The battle to place a microphone in every home has intensified. Samsung today confirmed that its long-rumored Bixby smart speaker will be out sometime in the second half of this year. The'premium' speaker is set to take on Apple's £319 ($349) HomePod - although the company has yet to reveal its exact features. Samsung is releasing a'premium' Bixby smart speaker that will listen to your every word as soon as this autumn. Details about how the speaker might look have not been announced.

The idea of an artificial mind that can think by itself has always loomed large in the human imagination – the ancient Greeks told myths of mechanical men. As an academic discipline, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been studied since the 1950s, after computer scientist Alan Turing first asked, "can machines do what we, as thinking entities, do?" But in 2018, AI is firmly out of the realms of science fiction or academic theory. Last week UK prime minister Theresa May stood up in her keynote address to the World Economic Forum and announced her ambition to establish the UK as a "world leader" in AI, alongside plans for its ethical oversight. These days, voice assistants like Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana are in every smart device and computer, and smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are selling in their tens of millions.

The team at Soul Machines, said CEO Greg Cross, have launched an AI avatar named Cora, which will interact with customers at NatWest Bank. Today, they are about banking functions - tomorrow, the virtual digital assistants could be helping with all the jobs you don't want to do.

Artificial intelligence is breaking out of science fiction and sprinting into reality. A robot can now identify a human from a photo of their face, trounce a Poker player and in theory, pilot a plane. Business applications for AI are growing, from Apple's Siri personal assistant to Amazon's delivery drones, and business schools want to ensure that their graduates have the skills to meet the future needs of industry. A wide range of master's degrees and electives within established courses that focus on AI are on offer. "Digital and AI are rapidly changing the way we live and work in significant ways," says Francisco Veloso, dean of London's Imperial College Business School. As businesses transform to keep up with the pace of technological change, he adds, "schools will need to do more to provide students with the tools they need to undertake careers or start businesses in areas such as blockchain, [and] fintech".

The first interactor--a muscular man in his fifties with a shaved head and a black V-neck sweater--walks into a conference room and sits in a low-slung blue armchair before a phalanx of video cameras and studio lights. The rest of the room is totally dark. He gazes at a black, hockey- puck-shaped object--an Amazon Echo--on a small table in front of him. "Alexa," he says, "let's chat." "Good morning, my friend," a female voice replies with synthetic agreeability, a purplish ring of light pulsing atop the Echo.

Back in December, it was reported that Samsung's Bixby smart speaker would arrive sometime in the first half of 2018. However, Samsung's mobile division president DJ Koh has confirmed that will no longer be the case. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Koh confirmed that the voice-activated Bixby smart speaker will be released sometime during the second half of 2018. Koh didn't give out any more details about the upcoming smart speaker, but he did say that Samsung is aiming to release a premium device. "When I introduce the first model, I don't want to give the impression that Samsung delivered another affordable mass model," Koh said.

The most significant innovation in AI these recent years, smart chatbots, personal assistants, are only a glimpse of what the future holds. Technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are at the forefront of personalized interactive products where intelligent human-computer interactions (IHCI) technology will continue to play a central role in automated messaging, task assistance and the Internet of Things. As the market matures, chatbots are becoming more and more specialized according to their specialized intended purposes, such as customer service, entertainment, personal assistance, or education. Launched in July 2015, AliMe is an IHCI-based shopping guide and assistant for e-commerce that overhauls traditional services, and improves the online user experience. During 2017's Double 11 shopping festival, AliMe successfully responded to 9.04 million queries, and accounted for 95% of the customer services rendered by Alibaba's e-commerce platforms.

China: Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is trying to speed up its global expansion with the help of Microsoft. The company on Friday entered into an agreement with Microsoft to explore Microsoft's AI technology and cloud services into Xiaomi hardware. In a statement, Xiaomi said it aims to make its "products and services better fit the global market" through this partnership. The two companies have plenty to gain from each other. The Friday agreement binds the two companies to cooperate on Microsoft AI-powered products including its Bing search engine, Edge internet browser, and digital assistant Cortana, among others.

Samsung's Bixby-enabled smart speaker is coming in the second half of this year. At Mobile World Congress, DJ Koh, President of Samsung's mobile division confirmed that the much rumored Bixby speaker will be launched in the second half of 2018. The smart speaker segment is currently led by Amazon and Google, and has suddenly caught attention among consumers as evident by the increase in sales of Google Home speakers during the holiday season. The rise in their popularity has led to more companies entering the segment. Apple recently launched its HomePod with Siri built-in, while Microsoft has partnered Harmon Kardon to launch Invoke speaker with Cortana built-in.

As artificial intelligence technology improves and matures, it will move on from an Apple Siri or a Google Assistant merely answering your questions to becoming your best friend and adviser. As per research firm Gartner Inc, personal devices such as mobile phones will know more about an individual's emotional state than his or her own family by 2022. According to statistics website Statista, the number of mobile phone users in India is expected to rise to 775.5 million in 2018. The number of smartphone users is expected to reach almost 443 million by 2022. In a report last year, networking company Cisco said India will have 1,380 million mobile-connected devices in India by 2021, with 60 percent of these being "smart" mobile connections. This means that Indians are looking at a huge number of "friendly" devices that will be able to detect human emotions and provide an option according to their moods.