Amazon's Echo has given consumers the ability to search the internet, play music and order products without lifting a finger. Now, the e-commerce giant has added even more hands-free abilities – you can now place and receive calls and messages from one Alexa-enabled device to another using voice commands. When a call is coming in, the ring around the top of the Echo will turn green and users can either accept by saying'Alex answer' or deny by telling the virtual assistant to ignore it. When a call is coming in, the ring around the top of the Echo will turn green, which users can either accept by saying'Alex answer' or deny by telling the virtual assistant to ignore it. Users can place a call through using their device at home to their family member's app or friends can call each other from device to the other.

What's been less reported is that the red-romance effect has been under scrutiny right from its early days. Now, after several follow-up studies, it seems likely that it does not hold up at all. Evidence for this comes from replications studies--scientific efforts that attempt to replicate an experiment to ensure that the previously found effect remains. One such replication study was published last week in Social Psychology by Robert Calin-Jageman and Gabrielle Lehmann of Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. This study repeated the strongest experiment from Elliot's 2008 paper as closely as possible, having university students and online participants rate the same photos.

When Microsoft unveiled Cortana three years ago, it was positioned as the company's response to Siri and Google Now. But as Windows Phone faltered, Microsoft wisely shifted Cortana over to other mobile platforms and Windows PCs, where it could hook into your calendar and email to offer even more personalized assistance. Now, it appears that Microsoft wants Cortana to take over yet another space -- the living room. At Build, Microsoft's annual developer conference, the company revealed that it was working on several Cortana-powered smart speakers that would take on Amazon's Echo. Aside from the Harmon Kardon Invoke that was leaked earlier this week, both HP and Intel are working on their own Cortana-powered speakers.

Every serious technology company now has an Artificial Intelligence team in place. These companies are investing millions into intelligent systems for situation assessment, prediction analysis, learning-based recognition systems, conversational interfaces, and recommendation engines. Companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon aren't just employing AI, but have made it a central part of their core intellectual property. As the market has matured, AI is beginning to move into enterprises that will use it but not develop it on their own. They see intelligent systems as solutions for sales, logistics, manufacturing, and business intelligence challenges. They hope AI can improve productivity, automate existing process, provide predictive analysis, and extract meaning from massive data sets.

Ask Alexa about the weather, and it'll tell you it's sunny and 75 in a pleasant monotone. Prompt it to tell you a joke, and it'll offer a pun in its signature staccato. Suggest that it sing a song, and it'll belt out an auto-tuned country ballad. Amazon's virtual assistant boasts a number of clever, humanlike abilities--but, as its voice betrays, Alexa is still just a robot. To help rid Alexa of its cyborgian lilt, Amazon recently upgraded its speech synthesis markup language tags, which developers use to code more natural verbal patterns into Alexa's skills, or apps.

Microsoft knows you don't run Windows on all of your gadgets, and it no longer cares. That, above all else, was the message the company conveyed for three whole days at its Build developer conference. Redmond is no longer trying to foist phones on consumers who don't want them. It stopped plugging its ears and pretending Google Docs and Chromebooks aren't a threat. And it won't beg people to throw out all of their devices and buy a dozen new ones so they can live their Best Windows Life.

Artificial Intelligence or AI is the intelligence shown by machines. When any machine becomes aware of its surroundings and does something keeping that in mind in order to achieve something. Usually the term Artificial Intelligence is used when a machine behaves like a human in activities such as problem solving or learning, which is also known as Machine Learning. The main goal of Artificial Intelligence is to create a technology that allows computers and machines to function in an intelligent manner. In 1943 Isaac Asimov coined the term Robotics.

If the Beauty and the Beast and Burger King debacles were anything to go by, owners of smart speakers like the Google Home aren't big fans of ads. But that won't stop marketing companies like VoiceLabs from trying to make them happen. The voice analytics company has announced a new platform called Sponsored Messages, which will let developers monetize their Amazon Echo skills by inserting ads at the start and end of conversations. VoiceLabs says Sponsored Messages are between 6 and 15 seconds long and are positioned at the beginning and end of interactions in order to "lead a consumer into an experience or converse with the consumer as they exit." An example provided to CNET by VoiceLabs CEO Adam Marchick suggests a developer of a sports podcast skill may decide to partner with ESPN, one of the early Sponsored Messages partners.

These days, customer experiences increasingly need to be enabled with the help of intelligent technology. In the past months I have given some examples of how business areas can use AI to improve their part of customer engagements to enable better experiences. Now they have different AI's, but then what? It is time to connect some dots and talk platform. Talking platform does not mean that direct interactions and people are not important – on the contrary; but an increasing number of customers are using the web, social media, or an app to identify suitable products or services, or to resolve an issue, when needed.

Samsung could be joining the smart assistant-powered speakers market in the future. The tech giant headquartered in Seoul, South Korea has recently been awarded a design patent for a mysterious "audio device," and it won't come as a surprise if this would turn out to be another Amazon Echo rival. Last Tuesday, Patently Mobile learned that Samsung was granted two design patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. While one is for a new "Note"-branded smartphone, another is for a digital assistant device that could be the tech giant's response to the successful Amazon Echo and the similar devices that have been popping up on the market recently. When Samsung introduced Bixby alongside the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 in late March, it mentioned its plan of making the digital assistant available to a range of devices including smart home appliances, connected devices and possibly other gadgets that have yet to be introduced to the public.