At its WWDC 2017 keynote on Monday, Apple showed off the fruits of its AI research labors. We saw a Siri assistant that's smart enough to interpret your intentions, an updated Metal 2 graphics suite designed for machine learning and a Photos app that can do everything its Google rival does without an internet connection. Being at the front of the AI pack is a new position for Apple to find itself in. Despite setting off the AI arms race when it introduced Siri in 2010, Apple has long lagged behind its competitors in this field. It's amazing what a year of intense R&D can do. Well, technically, it's been three years of R&D, but Apple had a bit of trouble getting out of its own way for the first two.

This article originally appeared on the Motley Fool. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has officially stepped into the market for stationary speakers powered by virtual assistants, a product category that Amazon.com Amazon's Echo family continues to expand, recently adding the Echo Look and Echo Show. Apple has never put all that much weight into being the first to market provided it can be the best when it finally gets there. With that in mind, how does the new HomePod stack up against the dominant Echo?

A new report claims that Samsung is working on a smart speaker that would directly compete with Google Home and Amazon's Echo devices. Samsung's speaker will be powered by Bixby, the digital assistant that was first introduced on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. The new report on Samsung's rumored smart connected speaker was made The Korea Herald. The news site said that Samsung has already been granted design patents for the new standalone speaker device, and that it will most likely be powered by the company's own Bixby assistant. The report is quite accurate as IBT reported last month that Samsung was indeed granted two patents: one for a Note-branded smartphone, and another that's only called as an "Audio Device."

Our world is changing at dizzying speed. With self-driving cars entering our highways and computers predicting our next likely purchase, we are entering an era where the cloud and machine learning are directly impacting our everyday lives. By merging with machine learning, cloud computing is in the midst of a pivot towards becoming more interconnected and intelligent. Below are five ways in which machine learning has been shaping the modern cloud. Cognitive computing is rapidly evolving the landscape of how we communicate and do business online.

Would you like to read a story about why Shopify is making its chatbot marketing assistant free to merchants? Type'yes,' send a thumbs up emoji, er, well actually, just scroll down to learn more. Techopia may not yet be run by bots (deep down, we're paranoid luddites) but Shopify believes it can reduce price barriers to growing a business by giving all of its merchants its first employee for free. Kit, which Shopify acquired last spring, is an automated assistant that can set up marketing campaigns, re-engage with customers via email, refresh social channels and run reports, all through Facebook Messenger or text message conversations with merchants. Before today, businesses on Shopify had to pay $10 per month for Kit's services, but the Ottawa e-commerce giant announced today that the firm would make its virtual assistant free to all merchants on its platform.

Paid-search campaigns running on desktop and laptops are estimated to decline 3.7% to $14.7 billion by 2021, but the combined share of total Internet advertising held by wired and mobile search will be much higher -- at more than 50% of the total revenue, according to data released Wednesday. PwC's 18th annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2017-2021 details the free fall of paid search delivered through fixed-line broadband and the rise of paid search on mobile devices. Paid-search advertising for desktop fell 34.4% to take 24.5%, or $17.8 billion, of total U.S. Internet advertising revenue in 2016. Google dominates in most global markets, but in the U.S. the company faces more competition, notably from Microsoft's Bing, according to the report. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to better anticipate users' search will become another area of focus in the next five years and make players like Apple more sophisticated in search.

Apple wrapped up WWDC on Monday by showing off the HomePod, its brand new smart speaker. The stout, cylindrical gadget packs in seven tweeters, six microphones, and a four-inch woofer that delivers impressive sound. The HomePod is very much a speaker, but for Apple, it also represents something more: a way to bring Siri into your home at a time when virtual assistants are smarter than ever. The question is whether the HomePod brings anything new to the table. Like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, Apple's HomePod provides a new shell for its omnipresent virtual assistant. Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing, claimed that while most companies choose to focus on either sound or smarts, the HomePod brings both in spades.

Three years after Amazon Echo launched as a frivolous oddity, its maker now plans to put Alexa inside smart phones, refrigerators, vacuums and Ford cars. The Alexafication of all things places digital attendants everywhere at our beck and call, and those of our kids, too. Last year, a San Francisco dad named Hunter Walk posted a blog titled, "Amazon Echo Is Magical. Walk, a former YouTube product manager, saw in Alexa's subservience a potential worry for parents: If a kid learned she could order Alexa around without so much as a please or thank you, why not a person? Experts at the crossroads of pediatrics, psychology and A.I. say there's a lot we don't know about how virtual assistants might affect young, developing minds, but parents can take proactive steps to help children better understand and interact with humanoid helpers.

Amazon's Alexa voice assistant is rolling out to your Amazon Fire tablet, allowing you to get similar functionality of the Amazon Echo speaker but on your tablet instead. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant is rolling out to your Amazon Fire tablet, allowing you to get similar functionality of the Amazon Echo speaker but on your tablet instead.