You don't need to have a Pixel 2 to get a built-in song identifier anymore: Google has finally given Assistant the ability to compete with Shazam. Next time you hear a nice tune playing, you can simply ask Assistant "What song is this?" and it will reply with the title and artist. It will also toss in an info card with the title of the album where you can find the track, the date it was released and embedded links to Search, YouTube and Play that make it easier to get the song or to listen to it again. Assistant will now also include "What's this song?" in its carousel of possible queries if you have voice as your preferred input. The big G debuted always-on music identification with its latest Pixel devices, which can compare tunes to an onboard database of more than 10,000 popular tracks.

AI is all around us, quietly working in the background or interacting with us via a number of different devices. Various industries are using AI for specific reasons such as ensuring that flights arrive on time or irrigating fields better and more economically. Over time, our interactions with AI are becoming more sophisticated. In fact, in the not-too-distant future we'll have personal digital assistants that know more about us than we know about ourselves. For now, there are countless AI projects popping up in commercial, industrial and academic settings.

I.am, the tech startup founded by pop star and entrepreneur will.i.am, The company, founded in 2012, initially focused on consumer electronics devices such as headphones. The new artificial intelligence product, similar to Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, marks a sharp departure for the firm, which now employs about 300 people. Its most recent funding round, an $89 million investment by a group including Salesforce Ventures, closed in March but had not been previously announced. Will.i.am, who rose to prominence as a member of The Black Eyed Peas, said the corporate market offered the company an opportunity to quickly deploy and develop its assistant, called Omega.

Not just to your every word (waiting for you say "Alexa"), but also to the widespread criticism of the audio quality on the new Echo. The company issued a software update on Friday to improve the second-generation Echo's sound profile. It should have installed automatically, meaning you may have already noticed a bit more bass in your music this weekend. You can see if you have the latest software by looking under the Settings section of your Alexa app. The version number should be "592452420."

One of the most visible ways artificial intelligence (AI) is entering the business world is the consumer-facing chatbot. This AI-powered virtual assistant uses natural language processing to understand key words and context from customers and help them without the use of a human representative. Naturally, this offers powerful incentives to companies looking to offer 24/7 customer service without ballooning costs. But how are consumers reacting to chatbots? Are they really an effective way to augment customer service or are they a finicky, early stage technology that still has too many bugs to work out?

Wi-Fi-enabled smart lights are rapidly becoming commodities, and it's exciting to see prices plummeting to the point where they make sense for just about everyone. The latest: Eufy, a sub-brand of everything-goes electronics manufacturer Anker, just hit the market with two new affordable Edison-style smart bulbs: a $30 tunable-white bulb and a $20 fixed-white bulb. Eufy ticks off nearly all the specs one could ask for in a smart lighting system. Both the tunable and white-only bulbs operate at a solid 800 lumens while drawing 11 watts of power, work without a hub, and can be controlled with voice commands via Amazon's Alexa digital assistant. The bulbs even support external dimmers (though you may encounter trouble with the wireless radio working while they're dimmed).

Wi-Fi security cameras are becoming more of a fixture in smart homes thanks to integrations with Amazon Alexa, SmartThings, and even IFTTT. But D-Link's Omna 180 Cam HD ($150) is the first camera certified to work with Apple's HomeKit platform. That makes this camera a slam-dunk purchase for some users, but a more difficult sell for others. Given its alliance with Apple, it's not surprising the Omna is long on looks. Its silver body recalls the anodized aluminum finish of many Apple products, and its sleek, cylindrical form evokes that company's attention to design.

Smart home speakers have quickly become the hot gadget people didn't know they wanted. They can answer your movie trivia questions, call a cab, turn your heating on and do your shopping for you. They're gaining new features every day, but are more than just a utility product. These speakers are a ripe platform for all kinds of screen-free entertainment, and I'm not just talking about streaming a Spotify playlist. Earplay is a popular Alexa skill that tells interactive stories, for example, and never one to be late to a fledgling medium, the BBC has taken note.

Voice shopping might be the latest trend this holiday season, with major retailers having already partnered with leading voice assistants to offer shopping experience to users. While Target and Walmart have teamed up with the Google Express service, Best Buy is now selling a limited category of products through Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. With the biggest shopping festival of the year -- Black Friday -- being held on Nov. 24, chances are that Alexa's parent company, Amazon, may offer special offers for the holiday via the shopping assistant. If you are using Alexa, you will be able to learn about and make purchases on Best Buy's products, including its Deal of the day. If you are confused about which laptop or TV you should go for, the voice assistant will ask you a series of questions and recommend products based on your answers.

There are two main approaches taken in recommendation systems: content filtering and collaborative filtering. Content filtering makes use of features associated with items and users (e.g., age, location, gender of users and genre, director of movies). In contrast, collaborative filtering is based on observed user preferences. Thus, two users are thought of as similar if they have revealed similar preferences irrespective of their profile. Likewise, two items are thought of as similar if most users have similar preferences for them. More generally, collaborative filtering (CF) makes use of structure in the matrix of preferences, as in low-rank matrix formulations [1, 4, 8, 13, 14, 19, 20, 25]. An important aspect of most recommendation systems is that each recommendation influences what is learned about the users and items, which in turn determines the possible accuracy of future recommendations. This introduces a tension between exploring to obtain information and exploiting existing knowledge to make good recommendations. The tension between exploring and exploiting is exactly the phenomenon of interest in the substantial literature on the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem and its variants [7, 16, 21].