"Speakers are one of the most popular things to add to a TV," Roku's VP of product Mark Ely told Variety during a recent interview. That's why one main area of focus of Roku and its hardware partners are going to be smart sound bars, which double as internet-connected speakers when the TV screen is turned off. "These smart sound bars will work with any TV, but they work really great with Roku TVs," Ely said. In addition, Roku is also working with consumer electronics companies to make Roku-powered smart speakers. These can be placed around the home, and inter-connect with each other as well as Roku-powered sound bars to play multi-room audio, giving consumers the ability to play the same song synchronized across their home.

Still, that's a much narrower scope than the assistants already available from its bigger rivals in the battle to build digital command centers in people's homes. Google's Assistant, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa can perform tasks and control appliances that have nothing do with entertainment.

As Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "the only one constant in life is change". And this is certainly true for anyone working in areas related to or based upon technology (and few don't these days). The pace of technological innovation is such that even the most fantastic of imagined futures seem like they could easily become reality. As existing technologies reach maturity, unforeseen developments arrive ever more quickly, and innovations make the leap from consumer applications to business (and vice versa) it's imperative that we constantly seek to find those that have the potential to add value to our own business and those of our customers. As we look ahead to 2018, I've been working with my colleagues to identify some trends that we think will have an impact on our business and industry.

Singles have been warned to avoid the'puffery' of dating websites which claim to have scientific proof they can find love. The warning comes after the popular site eHarmony was found to be misleading those looking for a partner. The company made the advertising claim that it used a'scientifically proven matching system'. A billboard ad for the website on a London Underground platform seen in July said: 'Step aside, fate. It's time science had a go at love.' Singles have been warned to avoid the'puffery' of dating websites which claim to have scientific proof they can find love (pictured, eHarmony's controversial advert) It went on: 'Imagine being able to stack the odds of finding lasting love entirely in your favour.

This might be a helpful time to clarify that AI is often a catch-all term for an assortment of different technologies. There's artificial intelligence in our digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana and the Google Assistant. You'll find artificial intelligence in software like Facebook's Messenger chatbots and Gmail's auto-replies. It's defined as "intelligence displayed by machines" but also refers to situations when computers do things without human instructions. Then there's machine-learning, which is when computers teach themselves how to perform tasks that humans do.

Remember how Amazon and Microsoft unveiled a team-up that would let Alexa and Cortana talk to each other by the end of 2017? As you might have noticed, that didn't quite work out as planned. Thurrott has pointed out that the voice assistant crossover still isn't available as 2018 begins. Both Amazon and Microsoft have said that they expect to say more "soon," but that's no guarantee of news at CES or another imminent event. The team-up promises to greatly simplify voice control in the home.

LG's TVs have taken home our Best of CES Award for three years running and in 2018 it's ready to take on all comers once again. As with all home electronics of the current era, the company's new TVs are AI-ready with its ThinQ technology, but you'll probably be more interested in their support for third-party smart home services like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. The top of the line OLED TVs will have its new "Alpha 9" processor inside that's not only powerful enough for AI, but also ready to push video at high frame-rates of up to 120FPS. The chip also claims better color performance and "four-step process of noise reduction" although we'll be interested to see if it can be disabled to avoid any artifacts or motion-smoothing type impact on picture quality. There's no word yet on the OLED display prices, but if you'd rather stick to LCD technology that will likely be cheaper, LG's Super UHD lineup will have a similar Alpha 7 processor inside, and improved backlighting with denser LED zones.

In 2018, two major and philosophically oppositional shifts will change the customer relationship management (CRM) industry. For one, tasks typically done by humans will be replaced by automation. And secondly, interactions with human sales representatives will need to feel less mechanical to the consumer, driven in large part by personalization and timeliness. These changes will be ushered in by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), both of which will provide sales reps with the opportunity to avoid common, labor-based tasks (i.e., cold calling and data entry) in favor of creating more personalized communications with higher-value prospects. Additionally, the intelligence gathered by software will give organizations the information they need to determine what the right message is, when it should be sent, and how the message is received by customers.

Japan has a sex problem. The country's birthrate is shrinking year after year, to the point where deaths are outpacing births. Simply put, Japan's population is decreasing. But let's be clear: Population change is a complicated subject affected by many factors. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, for instance, found that "almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship."

LG is getting ready to announce its lineup of new OLED TVs at CES this year (including a monstrous 88-inch 8K panel), and as a tide-me-over, the company has announced that its new TVs this year are getting Google Assistant. In the past, LG has shipped its TVs with a webOS-based operating system that included the company's own voice assistant, but the company is taking things a step further by including Google Assistant on its OLED and "Super UHD" LCD displays under its "ThinQ" artificial intelligence branding (shared by LG's recently announced Google-powered smart speaker). LG's integrated assistant strategy seems to be two-fold. You'll be able to use the ThinQ AI for more contextual, TV-specific tasks, like asking to "search for the soundtrack of this movie" or "turn off the TV when this program is over." But users in some countries (LG hasn't yet specified which ones) will also have access to Google Assistant on top of that for controlling smart home devices or accessing anything else Google Assistant can do.