Often called out for being slow to change, the insurance industry is beginning to catch up quickly on cognitive technologies. You've probably had regular help from a virtual assistant by phone or online, assisting you with basic tasks such as directing your call or giving you your bank balance. The companies that employ the virtual assistants think so, too, and are applying these AI/robotic processes to more and more of their everyday business operations. Often called out for being slow to change, the insurance industry is beginning to catch up quickly. Carriers like Celina and USAA are using AI in their daily operations and reaping the benefits.

"If you're not doing AI today, don't expect to be around in a few years," says Japjit Tulsi, VP of engineering at eBay, "It really is that important for companies to invest in -- especially commerce companies." Tulsi will speak next week at MB 2017, July 11 and 12 in SF, MobileBeat's flagship event where this year we've gathered more than 30 brands to talk about how AI is being applied in businesses today. It has focused on the potential of AI for the past ten years. The company's approach to AI has been built on a platform of research and development, Tulsi says, plus decades of insights and data about consumer behavior, making even the simplest applications incredibly valuable. As an example, Tulsi points to the merchandizing strip at the bottom of every item page, which shows similar items that a shopper might be intrigued by, and often leads them down a positive rabbit hole of shopping and buying.

Amazon's notification feature on Alexa is now running, which means you'll be able to get notifications if you have the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show or a compatible Alexa-enabled device. You can opt-in for what features you want Alexa to notify you about, but as of now Alexa can only tell you about packages are out for delivery, according to Amazon Fire TV & Fire TV Stick News. Amazon announced exclusive deals for Alexa Prime users. Telling the voice assistant: "Alexa, sign me up for Prime," will allow users to sign up for the one-year membership for $79.

It's a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn new data and apply it to a service, all without being explicitly programmed to do so. There are a few obvious examples, like chatting with Amazon's Alexa in your living room or Siri on your iPhone. Machine learning can also be more subtle, like when Google suggests a new route after sneakily cross-referencing your common destinations with a daily traffic report. Similar conveniences have made their way into customer service via machine learning. The difference is that while the aforementioned machine learning examples learn and adapt to your daily routines, AI tools for customer service focus more on the customer's journey and the workflows of support staffs.

You can add one more device to the pile of gadgets vying for your attention, now that Amazon has switched Alexa's notifications on. The e-commerce titan first revealed that visual notifications were coming to its speakers on its developer site back in May. Now, the feature is live, though in very limited capacity. According to Fast Company and AFTVNews, it can only tell you about packages out for delivery at the moment. It doesn't seem to be available for other Alexa skills yet, but hey, at least you can take the feature for a spin on Prime Day.

The voicebot ecosystem is growing immensely -- and amazing opportunities abound. Reading a recent post by Alon Bonder, and realizing the main subject of conversation for product managers, startups, and developers is voice-tech, I figured out some points to help you focus on building the right product for what's coming next. Basically, the mobile apps ecosystem we saw growing 10 years ago is making a return, but this time it is all about…voice. In the beginning, before the mobile apps ecosystem rose in popularity, problems weren't as clear as they are today. Specific iOS apps had memory problems; the UI was too simple; the development platforms were horrid (or nonexistent); there weren't enough solutions for mobile app marketing, acquisition, and attribution; and the competition featured apps alongside thousands of farting, semi-funny, and non-valuable apps.

"OK Google, what can you do when connected to Talend?" In this tutorial, I will show how to create an Agent in API.AI that will respond to commands spoken to Google Home. The Agent will reverse the words in a sentence spoken to Google Home by making use of a Talend web service which is used to carry out the word reversal. A very simple example, but it demonstrates the ground work you will need to create some really quite interesting applications. You do not need one to try this tutorial out as Google has provided an emulator, but I can highly recommend the device. Recently Google opened up access to the Actions on Google API. You can either use the Actions SDK or use API.AI. API.AI was recently acquired by Google. While API.AI is really quite simple to use, it is quite limited in how it can be used with Google Home at the moment.

We've just had a big tech season. Between Facebook's F8 conference, Google's I/O Conference and Apple's most recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) we've seen the big plans that these tech companies plan on focusing on over this next year. As a huge Apple supporter, I have to say, companies like Google in particular are giving Apple a run for their money. Companies like Google have been focusing on their plans for continued growth and improvement around artificial intelligence and augmented reality. This is setting the bar even higher for Apple whose own intelligent assistant Siri still has a lot of issues when used. Siri does not have the greatest speech recognition and is not connected enough to go in and execute commands.

No, I'm not talking about the strategy in which Apple rolls out a smart speaker years behind its competitors -- the one that has left former Apple employees and the world at large confused as to why the wealthiest, most design-centric tech company in the world took so long to unveil HomePod. I'm talking about the other Siri strategy -- the one to gradually roll out new ways for iOS developers to connect their apps with Siri. Siri is nearly six years old, the first popular intelligent assistant of its kind in a smartphone. But Apple is a company that gained its status not by being first to market, but by producing a superior product. As with the Apple Watch and iPhone, years from now Apple can tell us all how brilliant it was to quietly apply the lessons it learned from the early days of the App Store -- when the total number of apps did not ensure the delivery of value. Instead of going for a large number of apps, Siri would do well to go deep and help users solve their biggest problems.

Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360 company. Let us tell the world your success story. From creating personalized shopping experiences to offering virtual buying assistants -- AI is improving the online shopping experience for consumers and retailers. Shoppers will be able to easily find the best price for an item and communicate with chatbots for quick customer service. For retailers, they'll be able to better analyze consumer data to predict future buying patterns, create autonomous replenishing systems and also save money and time on customer service by utilizing chatbots.