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.

Banking business and technology leaders agree that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is among the key trends that will reshape the industry in 2017. Siri, Alexa, Google home) are gaining popularity among progressive banks. Financial Services is data intensive and therefore a great candidate for AI automation. AI technologies offers banks an opportunity to reinvent banking processes and gain unprecedented advantages. However, there is a lack of clear direction to banks on how should they approach this technology. Are banks ready for AI adoption?

Siri, Alexa, and OK Google… these are the virtual interactions that Sci-Fi movies have portrayed for decades past. The future is, it seems, here at our fingertips. These technologies are sparking new expectations in today's consumers on an almost daily basis. We want intelligent interactions that are personalized to our own situations and we want them on demand – not after we waste our precious time sitting on hold. Long gone are the days when customers almost expected to experience IVR hell and would pretty much tolerate jaw-dropping wait times.

Tony hates apps such as Cortana, Edge, Xbox, Groove and would like to uninstall them. Thu 18 Jan 2018 09.24 EST Last modified on Thu 18 Jan 2018 09.25 EST I am not a power user. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, which has plenty of features I don't need, and I hate Cortana, Edge, Xbox, Groove etc. I noticed that one of the Windows 10 tuners you reviewed last week "removes unwanted programs". Would it work for these?

Siddhartha Agarwal is vice president, product management and strategy, for Oracle Cloud Platform. Developers should be burning with excitement about the opportunities ahead in 2018, with products and tools around technologies such as blockchain, chatbots, serverless functions, and machine learning becoming mature enough for real-world projects. At the same time, many developers will be worried about holding up against the pressure to deliver code and functionality faster without compromising security or performance. But there is good news on that front as well. For developers, 2018 will be defined by this tension between seizing transformative new opportunities while coping with the pressure to do more, with higher quality.

I recently saw the latest Star Wars movie "The Last Jedi." It was powerful in many ways, not the least of which was because it was the final film for actress Carrie Fisher, who was excellent. In film, the way to connect with the theater goer is with close-ups of the faces of the actors. It's powerful and we respond, as human beings, to another person's face. When radio was born, people could not see faces, and the connection radio listeners would make would be with people's voices.