Competition is heating up between two of the world's largest tech firms in the battle to dominate CES 2018, held annually in Las Vegas. Coverage of last year's trade show detailed the rise of Amazon's smart assistant, which was used to enhance everything from cars to refrigerators. Now Google is hoping to fight back with its own Assistant set to take on its rival and the company's largest presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in a decade. Voice-commanded virtual assistants packed into speakers and other devices will be a'game-changing' trend this year, CES researchers have said. Competition is heating up between two of the world's largest tech firms in the battle to dominate CES 2018, held annually in Las Vegas.

Hauling around a heavy suitcase may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to an AI powered suitcase that follows its owner like a well-trained pet. The robotic luggage is fitted with facial recognition technology that lets it lock on to you and stick by you, no matter what gets in its way. It also comes equipped with a smart-connected wristband the features an alarm that sounds if the case starts to go out of range or if someone tries to steal it. Hauling around a heavy suitcase may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to an AI powered smart suitcase that follows its owner like a well-trained pet. The annual technology convention doesn't open until Tuesday, but CES Unveiled is an early chance for attendees to see the trends likely to dominate the show this year.

Just as Apple's iOS is forever linked to the iPhone, Alexa has been synonymous with Amazon's Echo speaker. But Amazon's digital assistant is becoming increasingly independent -- integrating into speakers made by Sonos, the Nest thermostat or lights made by Philips. Now it's also finding its way onto computer towers and notebooks made by PC makers, a move that could simultaneously ratchet up tensions between Amazon and Microsoft. PC makers like HP, ASUS and Acer are announcing Alexa integrations at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, and in some cases the partnerships see hardware being upgraded to make Alexa more accessible, according to GeekWire. HP, for instance, plans to add a custom LED to its Pavillion Wave desktop computer tower that can glow when it hears Alexa's name, activating the digital assistant.

Don't think it's enough to have Amazon Alexa in your car? Garmin thinks it has a better proposition: throw in a dash cam. Its new Speak Plus includes the same voice assistant that offers directions, music playback and other hands-free controls, but it also tucks in a camera that can both record "incidents" (read: collisions) and deliver alerts. It'll warn you if you're too close to a car, if you're drifting out of your lane or if that gridlocked traffic has finally started moving. The Plus continues to pair with your smartphone to get online, and can use either Bluetooth or an aux cable to pipe music to your car's audio system.

D-Link introduced two new home monitoring cameras at CES that tackle logistics shortfalls of domestic security. One is a wire-free system boasting battery power that lasts up to 11 months, while the other can operate and record over LTE. Additionally, D-Link has refreshed three of its simpler, affordable models. All have sound and motion triggers, can record footage to the cloud and integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT. The Wire-Free Full HD Indoor/Outdoor Camera operates around a hub and as many cameras as desired, all of which operate on battery life.

When it first launched in 2014, Amazon's Alexa voice assistant was little more than an experiment. It appeared first inside the Echo, itself a wacky gadget launched without warning or much expectation. As it took off, though, and millions of people began to put a smart speaker in their home, Amazon's ambition exploded. The company saw an opportunity to build a new voice-first computing platform that worked everywhere, all the time, no matter what you were doing. And it began to chase that vision at full speed.

If there were two technological advances that were said to have come of age in 2017, they were surely virtual reality and artificial intelligence. While the use of the former is there for all to see – you can hardly miss someone wearing a pair of VR goggles, after all – the application of AI can be much subtler. For example, how many people realize that it's AI that helps to filter out the email messages that seem to spam, despite the spammers' best efforts to always stay a step ahead? Or that it's this technology that helps companies like Uber and Lyft to manage their surge pricing at times of especially high demand? In fact, for the majority people, if you asked them for an example of AI in everyday use today, most would probably cite either Apple's Siri or Amazon's Echo but not be able to go much further than that.

A New York-based company is preparing to showcase the first augmented reality (AR) glasses to feature Amazon's Alexa voice assistant at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. The device is designed to present wearers with pertinent information directly in their field of view. Over the weekend, Bloomberg learned that Rochester, New York-based company Vuzix is unveiling its Alexa-enabled smart glasses at the largest consumer technology trade show this week. The 75-employee company that specializes in wearable display and virtual reality and augmented reality technologies managed to integrate Alexa into its invention thanks to an Amazon program that enables third-party manufacturers to put the digital assistant into their products. An Amazon spokeswoman has said that they are "excited about the potential of the glasses and the ability to bring Alexa to customers in a new way."

It looks like there's another reason to believe that Microsoft has been secretly working on the long-rumored Surface Phone. An engineer for the company who is based in China apparently slipped recently and dropped a hint at the highly anticipated device. Over the weekend, a Microsoft engineer took the time to respond to a complaint raised on a Chinese Q&A site called Zhihu about the poor integration of the Cortana digital assistant on Android. The engineer used the Microsoft Asia Research Institute's Cortana support account to reply to the complaint and initially made a mistake of mentioning the better implementation of Cortana on the Surface Phone. In the engineer's statement, he said that the problem with the integration of Cortana on Android was the lack of permissions on the operating system.

Banking business and technology leaders agree that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is among the key trends that will reshape the industry in 2017. Siri, Alexa, Google home) are gaining popularity among progressive banks. Financial Services is data intensive and therefore a great candidate for AI automation. AI technologies offers banks an opportunity to reinvent banking processes and gain unprecedented advantages. However, there is a lack of clear direction to banks on how should they approach this technology.