Your digital assistant goes through your calendar and talks to your other electronic devices to plan your day while you sleep. With an eye on your sleep cycles, it wakes you at a time in which you will feel most refreshed, within a window of time you've previously approved. As you get ready, your assistant reads you the news, reports, and social media activity it determined to be of most interest to you, based upon all it's learned from your schedules and communications. It updates you on the weather, upcoming meetings, and people you will see that day, and suggests the best time to leave the house based on traffic. Your assistant tells you that it has already ordered flowers for your sister's birthday (it knows that lilies are her favorite based on your previous purchases) and scheduled them for delivery that day.

The discussion of sexual assault and harassment are all the more paramount in an era dominated by the #MeToo and Times Up movement, but now there is a mobile dating application that is working towards making such complaints a thing of the past. Enter "Yes to Sex," a dating app created in 2016 that requests for an explicit sexual consent agreement to be made between both parties. The app, which is available for download through Apple's App Store and Google Play, requires users to verbalize the words "yes" or "no" before engaging in sexual relations with another user. The entire process is expected to take no more than 25 seconds, Yes to Sex's website claimed. "The media talking about consent is the first step in the right direction of making it the norm to verbally ask a potential partner straight-up every time, if they are interested," Wendy Geller, the app's president, CEO and inventor, told International Business Times.

There's no doubt that technology advances faster than we can even keep up these days, and the smart home sector is one of the fastest-growing. At CES 2018, hundreds of companies showed off new smart home solutions and gadgets, from the useful and innovative to the repetitive and uneventful. As we toured the showrooms, we noticed a few different trends coming to the table for smart home enthusiasts this year. Read on to learn more about where smart homes are headed and see how leading companies are tackling these new trends. Voice commands are great and all, but sometimes maybe you don't feel like shouting over your music or talking over an important scene in the movie you rented.

Who let the dog out? Sony rolled out a much cuter -- and more sophisticated -- Aibo robot dog on Tuesday, and it came off acting and moving a lot more like a real canine. The Japanese electronics giant retired the original Aibo in 2006 and went back to the lab to develop a 2.0 version. The one displayed at CES 2018 here has a new design that features expressive LED eyes and a vastly expanded range of movement, and is able to learn new tricks through real-world training. It is currently available only in Japan, but for roughly $1,760 and perhaps a little web magic, you can be the coolest person at the neighborhood dog park.

The former executive director of LSL Property Services, David Newnes, is one of the key backers of a new property management platform powered by artificial intelligence. Former TV Dragon James Caan and PropTech guru Faisal Butt are amongst other investors in AskPorter, which has now secured investment of over £500,000. AskPorter is a platform with an AI digital assistant that serves as a personal assistant for property managers and as a concierge for customers and tenants. The digital assistant'Porter' proactively carries out planned duties, guides customers through enquiries and reporting issues, and delivers concierge services, only reverting to a human manager or approved service provider when necessary. "This new technology has useful, practical applications that will add to and significantly improve the service that managing agents are able to offer landlords and tenants - both in AST and block management" says Newnes.

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."