As they say in relationship counseling, communication is everything in nurturing a successful happy marriage. Thus, it was with considerable fascination the other day that I listened as a colleague offhandedly mentioned that his spouse was "jealous" of his new Google Home, to which she promptly replied that it was true and that he now asked the home device all of the casual questions he used to ask her, from tomorrow's weather to today's headlines to what time the grocery store closed tonight. The casual back-and-forth banter that cements a long-term relationship was being replaced by an all-knowing AI assistant. What does this suggest about the future of AI in our homes? Gone are the primitive voice recognition tools of a decade ago that required hours-long training sessions and bizarre speech patterns of speaking a single word at a time and computer-like primitive vocabularies.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably saw headlines this week about a war between Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Alexa in personal computers and AR glasses may be a bit surprising, but the CES 2018 theme seemed to be the same as last year: more cars and auto appliances with AI assistants, and more smart home devices for the kitchen, family room, and bedroom that respond to voice commands and talk to Alexa and Google Assistant. In addition to Alexa in everything from a car cockpit to a toilet, Samsung's Bixby, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Assistant all showed up to vie for the world's attention. Away from Las Vegas, reports of a Facebook video chat device named Portal that responds to voice commands also made news this week. CES this year made clear the distinction in strategy between these tech giants that no longer treat their assistants as a novelty, but rather as a major selling point and part of their brand identity.

PitchBook, a Morningstar company, tracks every aspect of the public and private equity markets, including venture capital, private equity, and M&A. LAS VEGAS--For many of us, it feels like the future is now, and that's largely thanks to AI-powered technology such as virtual assistants and robots. AI is on the front lines of new technology, and venture capital investors have certainly taken note, pouring more and more money into the space each year. But there's still a lot to come for the red-hot industry. That's the view from a panel of AI executives who attended CES.

For years, marketers have talked about brands as having personalities. Now they have the tools to bring those brands to life – virtually at least. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are being combined with Academy Award-winning animation skills to create virtual humans that are the closest yet to flesh and blood. And for brands, that offers the opportunity to put a very human-looking face on a corporate body. One of the latest iterations of these virtual humans comes from Auckland-based company, Soul Machines, whose co-founder and CEO, Mark Sagar's ground-breaking work in computer-generated faces on films, King Kong and Avatar, was recognised with consecutive Oscars.

Does a robot manage your money? For many of us, the answer is yes. Online and algorithmic investment and financial advice is easy to come by these days, usually under the moniker of "robo-advisor." Startups such as Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and Betterment launched robo-advisors as industry disruptors, and incumbents, such as Schwab's (Intelligent Advisor), Vanguard (Personal Advisor Services), Morgan Stanley and BlackRock have joined the fray with their own hybrid machine/advisor solutions. It's clear that robo-advisors and AI play an important and growing role in the financial services industry, but a question remains. Will robo-advisors disrupt corporate capital allocation the same way they have personal capital allocation?

This week I was lucky enough to attend CES 2018 in Las Vegas – or unlucky, for those of you that have been before! This year a record-breaking attendance of nearly 200,000 came to see 4,000 exhibitors and 1,200 speakers. I'm not even going to attempt to summarise all the key announcements, otherwise we'll be here until next week. Instead, I'm going to keep it short and sweet and give my observations on the three things that stood out for me this year. This year felt more like a motor show than a tech show.

One in six Americans now own a smart speaker, according to new research out this week from NPR and Edison Research – a figure that's up 128 percent from January, 2017. Amazon's Echo speakers are still in the lead, the report says, as 11 percent now own an Amazon Alexa device compared with 4 percent who own a Google Home product. Today, 16 percent of Americans own a smart speaker, or around 39 million people. The holiday shopping season also seemed to have played a role in the increased adoption of smart devices in the U.S., with 7 percent of Americans reporting they acquired at least one smart speaker between Black Friday and the end of December, and 4 percent saying they acquired their first smart speaker during the holidays. Both Amazon and Google used the holiday shopping season to their advantage in terms of acquiring market share for their respective devices by slashing prices to encourage more impulse buys, and by heavily promoting the items across their storefronts.

Jefferson Graham runs down the winners and losers of CES 2018. Toto's $19,000 Floating Tub has a heated headrest and "brings freedom from gravity, releasing stress on joints and encouraging ultimate relaxation." LAS VEGAS -- The $19,000 high-end floating bathtub from Japanese manufacturer Toto was cool, but a cutting edge tech gadget? The mammoth technology convention formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show was stacked with home and bath products this year. While a new Kohler toilet is Bluetooth-enabled and lets you flush by asking Alexa to do just that, it was hard to lump these appliance upgrades in with some of the technological leaps that really made a mark in our lives.

Google Assistant attracts them with its expertise in answering complex questions, its ability to adapt to different settings and broader language support. Alexa can be used to command more devices, is associated with making purchases, and has become a household name. Microsoft Corp's Cortana is optimized to work with its services, including Skype.

Before the start of CES 2018, the only real smart speakers with a display were the Amazon Echo Show and the Echo Spot. But now that Google has partnered with several manufacturers to make a whole line of Echo Show rivals, a bona fide new device category has been born: the smart display. And based on the devices revealed this week, I believe the smart display will slowly start to outnumber smart speakers and will likely be the norm going forward. The simple reason for this argument is that the display makes such devices much more useful. Sure, you could have Alexa or Google Assistant tell you there's a Starbucks 1.5 miles away from you.