Don't think it's enough to have Amazon Alexa in your car? Garmin thinks it has a better proposition: throw in a dash cam. Its new Speak Plus includes the same voice assistant that offers directions, music playback and other hands-free controls, but it also tucks in a camera that can both record "incidents" (read: collisions) and deliver alerts. It'll warn you if you're too close to a car, if you're drifting out of your lane or if that gridlocked traffic has finally started moving. The Plus continues to pair with your smartphone to get online, and can use either Bluetooth or an aux cable to pipe music to your car's audio system.

D-Link introduced two new home monitoring cameras at CES that tackle logistics shortfalls of domestic security. One is a wire-free system boasting battery power that lasts up to 11 months, while the other can operate and record over LTE. Additionally, D-Link has refreshed three of its simpler, affordable models. All have sound and motion triggers, can record footage to the cloud and integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT. The Wire-Free Full HD Indoor/Outdoor Camera operates around a hub and as many cameras as desired, all of which operate on battery life.

When it first launched in 2014, Amazon's Alexa voice assistant was little more than an experiment. It appeared first inside the Echo, itself a wacky gadget launched without warning or much expectation. As it took off, though, and millions of people began to put a smart speaker in their home, Amazon's ambition exploded. The company saw an opportunity to build a new voice-first computing platform that worked everywhere, all the time, no matter what you were doing. And it began to chase that vision at full speed.

If there were two technological advances that were said to have come of age in 2017, they were surely virtual reality and artificial intelligence. While the use of the former is there for all to see – you can hardly miss someone wearing a pair of VR goggles, after all – the application of AI can be much subtler. For example, how many people realize that it's AI that helps to filter out the email messages that seem to spam, despite the spammers' best efforts to always stay a step ahead? Or that it's this technology that helps companies like Uber and Lyft to manage their surge pricing at times of especially high demand? In fact, for the majority people, if you asked them for an example of AI in everyday use today, most would probably cite either Apple's Siri or Amazon's Echo but not be able to go much further than that.

A New York-based company is preparing to showcase the first augmented reality (AR) glasses to feature Amazon's Alexa voice assistant at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. The device is designed to present wearers with pertinent information directly in their field of view. Over the weekend, Bloomberg learned that Rochester, New York-based company Vuzix is unveiling its Alexa-enabled smart glasses at the largest consumer technology trade show this week. The 75-employee company that specializes in wearable display and virtual reality and augmented reality technologies managed to integrate Alexa into its invention thanks to an Amazon program that enables third-party manufacturers to put the digital assistant into their products. An Amazon spokeswoman has said that they are "excited about the potential of the glasses and the ability to bring Alexa to customers in a new way."

It looks like there's another reason to believe that Microsoft has been secretly working on the long-rumored Surface Phone. An engineer for the company who is based in China apparently slipped recently and dropped a hint at the highly anticipated device. Over the weekend, a Microsoft engineer took the time to respond to a complaint raised on a Chinese Q&A site called Zhihu about the poor integration of the Cortana digital assistant on Android. The engineer used the Microsoft Asia Research Institute's Cortana support account to reply to the complaint and initially made a mistake of mentioning the better implementation of Cortana on the Surface Phone. In the engineer's statement, he said that the problem with the integration of Cortana on Android was the lack of permissions on the operating system.

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.

Amazon's Alexa recently arrived on headphones and even toilets, but it's about to become much more ubiquitous by hitting Windows 10 PCs later this year. HP, ASUS and Acer have revealed that the voice assistant is coming to various models, including ASUS's ZenBook and VivoBook lineup, the HP Pavilion Wave, and select Acer Spin, Swift, Switch and Aspire notebooks. Amazon will release a special Alexa app in the spring, and laptop builders are tapping Intel's Smart Sound tech to make sure that the app can pick up your voice when you're not right next to your PC. "Hands-free access to Alexa on PCs can be helpful to customers in many ways, like making it simple to interact with your smart home, get news or weather, set timers, and more," Amazon Alexa VP Steve Rabuchin said in a statement. In August, Amazon and Microsoft unveiled a surprise alliance with the aim of integrating their respective Alexa and Cortana voice assistants by the end of 2017. The companies obviously missed that deadline, and the new Alexa Windows 10 app isn't part of that.

As they become more ubiquitous in homes and in various consumer electronics products, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assistants are likely to be two of the major overarching themes at this week's 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Accelerating growth in both of these markets underscores their surging role in the overall consumer electronics landscape. More than 5 billion consumer devices supporting digital assistants will be in use in 2018, with almost 3 billion more added by 2021, according to IHS Markit, a global provider of critical information, analytics and solutions. Despite this growth, there are still some hurdles to overcome, before consumer adoption is widespread. "Amazon has a clear lead over rivals Google, Apple and Samsung, in terms of the numbers of skills and third-party apps and services supported by its Echo products, but more needs to be done by all platforms, to help users discover new skills and uses for the technology," said Jack Kent, director, operators and mobile media, IHS Markit.

At this year's CES, chipmaker Nvidia is showcasing new technology that could enable automakers to develop AI virtual assistants that are far smarter than the in-car versions of Alexa and Siri we're used to interacting with today. Nvidia announced two new software platforms for self-driving cars during a press conference on Sunday: Drive IX and Drive AR. The former allows carmakers to create artificially intelligent co-pilots that take advantage of sensors both inside and outside of the car to provide assistance. Volkswagen will be one of the first partners to begin experimenting with Drive IX in its I.D. Buzz prototype. Meanwhile, AI co-pilots built on Drive IX would be able to use facial recognition to identify the driver in order to accomplish tasks like starting the car or detecting whether or not the person behind the wheel is too drowsy to drive.