Going beyond traditional rules-based voice or chatbot digital banking solutions, a non-bot, natural language banking experience is being offered to USAA members in an Amazon Alexa pilot with Clinc. Last September, a team of computer science professors at the University of Michigan introduced an application developed in their research lab that they believed would change the way consumers would do banking in the future. Combining the science and technology from academia, with the needs for a better voice-first mobile banking capability, Clinc won'Best of Show' honors at Finovate in New York City with their Finie ("the financial genie") application. The intelligent personal assistant uses sophisticated natural language processing engines that have been trained with a deeper knowledge of the financial and banking industry as opposed to using a rules-based approach. Unlike solutions that currently exist from Siri, Alexa and Cortana, Clinc's machine learning capability allows the application to expand knowledge and improve responses with every query.

Solar glasses for the eclipse are sold out in many parts of the country, but still available in the college town of Corvallis, Oregon. CORVALLIS, Oregon - In case you haven't heard, a certain mega-event is happening Monday, the total solar eclipse of the sun, the first time we've seen such a natural wonder in the United States, from coast to coast, since 1918. Talking Tech is here as your last-minute guide to all things eclipse. Where to view it online and on TV, where to still buy your solar glasses, how to photograph it and what to do about a weak connection when surrounded by mobs of people all trying to get on the network at the same time. Near Corvallis, Oregon--an invitation to watch the Total Solar Eclipse from a large rural field.

With the wave of personal assistants, such as Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant, and new startups leveraging AI and analytics to build personal companions, it's becoming clear we are moving toward a new voice-controlled relationship with technology. As we have already seen in the consumer market, it is all but a given that these voice-activation systems will eventually make it into the enterprise environment, as the potential benefits of these systems could be tremendous in simplifying and automating activities. Although it may be a long time before we see the full likenesses of "HAL" from "2001: A Space Odyssey", the technology is already here that can improve the ways businesses operate. Think how much easier it would be for a physician to just say "System: update Mary Smith's chart with the following: "Patient experiencing abdominal pain, issue pharmacy order for 200MG of'SuperAntiGas', signed Dr. FeelBetter." Or in a conference room, instead of the struggle to figure out which remote control puts on the projector and the screen, a simple voice request "System: turn on projector, turn on TV and dim lights."

While not everyone you meet on a dating app is your soul mate you would at least hope they are capable of common decency. However, as these Tinder users prove, this is not always the case as singletons share the trashiest profiles they have found on the app. It might be referred to as the'hook-up' app but most Tinder users are subtle when it comes to their motives but the daters pictured here are not shy when it comes to revealing what they are looking for. From nearly-nude selfies to lewd descriptions many of the profiles come from those hoping to avoid commitment. Meanwhile other users have resorted to typically unattractive assets to bag themselves a date including sharing photos of them on the toilet to revealing that they are already married. Whether they make you cringe or recoil these profiles will surely struggle to make anyone swipe right.

What if your collaboration tools could actually understand the context of your words and deliver you what you really want, and not just web search results? What if it was like having another person in your office and not just a computer? Cisco Systems is aiming to answer that, in part through a $125 million acquisition of AI company MindMeld, which it announced last month. Cisco wants to incorporate MindMeld's AI platform into its collaboration products, because the tech allows users to build intelligent and human-like conversational interfaces for any application or device. AI-enhanced collaboration tools have the potential to increase efficiency, speed up the discovery of new ideas and lead to improved outcomes for teams that are working together in disparate locations.

To learn more about conversational AI, check out Yishay Carmiel's session Applications of neural-based models for conversational speech at the Artificial Intelligence Conference in San Francisco, Sept. 17-20, 2017. The dream of speech recognition is a system that truly understands humans speaking--in different environments, with a variety of accents and languages. For decades, people tackled this problem with no success. Pinpointing effective strategies for creating such a system seemed impossible. In the past years, however, breakthroughs in AI and deep learning have changed everything in the quest for speech recognition.

A survey last year found that 98 percent of smartphone owners had used their device's artificial intelligence-based virtual personal assistant (VPA). The majority of those surveyed were inhibited about talking to their artificial intelligence (AI)-powered VPAs in public, but that's likely to change as AI becomes more firmly entrenched in everyday life. As AI becomes a part of daily living, brand leaders are realizing the potential the technology has to transform marketing. With AI, marketers can understand customers more completely and connect with them on a deeper, more personal level. This can allow brands to deliver a buying experience that is relevant to the customer.

Amazon's Echo Dot was made available for free through Amazon.com The apparent promo appeared to shut down around 4 p.m. EDT, with some users showing notifications that the product was no longer available. There is no listing of the promotion, which is applied at checkout and is listed as an "Audible Promo," presumably in reference to Amazon's audiobook service Audible. It is unclear if the deal or apparently giveaway was intended solely for Amazon Prime customers, but customers without Prime were also able to order the product for free as of Friday afternoon. When the device is added to a user's cart, it is listed at it's retail price of $49.99.

Google's partnerships with media companies for Home add-ons goes beyond advertisements for Beauty and the Beast. For next month's 125th anniversary issue of Vogue, readers can ask Google Assistant for more information on a quintet of articles. Once they do, the journalists who wrote them will share bits of interviews with Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence, Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey that didn't make it to print.

Do you want Siri or Alexa to be the voice of your organization, or do you prefer a solution that is differentiated in tone, context and capabilities? Tara Kelly, from SPLICE Software sat down with The Financial Brand to discuss the future of AI-driven voice solutions. According to recent studies, by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. As consumers increasingly rely on voice artificial intelligence (voice AI) to answer questions and make life easier, it will be important for banks and credit unions to be part of this transformation. Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana are becoming an increasing part of how consumers manage their lives, and the competition is becoming more intense as forward-thinking banking organizations start to introduce voice-first solutions.