Integrating a voice or chatbot interface into a product used to require a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) cloud service. Today, we are open sourcing Snips NLU, a Private by Design, GDPR compliant NLU engine. It can run on the Edge or on a server, with minimal footprint, while performing as good or better than cloud solutions. From the 60 million messages Facebook bots process every day, to the tens of millions of users now talking to an Alexa or Google-powered device, natural language has become a preferred mode of interaction between people and machines. A new skill is being added to the Amazon Alexa skill store every 90 minutes, making voice assistants grow faster than smartphone app stores did.

Supply chains are hugely important in our world of physical goods. Companies invest a lot of money and effort to continually optimize and improve them, and that's not likely to ever stop. Save 5% on transportation costs? As artificial intelligence begins to reshape our digital world via AI-infused goods, services, and processes, it will require its own supply chain: mind-boggling quantities of data. Mountains of information must be continually gathered, processed, refined, and reassembled to produce the desired intelligence and decision-making.

Super portability and easy access to AI assistants make these wireless headphones must-haves on your next trip. And the design is kooky. But you won't find better Bluetooth chops. The W1 wireless chip maintains a rock-solid connection to minimize dropouts, and the battery delivers five hours of listening before you have to pop them into the case for a charge. Want to hear some SZA? Double-tap either bud and ask Siri to cue it up.

Maybe Ed Doran really does like to listen to Jamaican-infused Nordic metal bands, maybe he doesn't. Either way, there are times he wants to crank the music up to 11, and times it's better muted. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence can't always tell the difference, and that missing context ranks among the key challenges developers face as they try to craft a smoother and more-useful interaction between humans and machines, the principal program manager at Microsoft Research AI said at South by Southwest earlier this month. Despite the occasional bold prediction or prophesy of doom, the discussions about AI at this year's SXSW festivities took a more pragmatic tone this year than in the past. While several panels still contemplated our long-term future -- one, for example, considered the possibility of consciousness in machines -- most of the researchers, developers and pundits set their sights on the challenges AI faces in the here and now. They talked about improving human-machine interactions, reducing bias in data sets and developer teams and, as Doran noted, enhancing an AI system's sense of context and human environment.

Google on Thursday announced a new Google Assistant feature: the ability to transfer money to your friends as well as request cash using voice and Google Pay. The feature will work not only on Android smartphones and tablets, but also on iPhones -- as long as Google Assistant is installed on your iOS device, courtesy of the Google app. In the future, smart speakers will also get the functionality. Obviously, to make voice-based money transfers work via Google's Assistant, you need to set up Google Pay on your Google account. That's the actual part that handles the money changing virtual hands.

The virtual personal assistant for MSC Cruises guests is a conversational, voice-enabled Artificial Intelligence innovation that can communicate, learn and intelligently predict guests' needs to make relevant suggestions.

Brad Smith is Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer. Harry Shum is the Executive Vice President of Microsoft AI and Research Group. They've teamed to write this foreword for the company's new book. Twenty years ago, we both worked at Microsoft, but on opposite sides of the globe. In 1998, one of us was living and working in China as a founding member of the Microsoft Research Asia lab in Beijing. Five thousand miles away, the other was based at the company's headquarters, just outside of Seattle, leading the international legal and corporate affairs team. While we lived on separate continents and in quite different cultures, we shared a common workplace experience within Microsoft, albeit with differing routines before we arrived at the office. At that time in the United States, waking to the scent of brewing coffee was a small victory in technology automation. It meant that you had remembered to set the timer on the programmable coffee maker the night before. As you drank that first cup of coffee, you typically watched the morning news on a standard television or turned the pages of the local newspaper to learn what had happened while you slept.

You've no doubt heard the buzz about smart speakers. Why else would you be reading this article? A few years ago, if you wanted a smart speaker with a hands-free digital assistant, there was only one option. The Amazon Echo was one-of-a-kind when it debuted in November 2014, and it launched into uncharted waters unsure if it would find a home with consumers. But it was a smash hit, and was quickly followed up by the Google Home and a slew of third-party devices with Alexa or Google Assistant built in. Even Apple finally joined the party with the HomePod in early February.

CDs and vinyls are outselling digital downloads for the first time since 2011 thanks to streaming services, industry figures reveal. Apps like Spotify and Apple Music have seen an astronomical rise in popularity in recent years and this has all but destroyed the digital download market. As more people choose to stream music rather than own it, sales of physical media are now falling at a slower rate than their digital counterparts. This has been driven, in part, by a resurgence in vinyl sales among audiophiles, who prize the format's unique sound. CD's and vinyl copies of music are outselling their digital counterparts for the first time since 2011.

Welcome to your living room, the latest battleground for tech companies vying for your allegiance. What started as Amazon staking its claim with the Echo line of smart speakers now includes competition from Google and Apple, too. It's not just tiny smart speakers, either -- all three companies have launched Hi-Fi systems in the past few months in an attempt to appeal to audiophiles. But while the Sonos One with Alexa and the Apple HomePod have mustered a ton of press since their debuts, the Google Home Max hasn't picked up quite as much traction. It's not that the Home Max is underwhelming -- it's just that the Sonos One is surprisingly affordable, while the HomePod launched to much fanfare because it's Apple's first foray into the smart-speaker space.