Amazon's Echo smart speaker is about to get a hot new rival – the Apple HomePod. The device was originally supposed to go on sale last year and was ultimately delayed, but latest rumors suggest a HomePod release date is just around the corner. The HomePod is a direct rival to the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. It's powered by Apple's Siri virtual assistant, and can be controlled by voice commands. Just like the Echo, HomePod will perform tasks like playing music or telling you about the weather.

Amazon's Alexa strategy is to be everywhere: ubiquitous, omnipresent, and all-knowing, like some AI god. In pursuit of that goal, the Seattle-based company certainly covered some ground at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The extension of the Home Skills API to control microwaves and ovens adds to the more than 800 skills and more than 1,000 devices that Alexa can control in the home today. When it comes to cars, however, Alexa has made fewer inroads. That's why VentureBeat drew up this list of five ways Alexa will enter vehicles in 2018, as revealed at CES. Select Toyota vehicles, like 2018 models of the Camry and Sienna, as well as some Lexus vehicles, will be able to speak with Alexa this year.

PSFK's AI Retail Playbook, a collaboration with Microsoft, outlines AI's contributions to the customer experience With the rise of e-commerce titans like Amazon, today's retail landscape is built on a digital foundation--and words like AI, data, personalization, convenience and unified commerce are the new competitive advantages. As a consequence of this digital ecosystem, consumers have an entirely new set of behaviors and expectations when it comes to shopping. With on-demand services like Amazon Prime offering next-day delivery and 24/7 gratification, shoppers have a much higher bar than their coupon-collecting and bargain-hunting predecessors. They not only consider convenience and flexibility absolute musts, but also crave personalized service and experiences. As offline and online retail converge into a single, seamless channel, AI-powered experiences will become essential for retailers to meet their customers' needs, no matter when, where and how they choose to shop.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already impacting our lives in many ways. From intelligent video curation on Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube and Google web search to Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri personal assistant, AI is already making our lives easier. AI can also help corporations and customers fight against rapidly evolving cyberthreats. For instance, FireEye's (NASDAQ:FEYE) Helix cybersecurity platform is able to automate threat detection and prevention with the help of this emerging technology. The early adoption of AI by Alphabet, Apple, and FireEye could help them steal a march over rivals.

AI and machine learning has been shaping our experience as consumers for some time now. From the ubiquitous Google search to Spotify and Netflix recommendations, or asking Siri or Alexa just about anything, we haven't really resisted the idea of bots making our lives that little bit easier. So why is it only now that AI is on every marketer's lips? "I think there's now a democratisation of AI," explained Marketo's Customer Success Director Mike Handes at ADMA's recent Town Hall, Marketing in an AI-first World. "Technology vendors have embraced it, making it more accessible for marketers to create greater engagement or better outcomes for customers. In the past, the idea of automating communications brought a sense of lost control."

Rokid, a Chinese startup that makes an AI voice assistant and smart devices, just raised a Series B extension round led by Temasek Holdings, with participation from Credit Suisse, IDG Capital and CDIB Capital. The size of the round was not released, but a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that it is $100 million. The company's previous funding was its Series B round, which was announced in November 2016. Founder and chief executive officer Mingming Zhu says Rokid raised a Series B instead of a C round because the company, which is based in Hangzhou, China with research centers in Beijing and San Francisco that develop its proprietary natural language processing, image processing, face recognition and robotics technology, is still in its early stages. Rokid wants to focus on gathering more resources and bringing in strategic investors like Temasek Holdings before moving on to a Series C.

You can scarf down an entire bar of chocolate or treat yourself to a whole tub of ice cream, but for a healthier approach to winding down after a stressful day, you may want to consider the Noso. A new digital artificially intelligent diffuser, the Noso made its debut at CES 2018, and promises to help enliven your home with organic essential oils and natural extracts. So whether you're looking to relieve stress and anxiety or start your day with a bit of energy, the Noso can help. Helping to rid your home of traditional chemical-based air fresheners, the Noso only uses natural scents and oils, leveraging the powers of aromatherapy to potentially improve your health or mood. And to make it even easier to use, the Noso can be controlled with a mobile app, or simpler still, with your voice via Amazon Alexa or Google Home.

Earlier this week, industry sources disclosed that Samsung and LG are planning to launch artificial intelligence-based air conditioners later this month. At a media event in Seoul, LG introduced its premium air conditioning unit that boasts of artificial intelligence capabilities. "The Whisen ThinQ air conditioner has evolved to an air conditioner that can see, hear, think and speak," Song Dae-hyun, president of home appliance & air solutions at LG, said. The 2017 model did come with sensors that gave it the ability to learn about the room where it is placed, so it could provide optimum temperature to users. With ThinQ, the 2018 model features the ability to learn about the room and analyze real time changes that are taking place inside and outside of it.

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers. That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company's technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second. It was a fitting way to kick off this year's CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show's announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything.

A man dressed in white from head to toe was posted outside the Las Vegas Convention Center last week. His outfit included just a few colorful exceptions: four bubbles in red, yellow, blue, and green splashed in the center of his T-shirt, and a fluffy red poof atop his ski cap. Those multicolored spots should look familiar to anyone who's used Google's virtual assistant on their smartphone. After all, those dots form the same logo that appears in the Google Assistant app. That's because he, like others at CES in the same attire, was dressed as the Google Assistant. The costumed characters were part of Google's effort to give its digital helper a flashy presence at CES after Amazon's Alexa stole the spotlight at last year's show.