Artificial intelligence is transforming our lives at home and at work. At home, you may be one of the 1.8 million people who use Amazon's Alexa to control the lights, unlock your car, and receive the latest stock quotes for the companies in your portfolio. In total, Alexa is touted as having more than 3,000 skills and growing daily. In the workplace, artificial intelligence is evolving into an intelligent assistant to help us work smarter. Artificial intelligence is not the future of the workplace, it is the present and happening today.

AI is not just for driverless cars, digital assistants, or movie recommendations anymore; in multiple industries, it's a wave about to break. According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute study surveying 3,000 "AI-aware" companies around the globe, only 20 percent are using AI-related technologies in a core part of the business, but the majority expect to ramp up AI spending in the next three years. Other studies yield similar results. In an Infosys-funded survey of 1,600 business and IT leaders in seven countries, although only 25 percent said AI technologies were fully deployed and working within their organizations, 76 percent overall called AI critical to their companies' success. Organizations with partially or fully deployed AI technologies expect them to contribute a 39 percent increase in revenue and a 37 percent reduction in costs by 2020. Businesses on average have been using AI for about two years and expect mature adoption in three more years.

Those betting big on AI making voice the dominant user interface of the future are not betting so big as to believe their respective artificially intelligent voice assistants will be the sole vocal oracle that Internet users want or need. And so Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Amazon's Jeff Bezos are today announcing a tie-up, which will -- at an unspecified point later this year -- enable users of the latter's Alexa voice assistant to ask her to summon Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant to ask it to do stuff, and vice versa. Here are the pair's respective statements on the move: Quoth Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft: "Ensuring Cortana is available for our customers everywhere and across any device is a key priority for us. Bringing Cortana's knowledge, Office 365 integration, commitments, and reminders to Alexa is a great step toward that goal." Said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon: "The world is big and so multifaceted. There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas. Together, their strengths will complement each other and provide customers with a richer and even more helpful experience. It's great for Echo owners to get easy access to Cortana."

Sometimes the upgrades are gentle, other times, like with the arrival of iOS 7 when every icon was changed and the look of the software given a massive overhaul, it's almost unrecognisable. This year is somewhere in between. There are updates to some of the shortcut icons (the Maps icon now includes the circular Apple Park HQ on it!) But this year there are plenty of alterations you'll notice. The biggest changes, arguably, are on the iPad, but there are so many of these I'll come back to them separately.

The original Amazon Echo in black is currently out of stock on the company's site, as rumors claim the online retailer will come out with a new version to compete with Apple's HomePod. Amazon has released multiple Alexa-powered Echo devices, including the Echo Look and Echo Show, which were both launched this year. However, the original Echo hasn't been refreshed in two years, and has seen its price slashed in half for Amazon's Prime Day sale. The recent unavailability and discounts on the device suggests Amazon is gearing up to release a new Echo to rival the upcoming HomePod. Apple introduced the HomePod in June, and is expected to launch the speaker in December. Amazon Echo out of stock as rumors point to new device that will rival Apple's HomePod.

Amazon has unveiled a major software update for its Echo speaker allowing the gadget to work as a multi-room hifi system. It also revealed a new developer kit that will allow an Echo to control speakers made by other firms, such as Bose, Samsung and Sonos for the first time. The update will allow users to simply ask for the music they want to hear in each room - or to listen to music throughout the house. Rumors from earlier this month that Amazon is launching multi-room audio have come to fruit. Starting today users with multiple Echo products can play music simultaneously in multiple rooms.

ANALYSIS: Since Apple revealed in June that it will start shipping an intelligent home speaker, HomePod in December excitement has focused on its audio capabilities. This focus suits Cupertino which is giving little away on its smart home capabilities which will have to play catch-up with Amazon and Google. Pundits were already forecasting that 12 million smart speakers would be sold industry-wide in 2017 (Strategy Analytics, June 5, 2017) – even before Apple's announcement. Amazon's Echo is expected to snaffle 80% of unit sales this year, writes Jeremy Cowan, and there are expectations that 164 million intelligent speakers will be in use globally by 2022. As Bill Ablondi, director of the analyst firm's Smart Home Strategies programme says, "Apple has been rapidly building its HomeKit ecosystem of smart home devices and capabilities in recent months with manufacturers such as Logitech, Lutron, Honeywell, and Leviton."

Ocado has become the first British supermarket to launch an app on Amazon Alexa meaning customers can add items to their shopping basket using their smart assistant. The service, which launched yesterday, allows customers to order food to be delivered to their homes simply by issuing a voice command. Ocado is the only British supermarket in the UK to offer an app on Alexa, the personal assistant device owned by rival Amazon, as it moves away from traditional supermarket shopping. The service, which launched yesterday, allows customers to order food to be delivered to their homes simply by issuing a voice command. As well as ordering food from the device customers will be able to add a product to an existing order or basket, find out which products are in season and receive inspiration for the best ways to include them in recipes.

AI and ML are often used interchangeably, but they are in fact, not the same. Take a deep dive to learn more about these tech buzzwords! Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are some of the hottest buzzwords in tech these days, and maybe you want in. But first, let's take a moment to distinguish the two because while they may often be used interchangeably, they are in fact, not the same. AI is the concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in ways that humans would consider "smart."

Earlier this year, home speaker maker Sonos hinted at plans of making its own smart speakers. Now, it looks like the Sonos smart speaker is definitely on its way as an FCC filing for such a device was recently discovered. The FCC filing for the Sonos smart speaker was first discovered by Dave Zatz. He shared his findings on his website Zatz Not Funny. The FCC filing mentions a product with a model number S13, and it is described as having "integrated voice control functionality."