Adobe and Microsoft have joined forces, combining Adobe's Sensei artificial intelligence (AI) with Microsoft's data to give Adobe customers more automated, intelligence-based business feedback. By plugging into Microsoft's ecosystem, Adobe can pull rich insights from Microsoft's customer relationship management (CRM) and data visualization tools, among other platforms. Adobe Sensei is now armed with a new trove of data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Azure, from which it can draw on its algorithm-based recommendations. Both companies are also working to add Adobe Sensei to Microsoft tools; however, there is no timeline for when this reverse integration will be available. Here's an excellent example of how Adobe Sensei and Microsoft work together today: A financial services client working within Adobe Analytics can take existing Adobe data, combine it with Microsoft's data ecosystem, and then feed all of that information into Sensei.

Michael Bennett Cohn was head of digital product and revenue operations at Condé Nast, where he created the company's first dynamic system for digital audience cross-pollination. At a traditional boutique ad agency, he founded and ran the digital media buying team, during which time he planned and executed the digital ad campaign that launched the first Amazon Kindle. At Federated Media, where he was the first head of east coast operations, he developed and managed conversational marketing campaigns for top clients including Dell, American Express, and Kraft. He also has a master's degree in cinema-television from the University of Southern California.

Virtually any data science experiment that uses a new machine learning algorithm requires testing across different scenarios. Simulated data allows one to do this in a controlled and systematic way that is usually not possible with real data. A convenient way to implement and re-use data simulation in Azure Machine Learning (AML) Studio is through a custom R module. Custom R modules combine the convenience of having an R script packaged inside a drag and drop module, with the flexibility of custom code where the user has the freedom of adding and removing functionality parameters, seen as module inputs in the AML Studio GUI, as needed. A custom R module has identical behavior to native AML Studio modules.

The Galaxy S8 with Bixby will be the successor to last year's the S7 handsets. NEW YORK--Ahead of the March 29 launch of its next flagship smartphone, Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S8 will have a new voice-driven digital assistant named Bixby, molded by artificial intelligence. S8 owners will be able to summon Bixby on the phone at the press of a button. Samsung revealed some general details on Bixby in a blog posted Monday by InJong Rhee, the company's executive vice president and head of R&D, for software and services. Rhee did not mention in his post whether Samsung will leverage the conversational-based voice technology developed by Viv Labs, a startup Samsung bought in October.

Watch out Siri, there is a new virtual assistant in town. Samsung has unveiled its intelligent interface that will live in the firm's highly-anticipated Galaxy S8 smartphone set to launch next week. Unlike the other AI assistants on the market, Bixby is specifically design to'make using your phone even more seamless and intuitive'. Users can make apps Bixby-enabled, which will let Bixby support almost every task that the application is capable of performing using the conventional interface. Any task a human user can do via touch commands, the AI will have the ability to do as well.

Individuals in Toronto looking for escorts keep finding themselves at an eSports bar thanks to a quirk in Siri's algorithm. It's unclear why the mix up is occurring but the owners of Meltdown eSports Bar in Toronto's Little Italy have been getting late night calls for escorts. Meltdown is an eSports bar, where customers eat drink and watch or play eSport video games. One of the owners, Alvin Acyapan, who gets business calls to his cell phone, told The Star that since the bar opened in November, he's been getting calls from people looking for prostitutes. Prostitution was outlawed in Canada in 2014.

Ahead of next week's announcement of the Galaxy S8, Samsung has introduced the world to Bixby, its own entry into the increasingly crowded AI landscape. Samsung is a bit late to the AI race led by Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, but it has a bit of a different strategy. Instead of wowing us with encyclopedic knowledge, Samsung is putting Bixby at the center of the Galaxy experience. It's calling it an intelligent interface, rather than an assistant, and it will work across the phone and any "Bixby-enabled" apps to reduce the number of taps we need to make. Rather than adding summoning functionality into the home button, Samsung has built a dedicated button on the side of the S8 (seen in the picture above) to "make it feel easier and more comfortable to give commands."

Do you ever find yourself in this situation of having to speak to a personal assistant? The second I hear the words personal assistant, I immediately think wow this company must be important. Personal assistants have an association with very high up, powerful people within an organization. Or does having a personal assistant just seem more professional and established? The answer could be either, but the one thing I do know is that personal assistants are becoming easier to come by than ever before.

My mother waited two months for her Amazon Echo to arrive. Then, she waited again -- leaving it in the box until I came to help her install it. Any device that requires vocal instructions makes my mother skeptical. She has bad memories of Siri. "She could not understand me," my mom told me.

Amazon touts Alexa, Google has its Assistant, Microsoft has Cortana. But at Adobe, an often overlooked player in this contest, it's all about Sensei. Launched last fall, Sensei is a series of AI services and a voice-powered virtual assistant being added to Creative Cloud (formerly Creative Suite) apps and services like Photoshop and Premiere. Some Sensei services are already available, like the ability to change a facial expression with Face Aware Editing in Photoshop, while others, like the ability to control Photoshop with your voice, are still prototypes. Sensei will be able to talk you through how to edit photos and videos like a pro because Adobe has tracked millions of photo and video editing sessions.