You'd think that Amazon would have made it possible to control a Fire TV from external Alexa devices as soon as it was an option, but no -- you've had to use the Fire TV itself if you wanted to play a video using your voice. At last, though, sense has prevailed. Amazon has updated all versions of the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick to add support for voice control from another Alexa-enabled device. If you want to skip to the next episode of a show, you can talk to your Echo or smartphone instead of scrounging for the Fire TV's remote. Does the feature sound familiar?

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They've bought millions of Alexa-powered devices. When you think about Alexa, you're probably thinking about the Echo, the tall, cylindrical monolith that first introduced Amazon's chatty assistant to the world. The Echo features prominently in Amazon's Alexa ads, and its basic structure has informed the design of every other so-called smart speaker on the market. The Echo Dot has been the best-selling Alexa device since its debut. It was Amazon's best-selling device, period, during the 2016 holiday season, and the company just announced that yesterday, the Echo Dot was also the most popular item on Prime Day.

Booking.com, a brand within Priceline Group, is planning to begin using artificial intelligence (AI) to create personalized travel options for customers. According to Seeking Alpha, Booking.com will begin using AI within its mobile apps to provide travelers with instant recommendations for local events and attractions once they've reached a destination. Booking Experiences tool, which has been launched on its iOS and Android apps in Amsterdam with planned rollouts in Dubai, London, Paris, and New York over the next few months, makes suggestions based on a user's personal experience and from having analyzed millions of personal likes and dislikes and how these experiences impact the buying decisions for various venues. For instance, chatbots powered by AI are able to field and answer questions from customers on a variety of subjects, from generating recommendations on gift purchases to locating the nearest Chinese restaurant. As with other forms of automation, some have questioned whether AI will replace customer service reps and people in other types of customer-facing roles.

Voice assistants are becoming commonplace with many companies investing in them and both Android and iOS devices coming with at least one pre-installed. They are also slowly taking over the household, with presence in other hardware in addition to the smartphone, such as the HomePod -- Apple's smart speaker. According to research firm Verto Analytics, a total of 72 million or 43.8 percent smartphone users use voice assistants and AI-based apps as of May. Among major smartphone companies, Apple was the first mover in the voice assistant segment with its Siri. Samsung and Google did try to match up with S-Voice and Google Now, respectively, but these voice assistants lacked the conversational capabilities that Siri possessed.

Kayak introduced an Alexa skill a year ago, which lets you search for flights, hotels and rental cars with your voice. Useful, but not that useful -- you still need to hop on your computer or fire up a phone to book them. Might as well do either from the start and use emoji to search for travel deals. Now, Kayak has upgraded its skill, so that you can book a hotel with just your voice. Simple say, "Alexa, book a hotel room in [the location you're going to]," and it will give you a list of available rooms that you can reserve right then and there.

Siri remains the most popular virtual assistant with 41.4 million monthly active users in the U.S., according to a new report from measurement firm Verto Analytics out this morning, but it has seen a 15 percent decline since last year – or 7.3 million monthly users. In addition, the study found that engagement with Siri has also dropped by nearly half during this period, from 21 percent to 11 percent. Meanwhile, Amazon Alexa usage has been skyrocketing – jumping 325 percent in monthly active users – that is, from 0.8 million to 2.6 million monthly users, as its user engagement also increased from 10 percent to 22 percent during the same time frame. Cortana has seen an increase as well, growing from 0.2 million monthly users in the U.S. to 0.7 million, or a 350 percent increase. Its user engagement tripled, from 19 percent to 60 percent.

From digital personal assistants to applications that provide contextual and relevant recommendations for ecommerce, to driverless cars that may soon be a reality, AI is making every interface both simple and smart and setting the bar high for future applications. The hallmark of Human-Machine Interaction has been marked by the constant endeavor to make machine interactions more'human-like'. HMI has come a long way from its'command prompt' days where the interaction was machine-centric to touch screens where users interacted with machines using natural gestures. Today, machines have the capability to understand voice (Natural Language Processing) and sight (Image and Vision Computing) – the two senses which humans use most for communication. This has been made possible by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning that enable machines to interpret, decipher and contextualise human inputs into machine understandable and readable formats. Machines have begun to understand natural human interaction cues with greater accuracy; and interactions have become adaptive and multimodal (type, touch, voice, sight) as compared to the earlier unimodal, passive and command based interactions.

Back in January, CES introduced headlines on how Artificial Intelligence was taking centre stage as the key technology for the year. We've already seen how AI has emerged on the consumer side of things, with things like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa changing the way we communicate and search. But, what does all this mean for the growth of enterprise? Well, first, only moments after the announcement of the "Echo Show" from Amazon, Cisco revealed that they would be purchasing "MindMeld" a company known for pioneering technology for intelligent conversational solutions. Cisco's Rob Salvagno noted that the acquisition of MindMeld would enhance the business's collaboration suite, with brand new services for Cisco Spark.

AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol, Go World Champion, may make us humans feel uneasy when confronted with such intellect, but should we instead be embracing artificial intelligence (AI)? Optimists see AI to be the saviour of customer experience in the financial services industry. Siri and Cortana are now at the frontline of providing information services, before we would of had to manually type into a search engine or call up a customer service team to find the answer. This seems just the beginning of AI enhancing customer experience, and its influence in the financial services sector is growing. The financial services sector has been excited with news of BBVA working on their virtual banking assistant Lola, RBS investing into a robo-advisory recording system and Mitsubishi UFJ challenging Lola with their humanoid virtual assistant Nao. All have promised a more efficient and reliable experience for the customer.