After months of anticipation, Apple will finally release its new iOS 11 today, designed to work with the iPhone, iPad and iPod. But one major omission will be the Apple Pay Cash person-to-person money transfer system included in previous beta versions. Among the headline features will be a completely redesigned App Store, a more expressive voice for Siri, map updates, including a'Do not disturb while driving mode', animated emoji, shared Wi-fi and the ability to see what your friends are listening to in Music. The iOS 11 GM code has revealed that the new operating will come with 3D animated emoji, called'Animoji' Apple is adding High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC video), offering more efficient compression.

Leah Messer is jumping back into the dating world. The "Teen Mom 2" star decided to step outside of her comfort zone and potentially find a new boyfriend on Monday's Season 8 installment of the MTV docuseries. Leah's storyline in episode 11, "Swiping and Griping," started out with her revealing to the cameras that she's created a Bumble account two years after divorcing her second husband Jeremy Calvert. "I haven't been on a date since my divorce with Jeremy so I made myself a profile on a dating app," Leah says. Leah's dating life, however, doesn't remain private for long.

Children could soon be ditching their human best friends to spend time with a robot instead, a scientists has warned. It comes as a survey claims a fifth of youngsters aged between five and 18-years-old say they expect to become friends with a robot in the future. Some are already turning to artificial intelligence for company, with eight per cent saying they talk to voice-activated assistants, like Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, like they would a friend. Children could soon be ditching their human best friends to spend time with a robot instead, according to a new survey. The research also revealed that young people have fewer concerns about the threat posed by robots in the future compared to adults.

Samsung has put a lot of effort into launching its Bixby virtual assistant, but the company is finally making a concession to Samsung Galaxy users who've been frustrated with the program's hardware. The company's newest update will allow users to prevent the Galaxy S8's Bixby button from opening its Bixby Home app, according to Sammobile. The update is rolling out gradually to Samsung Galaxy S8 owners, but if you get it, here's what you'll need to do: The move is a notable step down on Samsung's part, as the company has been less than flexible about the virtual assistant in the past. The S8 features a dedicated physical Bixby button on the phone's side that previously opened up Samsung's Google Now-like Bixby Home app, which displayed weather, daily reminders and other situational notifications. Third-party developers had briefly figured out a way to reassign the button for other applications, but Samsung quickly closed that loophole.

This is the moment somebody defied the odds and outsmarted an Amazon Echo at its own game. Footage shows a man challenging the voice service device - which responds to the name Alexa. He says: 'Alexa - let's play guess my number.' The voice-activated machine responds and asks her opponent to define the terms of play. 'Welcome to guess my number,' it says.

This year, the iPhone turned 10. Its launch heralded a new era in audience behavior that fundamentally changed how news organizations would think about how their work is discovered, distributed and consumed. This summer, as a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard, I've been looking at another technology I think could lead to a similar step change in how publishers relate to their audiences: AI-driven voice interfaces, such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Home and Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, and Apple's upcoming HomePod. The more I've spoken to the editorial and technical leads building on these platforms in different news organizations, as well as the tech companies developing them, the more I've come to this view: This is potentially bigger than the impact of the iPhone. In fact, I'd describe these smart speakers and the associated AI and machine learning that they'll interface with as the huge burning platform the news industry doesn't even know it's standing on.

The C by GE Sol ($200) is the first lamp I've seen that fully incorporates Amazon's Alexa digital assistant. If you can get past its 1950s sci-fi aesthetic, it could be a good addition to your smart home. This goes double if you also use C by GE smart bulbs. I control 95 percent of my home's indoor and outdoor lighting using Amazon Echos and Echo Dots, so I'm accustomed to the convenience that the Sol offers. I used the latter pronunciation a few times, and Alexa kept hearing "salt.")

As organizations look for ways to better serve their customers, many are seeking new and innovative ways to better understand their customers' wants and behaviors. Increasingly, this means the use of digital tools and digital transformation initiatives, as well as the use of customer and predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, to better know and understand their prospects' and customers' needs to provide an outstanding customer experience. For some, the initial exposure to AI has been with such consumer products as Apple's Siri and Amazon's personal assistant, Alexa. For others, this journey began with exposure to progressive retailers that have been leaders in defining and executing on key elements of omnichannel retailing and omnicommerce. These firms, which include such names as Apple, Best Buy and Nordstrom, and others, are relentless in their efforts to better understand their customers, and have been among the leaders in developing customer-centric systems. Analytics and digital transformation efforts are often at the center of discussions about increasing customer interaction and engagement.

Digital voice technology – think virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant, and so on – is changing the role of customer engagement in the enterprise, altering the function of traditional on-premises or cloud-based customer-relationship management (CRM) applications. CRM (covering sales, marketing, and service software) traditionally had only limited voice interaction with the customer: voicemail for customer service agents in a call center setting or computer voice-driven phone directories for customers to reach the correct department. The penetration of these voice technologies was not very high for the simple reason that they don't really add value for the customer in saving time or reaching the right person in the right department. Quite a few forces have come together to enable voice technologies to add more value to the customer, including cloud compute power, mobility, powerful hardware/silicon chips, and advances in natural language processing (NLP). Let's explore some of the ways voice assistants are changing the role of customer engagement in an enterprise.

The creators of a new artificial intelligence programme hope it could one day save democracy. Are we ready for robots to take over politics? "Siri, who should I vote for?" It has stock, non-committal answers for anything that sounds remotely controversial. But the next generation of digital helpers, powered by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), might not be so reticent.