You would be forgiven for thinking that your private conversations were just that, but two leading voice assistants are listening to everything you say, a new report claims. Patent applications from Amazon and Google revealed how their Alexa and Voice Assistant powered smart speakers are'spying' on you. The study warns of an Orwellian future in which the gadgets eavesdrop on everything from confidential conversations to your toilet flushing habits. Future versions of gadgets like the Echo and Home will use this data to try and sell you products, it says. You would be forgiven for thinking that your private conversations were just that, but two leading voice assistants are listening to everything you say, a new report claims. Patent applications from Amazon and Google revealed their smart speakers are'spying' on you Google and Amazon appear most interested in using the data they get by snooping on your daily life to target advertising, Consumer Watchdog said.

Artificial intelligence is gradually taking over various aspects of human life, and no matter how well-intentioned the creators of these highly intelligent machines have been, they continue to elicit mixed feelings from different people. While some are of the opinion that artificial intelligence shouldn't exist in the first place, others have received it with open hands because of the numerous advantages they offer man. Artificial intelligence should not be viewed only from the robotic aspect that some see it to be but should be considered with a broader mind with emphasis on how much it has eased humanity's ways of doing things. While some narrow artificial intelligence is designed to carry out small tasks like car driving, facial recognition, speech recognition or internet search, the artificial general intelligence (AGI) can perform broader and multiple cognitive functions. According to Forbes, some great examples of areas where artificial intelligence are being used include voice-powered personal assistants (such as Alexa and Siri), self-driving cars that are powered autonomously, suggestive searches, behavioral algorithms, and the rest.

Like it or not, artificial intelligence is changing how companies find, hire and manage talent.

Having Siri answer questions out loud can be helpful, but sometimes too loud for the environment the user is in. A new patent, spotted by Gizmodo, shows Apple is trying to address that inconvenience. The patent reveals Apple is looking into improving Siri by allowing her to detect when a user whispers to her, and in return having the voice assistant whisper back. The documents, titled "Digital Assistant Providing Whispered Speech," details a system that would recognize when a person is using his or her regular voice or when the user is whispering by measuring an input's amplitude and frequency patterns. Whispering to Siri now might pose a problem, since voice assistants usually need to hear commands loud and clear to answer questions or carry out tasks.

For the past few years, devices and services powered by artificial intelligence have been the most popular and interesting items at tech shows around the globe. This will surely be true in 2018, but there is already a noticeable shift in the market. First, mainstream consumer products are increasingly integrating AI, and not just high-end, premium products. Second, many of these products have intelligence built into the edge device, instead of relying on the cloud. These trends are improving accessibility, privacy, and effectivity of intelligent applications, making them more widely adopted. With the world's biggest consumer electronics and technology trade show right around the corner, here's a look at the innovative and interesting products that will garner attention this year, and the technology that enables them.

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Streaming services have changed the way in which we experience content. While recommendation systems previously focused on presenting you with content you might want to purchase for later consumption, modern streaming platforms have to focus instead on recommending content you can, and will want to, enjoy in the moment. Since any piece of content is immediately accessible, the streaming model enables new methods of discovery in the form of personalized radios or recommendation playlists, in which the focus is now more on generating sequences of similar songs that go well together. With now over 700 million songs streamed every month, Anghami is the leading music streaming platform in the MENA region. What this also means, is that the amount of data generated by all those streams proves to be an invaluable training set that we can use to teach machine learning models to better understand user tastes, and improve our music recommendations.

We hear a lot about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and digital assistants these days. But what does it all mean? Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and others are aggressively imbuing their products and services with "intelligence." We're told that computer systems will become smarter, will anticipate our needs, proactively serve us, and understand us in various contexts and via multiple methods including voice, text, inking and motion. The digital "face" of this promising tech comes in the form of assistants like Cortana, Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Bixby.

Content marketing has been around since 1895, when the John Deere company started a magazine for farmers. Fast forward to today, when brands have infinite media options for engaging customers--web sites, blogs, videos, social media, podcasts, and webinars among them. Each medium offers a different way to tell a story, educate prospects, and turn customers into advocates. And as 2018 approaches, newer forms of content marketing are gaining traction, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa. Here are 7 trends content marketers are predicting for 2018.

Conversational AI, or making human and computer interactions more natural, has been a goal since technology became ubiquitous in our society. Our mission is to bring conversational AI tools and capabilities to every developer and every organization on the planet, and help businesses augment human ingenuity in unique and differentiated ways. Today, I'm excited to announce Microsoft Azure Bot Service and Microsoft Cognitive Services Language Understanding (LUIS) are both generally available. Azure Bot Service enables developers to create conversational interfaces on multiple channels while Language Understanding (LUIS) helps developers create customized natural interactions on any platform for any type of application, including bots. Making these two services generally available on Azure simultaneously extends the capabilities of developers to build custom models that can naturally interpret the intentions of people conversing with bots.