Amazon has launched two new budget Fire tablets, with one costing just £50, and has brought its Alexa voice assistant to tablets in the UK. The new thinner and lighter £50 Fire 7, which has an improved screen, longer battery life and more storage, hopes to continue the success of the previous Fire 7 tablet, which won plaudits for balancing low cost with features. At the same time, Amazon has launched a new version of its Fire HD 8 tablet, with similar improvements and a lower starting price of £80. Kevin Keith, Amazon's general manager for Fire tablets, said: "The Fire 7 for under £50 shocked a lot of folks, and became the bestselling tablet we ever built. We found most of the folks who buy our devices do so for entertainment, or what I like to call digital snacking: social media, light email, apps, games and music. So we've really focused on those areas."

You may want to practice saying "Ok Google" if you have GE WiFi-connected appliances in your home. Just as Bloomberg reported a few days ago, GE worked with the tech titan to integrate Google Assistant into its system. Now, you can use the voice-activated helper through Google Home, a Pixel or other select Android phones to operate various smart appliances. Take note that the big G's Assistant can't exactly control the devices directly. Your commands work by going through Geneva, the skill GE developed when it launched Amazon Alexa integration for its appliances in September last year.

Apple might be ahead of most of its rivals in terms of sales and branding, but for the past few years, it has been lagging behind in terms of features. An important feature of Apple's iPhone is Siri -- the company's voice assistant. Siri was the first conversational voice assistant on the scene in 2011. However, in the past year it has been left behind by artificial intelligence (AI) based voice assistants such as the Google Assistant and Samsung Bixby. While Siri has remained limited by its pre-recorded responses to queries, other AI-based voice assistants have developed the ability to evolve with usage.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham says Google Home is improved but is still a work in progress with some gaping holes. For the second straight year, Google is expected to use its annual conference for software developers to push its latest hardware. Wednesday kicks off Google I/O, the company's developers conference. It starts with a keynote address at 1 p.m. eastern, during which Google is likely to reveal lots of news about both its latest wave of gadgets and its software. Here's what to expect on Wednesday: Amazon's Echo fueled a surge in interest for both voice-enabled speakers and the digital assistants that power them.

Competition – it motivates all of us to become better at what we do. Marketers are no different, especially when they have to stay on top of the SEO game. They research the latest SEO trends; they use the best SEO tools out there. The problem is, unlike a sports competition, the goal posts for SEO are always changing. This, of course, makes the game more interesting, but also pretty frustrating for those trying to "keep up."

Imagine a surgeon asking a Siri-like digital assistant in the operations theater about the options available in a risky operation, based on the patient's medical history matched with a global database of similar cases. The "assistant" comes up with several options in a split second and, the surgeon and his team, choose one that they think is best and proceed. This could be one of the many possibilities that an Artificial Intelligence or A.I. can provide to the healthcare sector. A.I. is poised to become a game changer for the health care sector, according to Steve Leonard, chief executive of SGInnovate, the government entity that supports entrepreneurs leading Singapore's innovation efforts. But convincing doctors, clinicians, nurses, patients and other stakeholders to place their trust in self-thinking machines could be tricky.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled new tools intended to democratize artificial intelligence by enabling machine smarts to be built into software from smartphone games to factory floors. Improving programs with artificial intelligence that could tap into services in the Internet "cloud" and even take advantage of computing power in nearby machines, was part of a vision unveiled as the US technology titan's annual Build Conference opened. "We are infusing AI into every product and service we offer," said Microsoft executive vice president of artificial intelligence and research Harry Shum. "We've been creating the building blocks for the current wave of AI breakthroughs for more than two decades." Microsoft research has gone deep into areas such as machine learning, speech recognition, and enabling machines to recognize what they "see." "Now, we're in the unique position of being able to use those decades of research breakthroughs," Shum said.

Apple has another tool to help make Siri smarter thanks to its recent purchase of Lattice Data. The company specializes in artificial intelligence and dark data, which ultimately could turn out to be as cool as it sounds. Apple's Lattice Data purchase means Siri is getting smarter Sources speaking with TechCrunch spilled the beans on the deal, which reportedly cost Apple around US$200 million. Apple offered up its usual noncommittal confirmation saying, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The technology Lattice Data created aids with artificial intelligence by finding the structure in dark data, or data that otherwise doesn't seem connected.

Innovations in digitization, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation are creating performance and productivity opportunities for business and the economy, even as they reshape employment and the future of work. Rapid technological advances in digitization and data and analytics have been reshaping the business landscape, supercharging performance, and enabling the emergence of new business innovations and new forms of competition. At the same time, the technology itself continues to evolve, bringing new waves of advances in robotics, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), and especially machine learning. Together they amount to a step change in technical capabilities that could have profound implications for business, for the economy, and more broadly, for society. Some companies are gaining a competitive edge with their use of data and analytics, which can enable faster and larger-scale evidence-based decision making, insight generation, and process optimization.

Amazon has started paying out cold hard cash to the developers making apps for Alexa, the virtual assistant built into the company's Echo smart speakers. The company described the program on a support webpage for Alexa developers. "We are exploring new ways to reward our developers," Amazon said on the page. "Starting May 2017, we are offering game skill developers the opportunity to earn money based on customer usage." The page doesn't say how much developers can expect to make. For now, Amazon said it is only paying developers who create game apps, or "skills," for Alexa.