were practically any other company, we'd be concerned that there's nothing left to discuss. The next few days are going to be jam-packed with developer news and a whole lot of information around the company's consumer-facing offerings over the next year and beyond. Android, Assistant, Wear OS, search and the like are going to take center stage when the company kicks off the festivities tomorrow at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.

SAP is continuing to add smart features to its cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution - S/4HANA Cloud - as it looks to help customers automate processes and react faster to information held in their core systems. It has also integrated S/4HANA with CoPilot, its digital assistant, allowing users to take action through a natural language interface, like Microsoft's Cortana. The 1805 release of S/4HANA Cloud, which is out today, will include 12 new'scenarios' to help customers optimise common processes. Nine of these are machine learning solutions and three are CoPilot'conversational UI scenarios'. Sven Denecken, SVP head of product management said of the announcement: "With enhanced machine learning capabilities, businesses can now have intelligent interactions that anticipate the needs of their end users – incorporating intelligent self-learning mechanisms, and liberating users from mundane tasks for higher level thinking. This will further support the journey to automation and the intelligent ERP."

A mysterious, cone-shaped device, shown in a demo Monday at Microsoft's Build event in Seattle, hinted at a big leap in capability for the company's digital assistant: the ability to see and identify people. In the ruthless war among Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google's Assistant, this is a feature we haven't yet seen from the competition. What we don't know is what this prototype is, and whether it will ever come out. Microsoft's official, overshadowed demonstration showed us the conference room of the future. Microsoft incorporated Cortana, the Surface Hub, and Skype's translation and transcription features, together with PowerBI and Microsoft Teams, into a cohesive working environment.

Fin is an on-demand, artificial intelligence service that uses human and computer intelligence to be a smart assistant. Sam Lessin is the co-founder and co-CEO or Fin, and he joins Cheddar to detail the special Mother's Day offering. Fin wants to help you shop for mom so you don't physically have to.