Google Home was a decent first stab at taking on Amazon's Echo, but there's clearly room for improvement. Today at Google I/O, the company revealed that its smart speaker will soon be able to give you proactive notifications, like alerting you to traffic delays ahead of upcoming appointments. Google Home will light up to let you know it has an alert for you, so it thankfully won't just start talking without any prompting. Additionally, you'll be soon be able to see visual responses to your Home queries on all of your devices. So, for example, if you ask for directions somewhere, you'll get that routed straight to your phone.

Google's smart speaker was already handy for a lot of things, but today the company is announcing a ton of new features for the device. At Google I/O 2017, the company said it's adding Bluetooth connectivity to Google Home. This means you'll be able to play music and other audio from any device, including those running Android and iOS. Google also revealed that Spotify's free tier will be available on Home. Previously, you needed a paid monthly subscription in order to beam your tunes to the speaker from that library.

The Google I/O announcements didn't skimp on the internet giant's domestic assistant hub. Now, users can make hands-free calls on their Google Home -- and so long as they're to anyone in the US or Canada, they'll be absolutely free. The hub recognizes your voice commands and automatically finds the right number from your contacts, but differentiates by your vocal tone, so asking to "Call mom" won't accidentally call your significant other's parent by mistake (and vice versa). While Amazon announced hands-free calls for its entire Echo lineup a week ago, plus video calls with its new touchscreen Echo Show, recipients need to have an Echo device themselves (or the Alexa app installed on their phone). Google Home's feature ostensibly makes standard calls to any phone and will use a private number by default, but users can link it to their personal one.

Google has unveiled a raft of new features for Android including a radical image recognition app giving phones'eyes'. Called Google Lens, it will be able to do everything from recognise flowers in a garden to translate menus in a foreign language. The firm also unveil a new iOS version of its smart assistant for the iPhone, taking on Siri, along with updates to its Home speaker turning it into a hands free phone and a smart reply service for Gmail. CEO Sundar Pichai first revealed over 2 billion people are now using Android, and said the future was about speech and vision. 'We are clearly at an inflection point with vision, so we are announcing Google Lens. 'If you run into something and you want to know what it is, you can point your phone at it,' Pichai said.

Google, which gets most of its revenue from its dominant search engine, also released a host of new features for Google Home, a speaker released last year. Users will soon be able to make phone calls using the device, and the HBO Now streaming service, owned by Time Warner Inc, will be integrated as well.

Google gave its Google Assistant a big promotion on Wednesday, adding the ability to control more devices, make payments, and even run on Apple's iPhone as well as consumer appliances. Google's Assistant runs on more than 100 million devices, according to Google executives. The company's goal is to expand its reach, making it smarter and more capable as it goes. Probably the most important Assistant announcement of the morning was Google's plans to integrate Assistant into a slew of consumer devices. The company said it was working with Sony, Panasonic, and others to control them with the Assistant, and even bake it in to the device itself.

As artificial intelligence systems improve, voice assistants like Siri make take a more active role in protecting our computers and our online activity. John Martellaro and Kelly Guimont join Jeff Gamet to look at how Siri may play a bigger part in our personal cyber security, and whether or not that's something we want. As artificial intelligence systems improve, voice assistants like Siri make take a more active role in protecting our computers and our online activity.

Amazon introduced new kid Fire tablets Wednesday, lowered prices for Amazon Fire devices and announced it is bringing Alexa to U.K. Fire tablet users. The company Wednesday introduced the Amazon Fire 7, a thinner and lighter model with a 7-inch display that has better clarity. The tablet features a battery life of up to eight hours, 8 GB of storage with support for an expandable capacity of 256 GB and Wi-Fi connection. It is available in four colors and comes with Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa. The durable tablet, compared to the latest iPad, comes with front and rear-facing cameras.

Even if we are not always aware of it, artificial intelligence is already a big part of our lives, having a major impact on how we live and how we work. From customer service applications to voice-powered assistants such as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, there are several examples of AI and automation tools in use today. As technological advancements continue, AI's role in our lives will only grow bigger. There are even concerns that AI will soon make most human-filled jobs obsolete and ultimately leave millions unemployed. And according to the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, these concerns are not entirely unfounded.

GE Appliances announced a deal with Google Wednesday enabling the US tech giant's voice control home hub to be used for cooking, cleaning and other functions. The deal enables GE's "Geneva" to communicate with the Google Assistant, so users can say: "Ok Google, ask Geneva Home to set the oven timer for 10 minutes." The announcement comes nearly a year after GE Appliances unveiled a similar tie-up with Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers. It also comes as Google was expected to unveil more partnerships and initiatives in artificial intelligence at its developers conference in California. "Everyone's busy these days and our consumers are looking for simpler and more convenient ways to control their home, especially when busy in the kitchen or working around the house," said Liz VerSchure, vice president at GE Appliances, a unit of the Chinese electronics group Haier.