Americans' high-tech appetite is even more voracious than anticipated as sales of digital assistants, drones, VR headsets and 4K Ultra HD TVs expected to surpass forecasts. The total 2017 consumer bill for tech products -- from Amazon Echo voice-activated speakers to virtual headsets from HTC, Oculus, Samsung and Sony -- is expected to hit $321 billion, up 3.2% over 2016, according to the Consumer Technology Association's mid-year sales forecast. "Driven by consumer demand for the products we already know and love, as well as new, innovative technologies, revenue growth in the consumer technology industry is exceeding expectations," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CTA, which released the forecast earlier this week. Drones, OLED TVs and VR are all expected to surpass $1 billion in sales for the first time. Still, the categories grabbing the biggest share of sales remain smartphones, expected to increase 2% to $55.6 billion, laptops ($28 billion, down 1%), televisions ($18 billion, -2%), and tablets ($16 billion, -8%).

In 2017, we're already seeing a growing list of insurers leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to transform their customer- and distributor-facing channels, including the use of robo-advisors to support customers in their purchasing decisions. In some cases, insurers are choosing to partner with emerging players like Motif or Betterment, and in others, they are developing their own capabilities. Consider the Allstate Business Insurance Expert (ABIe)--known as Abby. This virtual assistant with an on-screen personality helps agents quote and issue commercial insurance products. It finds answers through a combination of contextual knowledge and intelligent content.

"If you say things that are particularly assholeish to Cortana, she will get mad," Deborah Harrison says. As a writer for Windows' female-voiced virtual assistant, she should know. At a 2015 tech conference, Harrison told delegates that "a good chunk" of user inquiries were about Cortana's sex life, something Microsoft was working to curb. Siri, Alexa, x.ai's meeting-schedule bot "Amy" and even traffic update assistant Robin have all been subjected to the sexual advances of their male users. That there's a market for virtual sex is unsurprising.

The previously unreported acquisition of Graphiq Inc. and its more than 100 employees has given Amazon a new Southern California outpost. It recently began looking to hire additional software developers and data associates in Santa Barbara to work on Alexa. Investors in Graphiq made out with more than they put in, according to a source, suggesting the deal was worth at least tens of millions of dollars. Another source estimated the deal's value at $50 million. Amazon and Graphiq declined to comment.

Artificial Intelligence – the word conjures up the Hollywood sanctioned image of terminators taking over our world. Most people think of AI as something a bit scary that might occur in the future. But the truth is that we are surrounded by Artificial Intelligence even now! Every time you see an advertisement pop up selling exactly what you want – that's AI! From movie recommendations and Facebook feeds to Virtual PAs like Siri and Alexa – AI is already here and is set to become more and more enmeshed in our daily lives. There is no doubt about the benefits Artificial Intelligence can bring to our lives – it makes things smarter, faster and cheaper – and in areas like healthcare, it can even save lives.

This month we're chatting with Arte Merritt, CEO and Cofounder of Dashbot, a bot analytics platform that enables publishers and developers to increase engagement, acquisition, and monetization. In conversation with Arte, we get the low-down on the future of conversational analytics, how voice-controlled bots like Alexa and Google Home are changing the game, and the surprising stats around people sending scandalous selfies to bots (yes, really). Check out the full conversation below. Give us a quick primer on Dashbot. Dashbot is a bot analytics platform with additional tools to take action on the data.

Now, however, Android owners can finally ask Alexa about package shipping, to watch a show on Netflix, or even to pay their American Express bill from the Amazon shopping app on their Google-powered handsets. According to TechCrunch, who initially reported a Twitter user's discovery of the feature, Alexa should start to roll out to Android OS Amazon shopping app users this week. While Android users can already use voice search in Amazon's shopping app, it makes sense to upgrade that to something more robust like Alexa. It could also likely bring the voice assistant to the attention of even more folks out there on Android. We've reached out to Amazon for confirmation and will update this post when we hear back.

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Finance is something that no person on earth can live without. It is the basic necessity of life, as everybody needs money to eat, travel, and buy things. Although as technology gets smarter so do people. The present financial market is already comprised of humans as well as machines. People are finding more and more ways to default on loans, stealing money from others account, creating a fake credit rating etc. Today, machine learning plays an integral role in many phases of the financial ecosystem.

The world of Banking and Finance is changing more than ever, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) being the front-runner in bringing about a sea-change in the banking industry. Various AI solutions have already been implemented in banking across various areas like core banking, operations efficiency, customer facing services and analytics. With the onset of AI, banking will no longer be just apps, websites or physical branches but a whole new experience. Although, it is only recently that we have witnessed the application of AI, the history of AI goes back to the 1950s where a paper was published by Alan Turing about the possibility of machines with true intelligence. This was only the inception of Artificial Intelligence as a concept but no use case or AI process was implemented until the late 1990s.