Bert Brautigam is sick of having conversations with his devices. Like many of us, Brautigam, who works for the design firm Ziba, uses voice assistants like Google's phone AI or Amazon's Alexa. The theory is that voice commands make life more convenient. But these assistants are scripted to emulate every day conversation. And everyday conversation is filled with little pauses and filler words, the "phatic" spackle of social interactions.

But the deals are here already. The Black Friday phenomenon – which already stretches over the following weekend and into Cyber Monday – grows each year, taking up more days and more focus. That is matched by companies who are more and more desperate to show off their deals, including Amazon. This year, the company has launched its Black Friday page with eight days left to go. And as ever, the best deals look to be on Amazon's own stuff.

Artificial Intelligence (shortened to AI) falls under the computer science umbrella. It refers to the discipline of programming computers to become intelligent and make decisions, just as a human would do. Its primary purpose is to replace/complement humans when making sophisticated decisions, using data inputted into a system and then injecting code to help the computers make more intelligent decisions based on possible outcomes. Although AI is said to be nothing but a gimmick by some critics, it has the potential to be highly useful in the world of business, helping organisations become more automated, freeing up a human's role to make the decisions only a human brain can make. Using AI significantly speeds up the time it takes for a process to happen and with so much data being generated every single second, automating this process can make life easier for everyone.

Personal robots, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, have come a long way in recent years. But fundamentally, they're still stationary speakers whose defining expression is a light that turns on when you speak. It's not just that he--and I use the term he here, because that's how Jibo refers to himself--looks like something straight out of a Pixar movie, with a big, round head and a face that uses animated icons to convey emotion. It's not just that his body swivels and swerves while he speaks, as if he's talking with his nonexistent hands. It's not just that he can giggle and dance and turn to face you, wherever you are, as soon as you say, "Hey, Jibo."

It's taken a while, but Amazon's Echo Show is finally ready for British customers. The boxy device, which comes with a 7-inch display and Alexa smarts, was announced way back in May. Pre-orders for the UK opened on September 28, and today, at last, the first units are shipping out. It's an expensive bundle, but one that makes sense given the Echo Show can be used for voice and video calls. The idea, presumably, is that you'll buy one for yourself and a relative so you can chat freely over the festive period.

A series of recently disclosed critical Bluetooth flaws that affect billions of Android, iOS, Windows and Linux devices have now been discovered in millions of AI-based voice-activated personal assistants, including Google Home and Amazon Echo. As estimated during the discovery of this devastating threat, several IoT and smart devices whose operating systems are often updated less frequently than smartphones and desktops are also vulnerable to BlueBorne. BlueBorne is the name given to the sophisticated attack exploiting a total of eight Bluetooth implementation vulnerabilities that allow attackers within the range of the targeted devices to run malicious code, steal sensitive information, take complete control, and launch man-in-the-middle attacks. Triggering the BlueBorne exploit doesn't require victims to click any link or open any file--all without requiring user interaction. Also, most security products would likely not be able to detect the attack.

It's three in the morning and my room is bathed in the glow of my phone. Like one in three people, I check my smartphone when I wake up in the middle of the night. I can't sleep and so wander from one social-media app to another, my thumbs scrolling through what feels like miles of emptiness. "Siri, what is the meaning of life?" "I have stopped asking myself this kind of question," she answers. I ask again, because I like it better when she says "nothing Niestzche wouldn't teach you".

Chinese internet search giant Baidu on Thursday introduced a speaker and two robots as part of its Raven series in a serious push into the highly competitive smart home market. The products, introduced at the Baidu World conference in Beijing, are powered by the company's DuerOS conversational artificial intelligence technology. That system is similar to virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana. The smart speaker is called Raven H and will be available for purchase in December for about 1,699 yuan ($256). Design-wise, the speaker looks like a stack of thin, colored square blocks and it comes with a touch-sensitive light-emitting diode (LED) display controller.

Indian ride-hailing firm Ola said it has tied up with Microsoft to build a connected-car platform and will use the U.S tech giant's Azure cloud-computing service to power its in-car entertainment offering. Microsoft is separately also in talks over a potential investment in Ola, a source told Reuters, declining to be named as the discussions are private. The new connected-vehicle platform, for cars that have internet access, will have features to aid navigation and to flag when vehicle maintenance is required, Ola said in a statement on Tuesday. "Both companies will collaborate to take this platform to car manufacturers globally to integrate with vehicle systems," Ola said, making the announcement during a visit to India by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Ola, which has been locked in a fierce battle with rival Uber for a bigger piece of India's $12 billion taxi market, has said it would invest in artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities, which include technologies like its in-car entertainment platform called Play that allows riders to choose music and stream videos.

The company's dedication to developing AI capable of running algorithms on a mobile device -- without connecting to the cloud -- is laying the groundwork for the artificial intelligence of things (AioT) of the future. As far as consumer products go, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri are among the most popular uses of AI in the mainstream. For as little as $30 or $40 a person can get their own interactive artificial intelligence – as long as they also have WiFi and somewhere to plug in a charger. TensorFlow Lite represents the nascent steps on the path toward making AI-powered devices not just accessible, but disposable. Developers now have preview access to TensorFlow Lite for Android or iOS. Instead of providing new functionality for AI applications, it's designed to leverage existing hardware – like the Snapdragon processors inside many smartphones – to run algorithms typically impossible for mobile devices without connecting to the cloud.