Artificial Intelligence (AI) is enabling smartphone apps too to enhance the experience for a user. Microsoft and Google, for instance, are trying to make AI an integral part of their software. In fact, at Google's annual I/O conference in California in May, Google spoke of AI for various platforms, including the Home hardware and Photos app. We look at some of the apps that are making maximum use of AI. Niki.ai is a thoroughbred chatbot that uses AI to execute tasks.

At the annual developers conference, Apple announced the voice recognition software will have a more "natural" tone. SAN JOSE -- Apple had a chance to pull out its big guns, and really, really beef up personal assistant Siri to take on Amazon Echo and the Google Assistant. It didn't do that Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Based on its presentation, and the announcement of a new HomePod speaker which featured amazing sound first and Siri integration second, we'll have to call Apple's feeble attempt at improving Siri the biggest miss of WWDC. Siri, which has taken a backseat in development to the more aggressive moves by Google and Amazon, will have a new voice in the fall that will have inflections, be able to translate some foreign phrases and offer us several options to queries instead of one.

Siri is getting a new voice, and the Mac is getting a new name. Apple unveiled new hardware, including a Siri-powered speaker, and previewed upcoming iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch features as the company's Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off Monday. An internet-connected speaker called HomePod is coming in December for about $350. The speaker is similar to cheaper devices from Amazon and Google. Apple says it's giving more emphasis to sound quality, not just smarts.

The iPhone maker has finally jumped into two of the hottest tech trends of the last two years -- augmented reality and voice-activated speakers, with a promise to dominate these markets pioneered by its rivals. Two years after Amazon introduced its sleeper hit Echo device, and a year after Google Home, Apple now has the voice-activated HomePod, a high-end music speaker priced at $349 that will be powered by Siri. That often maligned but widely used artificial intelligence assistant is also getting an upgrade, though for HomePod, Siri's main task is clear: play music. Apple also unveiled a new augmented reality developer kit that would help Apple app developers integrate this technology that overlays digital images on the physical world, made popular by Pokemon Go. Facebook and Google have been showcasing such distorted reality tech at their own demos, with plans to revolutionize commerce and communication.

Apple replaced record collections with the iPod and earned front pocket real estate with the iPhone. The Cupertino, Calif., company announced Monday at its annual World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose the HomePod, a home speaker with Apple's digital assistant Siri built into it. Similar to Amazon's Echo and Google's Home -- voice-activated, internet-connected speakers that play music, answer questions and provide information such as the news, weather, sports updates and metric conversions -- the HomePod listens and responds to voice commands. Using the HomePod is like using Siri, without the need to tap any buttons. To get its attention, users simply say, "Hey, Siri."

Apple's iMac updates and new HomePod speaker drew most of the attention at the company's World Wide Developers keynote. But tucked away in the middle were a short few minutes in which software chief Craig Federighi casually launched Apple into one of the tech industry's fiercest competitions– the contest to help developers build the next generation of AI-powered applications. Federighi had already spent some time boasting how Apple was using machine learning to do things like make Siri smarter, or help users rediscover old memories in the Moments photo app. Then he announced that Apple would also be gifting some AI superpowers to developers. "We want to make powerful machine learning easy for you to incorporate in your apps," he said.

With Google and Wikipedia, we can be experts on any topic; they don't make us any dumber than encyclopedias, phone books and librarians did. Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing so rapidly that even its developers are being caught off guard. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in Davos, Switzerland, in January that it "touches every single one of our main projects, ranging from search to photos to ads … everything we do … it definitely surprised me, even though I was sitting right there." The long-promised AI, the stuff we've seen in science fiction, is coming, and we need to be prepared. Today, AI is powering voice assistants such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri, allowing them to have increasingly natural conversations with us and manage our lights, order food and schedule meetings.

As you contemplate the introduction of artificial intelligence, you should articulate what mix of three approaches works best for you. Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke's farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country's history. Climate Corp., the Silicon Valley–based developer of Climate Basic, also offers a more advanced AI app that operates autonomously. If a storm hits a region, or a drought occurs, it lowers local yield numbers.

Senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi claimed that the upgraded Safari tops all desktop browsers in speed: He even went as far as to say it's the world's fastest desktop browser. Apple claims that High Sierra is its fastest operating system ever, and Apple File is part of that, offering much better performance and security than before. That's apparently enough for up to 11 Teraflops of single precision (or 22 Teraflops at "half precision") processing power. The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system features a smarter version of Siri that does a better job of understanding what you need to know and presenting that information when it's relevant.

In 2011, Apple became the first company to place artificial intelligence in the pockets of millions of consumers when the firm's co-founder Steve Jobs launched the voice assistant Siri on the iPhone. Eight years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI. Analysts say the question of whether Apple can succeed in building great artificial intelligence products is as fundamental to the company's next decade as the iPhone was to its previous one. But the tech giant faces a formidable dilemma because the nature of artificial intelligence pushes Apple far out of its comfort zone in sleekly-designed hardware and services. AI programming demands a level of data collection and mining that is at odds with Apple's rigorous approach to privacy, as well as its positioning as a company that doesn't profile consumers.