Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer at Box, announced the release of the new machine-learning-focused product Box Skills at BoxWorks 2017. To kick off this 25-minute product announcement, Box CEO Aaron Levie talks about the background for Box Skills -- a technology climate heavily influenced by the rise in mobile devices, the power of cloud computing, the unstoppable growth of the internet and the recent focus on machine-learning applications. We're seeing these trends converge in our personal lives in things like virtual personal assistants (Alexa, Siri), but personal applications are just the start for machine learning. Technology in the enterprise is where AI and machine learning will fundamentally change the way we use information in the cloud. Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation (and spending) around machine learning, specifically to solve business-case problems for things like voice recognition and image recognition.

In the not so distant future, we will have machines capable not only of storing data, but of thinking, feeling, and being as intelligent as the human being. Following the new trends in the information technology market, such as tracking digital transformation, is a key factor for organizations seeking to remain competitive with the great competition in the market. With increasingly advanced and sophisticated resources, technological innovations have computer machines that promise to facilitate the routine of companies, where intelligent machines can perform their activities in an optimized way. We are talking about the trend of the future, a revolutionary technology – Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence is already part of our everyday life, but many times we do not even notice it.

AI autopilots in commercial airlines is a surprisingly early use of AI technology that dates as far back as 1914, depending on how loosely you define autopilot. The New York Times reports that the average flight of a Boeing plane involves only seven minutes of human-steered flight, which is typically reserved only for takeoff and landing. Many high school and college students are familiar with services like Turnitin, a popular tool used by instructors to analyze students' writing for plagiarism. While Turnitin doesn't reveal precisely how it detects plagiarism, research demonstrates how ML can be used to develop a plagiarism detector. Historically, plagiarism detection for regular text (essays, books, etc.) relies on a having a massive database of reference materials to compare to the student text; however, ML can help detect the plagiarizing of sources that are not located within the database, such as sources in foreign languages or older sources that have not been digitized.

You might have watched a movie like The Terminator or I, Robot and considered that the artificial intelligence potential it portrays is a far cry from our current technologies (there's no real fear of bots powered by Samsung Bixby overtaking the planet, that's for sure). After investigating a recently published Google research paper (via Quartz), it looks like we might be closer to this reality than you might think. The paper, titled "Natural TTS Synthesis by Conditioning WaveNet on Mel Spectrogram Predictions," highlights a new Google text-to-speech system called Tacotron 2, which is capable of a near-human level of AI voice reproduction. To achieve this, Tacotron 2 uses a pair of neural networks: one to create a visual representation of specific audio frequencies and a second (called "WaveNet") to recreate this visual data as sound. Google launched a website alongside the paper to show-off what this tech could lead to in practice; there, Google provides examples of how Tacotron 2 handles phrase semantics (like distinguishing between the noun and verb of "present"), intonation and difficult words that might trip some of us humans up like "otolaryngology."

According to app downloads, Amazon beat out its rivals over the holidays. As of writing, the Amazon Alexa app was the most popular app on both iOS and Android's Google Play. On Android, the Google Home app did make its way to second place--so it would look like the Google Home was a popular gift, too. But on iOS, Google's companion app didn't even crack the top 10 most popular apps. While Amazon's devices were a cross-platform favorite, those already embedded in the Google ecosystem were more likely to invest in its smart home speaker products. This is likely what we can expect when Apple comes out with its own Amazon Echo competitor, the HomePod, in early 2018.

Could robots change the way we think? While that might seem the stuff of dark science fiction, New Zealand artificial intelligence (AI) experts say there's real fear that computer algorithms could hijack our language, and ultimately influence our views on products or politics. "I would compare the situation with the subliminal advertising that was outlawed in the 1970s," said Associate Professor Christoph Bartneck, of Canterbury University's Human Interface Technology Laboratory, or HIT Lab. "We are in a danger of repeating the exact same issue with the use of our language." Bartneck has been working in the area with colleague Jurgen Brandstetter and other experts at the New Zealand Institute of Language Brain and Behaviour and Northwestern University in the United States.

Amazon saw a big win this holiday season. The company took over with its Echo devices after Apple's HomePod was delayed. Amazon announced on Tuesday the Echo Dot was the top-selling device across all categories on the shopping platform this holiday season. The company said it sold tens of millions of Alexa-enabled gadgets worldwide, selling millions of Echo Dot devices alone. The Echo Dot was also the top-selling gadget across Amazon Books' 13 stores, the company said.

'The Cyber Guy' Kurt Knutsson explains on'Fox & Friends' Amazon's smallest smart speaker turned out to be its biggest hit this holiday season, selling more than any other product among all manufacturers. The diminutive Dot sold in its "millions," the ecommerce giant revealed on Tuesday, though as usual the company declined to offer a specific number. It's sold out, too, and won't be in stock again until January 2, according to its product page. "Echo devices have been an extremely popular gift this year," Amazon said in reference to its growing line-up of smart speakers that besides the Dot also includes the updated Amazon Echo, the larger Echo Plus, and the Echo Spot. The hands-free, voice-controlled devices let you communicate with Alexa, the built-in virtual assistant that allows you to request information, play music from your library, make calls, listen to audiobooks, control smart home devices, and more.

AI is about to head to the office. Already these "voice assistants" are learning to recognize different voices within one conversation and respond accordingly. When you ask Google Home about your calendar it will know to reply with the events on your calendar and not your wife's calendar. Likewise, when your wife queries Google home, it will respond using her data.

If you've had enough of disappointing first dates, this new app could herald a new era of dating where you have sexual chemistry with every person you meet. A genetics-based app called Pheramor has pinpointed 11 genes that link to our pheromones and therefore whether we are sexually compatible with someone. Experts say this information could reveal how diverse someone's immune system is compared to our own - and all you have to do is take a swab from your cheek. Pheromones are chemical signals secreted in bodily fluids such as sweat that influences the behaviour of the opposite sex - including triggering sexual interest. People can take swabs from their cheek in order to isolate the 11 key genes that control how attracted we are to other people.