The smart home assistant battle has shifted. No longer is it about how well your speaker can understand what you're saying, it's about how many devices can understand what it's telling them to do. And Google Assistant just made a big leap in that department. Google has announced that Assistant can connect with more than 5,000 devices for your home, an increase of nearly 250 percent from January's 1,500 devices. That includes many of Google's own devices such as Chromecast, Nest thermostats and cameras, as well as popular smart home devices from a variety of manufacturers.

Lonely hearts out there, rejoice--soon Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid, and The League won't be your only options for frittering awaytime in your search for love. At its annual developer conference on Tuesday, Facebook revealed that the social media giant is entering the already crowded field of dating apps. "This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships -- not just for hookups," CEO Mark Zuckerberg joked, seemingly side-eyeing everyone's favorite time-suck, Tinder. While "Dating for Facebook" will be opt-in only, the rollout of a plan for a dating app amid the company's huge privacy scandal managed to raise some eyebrows. In an apparent effort to ward off criticism, Zuckerberg immediately addressed concerns that might arise around melding the app you use to see photos of your third cousin's new baby with your dating profile.

From The Terminator to Blade Runner, pop culture has always leaned towards a chilling depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) and our future with AI at the helm. Recent headlines about Facebook panicking because their AI bots developed a language of their own have us hitting the alarm button once again. Should we really feel unsettled with an AI future? News flash: that future is here. If you ask Siri, the helpful assistant who magically lives inside your phone, to read text messages and emails to you, find the nearest pizza place or call your mother for you, then you've made AI a part of your everyday life.

As far as Google is concerned, there's no place like home. Ahead of its I/O Developer conference next week, Google announced that its artificial-intelligence-fused Google Assistant is now connected to more than 5,000 devices in the home, up from 1,500 in January. The idea is that you'll be able to summon the Google Assistant and issue voice commands, to preheat the oven, see who is at your front door, or dim the lights. The list of cloud-connected smart home products where the Google Assistant has an increased presence includes cameras, thermostats, security systems, vacuums, washers, and air conditioners. Of course, with the smart home rapidly emerging as one of the next key battlegrounds for tech, this very same vision is being laid out by Amazon with Alexa, Apple through HomeKit and Siri, Microsoft with Cortana, and Samsung via SmartThings and Bixby.

Google's I/O developer conference is happening next week, and it'll be just about two years since the Google Assistant was first introduced. As such, the company is taking some time to announce a few new features, all of which are meant to expand the Assistant's usefulness in a smart home. Part of making the Assistant able to take on Amazon's Echo / Alexa powerhouse is having broad support for the massive number of smart home devices out there, and Google undeniably has that now. The company says that the Google Assistant works with more than 5,000 devices, up from only 1,500 at the beginning of the year. It's a number that doesn't mean much on its own, but Google VP of Assistant and Search Nick Fox said "the Assistant now supports essentially all the major brands."

The latest announcements could aid Amazon in bolstering usage of its voice assistant platform. At the moment, voice assistants are used primarily for activities like checking the weather, receiving news updates, or making calls. The development of new experiences that expand voice assistants' ability to complete more complex interactions will likely help voice assistants and smart speakers occupy a growing amount of consumers' time. The voice app ecosystem is booming. In the US, the number of Alexa skills alone surpassed 25,000 in January 2018, up from just 7,000 the previous January, in categories ranging from music streaming services, to games, to connected home tools. As voice platforms continue to gain footing in homes via smart speakers -- connected devices powered primarily by artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice assistants -- the opportunity for voice apps is becoming more profound.

Artificial intelligence has moved from science fiction to science fact. OPINION: You have probably chatted with Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri. Autonomous vehicles are proliferating in the air, on the water and on land. And you may be familiar with the personalised recommendations of Netflix. But did you know that your bank's decision to approve or deny your loan application may rely on the judgment of predictive algorithms?

As recently as 10 years ago, social media advertising was a relatively unknown medium, but in 2018 it is a major part of huge, global advertising campaigns, which gives you an idea of the speed and scale at which the advertising industry is changing. With that in mind, in this article Clear Channel Direct looks into another form of technology that has, and will, impact advertising platforms: artificial intelligence. When artificial intelligence is mentioned, you might think of robots and various other sci-fi- style inventions. However, AI doesn't just mean robots that can walk and talk – there are plenty of less spectacular iterations of artificial intelligence that feature in our advertising industry in a more understated way. When we're looking for a product online, we log on to a search engine or a specific shopping site and search for what we want without a moment's hesitation.

If you were to ask your device with an AI voice assistant a random question, what gender would respond to you? Female most likely, and that's because only female artificial intelligence assistants have been developed. Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assistant all have female voices. Apple's Siri also started as female only, but added a male voice option three years ago, even though the female voice is still the default. It might be easy to think that female AI voices have been the go-to because of sexism -- lots of men in leadership and developer roles at Silicon Valley -- and that may be at play, but there's more to it. Two studies recently cited by The Wall Street Journal show that men and women prefer a female voice assistant because they believe it's more welcoming and understanding. However, they prefer to listen to a male voice on certain subjects.

Artificial Intelligence is all about the performance of intelligent behaviours by computers or machines performing tasks that traditionally need cognitive function in order to execute effectively. Over the last couple years, multiple changes within the technology space have brought forward a paradigm shift, leaving some players behind while simultaneously adding more value for end users. Given the rising need for smart automation of existing processes, AI has entered the hospitality landscape with a promise to enhance hotel reputation, drive revenue and take customer experiences to the next level. Like many industrial systems, the world of hotels revolves around a handful of solutions all driven by intelligent chatbots and voice-enabled services. To meet changing consumer expectations, hotels across the globe must upgrade their operational systems and services by integrating intelligence-based predictive analytics in hospitality.