For all of Alexa's many skills, one major thing Amazon's voice assistant is currently missing is the ability to distinguish who is actually speaking to it. According to a new report from Time magazine, however, the online retail giant is currently working to make that a reality. As Time's sources inside Amazon explained, the feature would use a "voice print" to verify each speaker's identity and primary account holders could set Alexa to require their voice print for specific commands. That means that the person with the credit card tied to the account could set their Echo to require their voice for purchases and restocking the fridge. The Voice ID feature, which has reportedly been in development since 2015, could also help ease some of those Alexa headaches and accidental shopping sprees.

Task-oriented dialog systems have been applied in various tasks, such as automated personal assistants, customer service providers and tutors. These systems work well when users have clear and explicit intentions that are well-aligned to the systems' capabilities. However, they fail if users intentions are not explicit. To address this shortcoming, we propose a framework to interleave non-task content (i.e. everyday social conversation) into task conversations. When the task content fails, the system can still keep the user engaged with the non-task content. We trained a policy using reinforcement learning algorithms to promote long-turn conversation coherence and consistency, so that the system can have smooth transitions between task and non-task content. To test the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we developed a movie promotion dialog system. Experiments with human users indicate that a system that interleaves social and task content achieves a better task success rate and is also rated as more engaging compared to a pure task-oriented system.

Alexa has always been able to hear your voice but it might be able to actually recognize it soon. Amazon is developing technology for the Echo lineup of home assistant devices that would allow it to recognize the voices of individual users, according to Time. As Time notes, this feature is expected to be applied for general use and security applications. For instance, Alexa could require purchases to need a specific user's voice in order to fully process orders. While Amazon has finished developing much of the technology for voice ID, secondary issues like privacy concerns have delayed the feature rollout, which does not yet have a definite release date.

The past decade has witnessed tremendous influx of technology across all aspects of business operations. Organizations are increasingly turning to automation, artificial intelligence and robotics to bring about a transformation in their revenue generation capability, reduction in costs and increase in efficiency. Indian banking leaders like ICICI and HDFC have piloted using humanoids/robots to bring about operational efficiency by intelligently automating many of the backend processes and customer facing areas. On a similar note, global banks like Mizuho and Sberbank use virtual assistants to enhance customer experience. Technological advances are increasingly being viewed as game changers in the ever evolving business landscape.

Someone made a lot of new friends over the holidays. Her name is Alexa, and along with her acquaintances (perhaps frenemies?) Cortana and Siri, she's about to become as much a part of the daily life of American households as Alfred the butler is at Wayne Manor. Except that Alfred, for all his talents, can't tell Batman exactly what time the cable repairman will arrive this afternoon, or the current balance in his bank account (not that billionaire Bruce Wayne would care). The implications of 2017, the year virtual assistants really arrived, will be immense for business.

Conversational AI is pushing deeper into enterprise with Workfit, a new startup promising to make conference call follow-ups and mid-meeting CRM updates as easy as playing a song or checking the weather on Google Home or Amazon Echo. Battery Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Salesforce Ventures and a number of angels joined together to finance a $5.5 million seed investment in the startup. Workfit's announcement is underscored by a general uptick in activity around conversational AI for enterprise. Amazon's Alexa, perhaps the most enterprise-friendly of the popular conversational tools available today, boasts integrations with companies like Hipchat and Sisense for both team collaboration and data recall. Of course, the reality is that most meetings are not limited to a single conference room and even fewer have an Echo listening in.

As long as you don't mind having an always-on microphone with a direct connection to Google, the company's smart speaker, Google Home, is a fantastic little device. Google seems to realize that, and right now at Best Buy and the Google Store you can get a free Chromecast ($35) or Chromecast Audio ($30) with the purchase of a Google Home. The smart speaker is offered at its regular price of $129. To take advantage of the deal you must add the Chromecast to your cart manually before checkout. The Chromecast Ultra is not available as part of this sale.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. Our picks and opinions are independent from any business incentives. Smart home tech is the hot new thing, but it can be pretty overwhelming if you're just getting your feet wet. For newbies, it makes sense to start with something simple, and it doesn't get any simpler than the humble smart plug. These cheap, compact devices plug into traditional wall sockets, upgrading them with remote control, scheduling, and power usage monitoring via smartphone apps.

The topic of artificial intelligence is everyone's lips lately. Just Google the term and you'll see a plethora of articles and information on the subject, generating daily -- and not just from academic journals, but in mainstream media and pop culture. We talk about artificial intelligence quite a bit on our own blog, so it's a good idea to brush up on some of the vocabulary you'll be hearing a lot more about as AI becomes more ubiquitous in our lives. Check out our handy glossary and then test yourself with our fun quiz. Or more simply, having machines "think like a human."

Amazon is working to make its Alexa a better listener. The Seattle-based technology giant has been developing a feature that would allow the voice assistant that powers its Echo line of speakers to distinguish between individual users based on their voices, according to people familiar with Amazon's Alexa strategy. The sources declined to be identified by name because they are not authorized to talk about the company's future product plans. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Alexa, like Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, can interpret and respond to voice commands such as "How's the weather?" or "What movies are playing tonight?"