Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it would make its digital assistant available on Apple's iPhone, making a play for the higher end of the smartphone market and challenging Apple's Siri feature on its own devices. Google's AI raises the bar for rivals Apple, Amazon

By the year 2021, there will be more AI-powered digital assistants installed on devices than there are people in the world, according to new research from Ovum. The install base will be higher than 7.5 billion by that time, which is greater that the planet's population as recorded by the US Census Bureau on May 1, 2017. Google Assistant will be the most installed assistant, accounting for 23.3% of the market, the report said. The next most popular assistant will be Samsung Bixby, with 14.5% market share. SEE: Why robots and AI won't replace most jobs any time soon "Ultimately, a digital assistant is just another user interface. It will only be as good as the ecosystem of devices and services that it is compatible with. Partnerships between tech giants and local service providers will therefore be key differentiators," said Ronan de Renesse, practice leader for Ovum's Consumer Technology team and author of the report, in the release.

My husband and I have a running joke where we have our Amazon Echo "compete" with our iPhones to see who does a better (i.e., more human-like) job of interacting with us. While there's no clear winner, Siri seems to have the edge for casual conversation, but Alexa can sing. I've noticed something else, too. We don't usually thank Siri or Alexa the way we would a clerk at a supermarket or an employee at an information kiosk, even though they're providing us with identical services. They don't care if we thank them, because they don't have feelings.

During his keynote address, CEO Satya Nadella (pictured above) revealed that the Windows 10 operating system, launched nearly two years ago, is now installed on 500 million devices around the world. Microsoft's Office 365 suite has also reached a milestone: more than 100 million monthly commercial active users. Other announcements made yesterday included the launch of a public preview of the Cortana Skills Kit, which lets developers create bots using Microsoft's intelligent digital assistant, and the debut of Azure IoT Edge, which helps developers bring machine learning and other advanced capabilities to other devices on the Internet of Things. Microsoft's vision of artificial intelligence is to make those capabilities "available to everyone, from developers and data scientists to tech enthusiasts and students," Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's AI and research group, said yesterday in a blog post. Shum said Microsoft now offers 29 different cognitive services to developers, making it possible for them to incorporate AI capabilities in new apps "with just a few lines of code."

Conversations with Siri have almost become a pastime as people find new ways to garner funny responses from the iPhone personal assistant. A new study indicates that time spent chilling with your phone, or other human-like gadgets like Amazon's Alexa, could actually hinder your IRL relationships. Those who are lonely typically spend time with real people as a way to feel better. However, researchers say that devices mimicking realistic personal responses are now taking the place of, well, their actual human counterparts. "Generally, when people feel socially excluded, they seek out other ways of compensating, like exaggerating their number of Facebook friends or engaging in prosocial behaviors to seek out interaction with other people," says Jenny Olson, study co-author and marketing professor at the University of Kansas, in a statement.

Richard Adler knows a few things about the uneasy relationship between older adults and technology. It's something that Adler, a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., has been studying for more than 25 years. One thing, in particular, has struck him. "The truth is that a lot of older adults are technophobes," he said. "They tend to be classically late adopters of almost any technology."

As voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri get more popular, a new study found what humans think about the technology -- and it sounds like the 2013 movie "Her." The study found people who use voice assistants regularly wish it were human, while others admitted to sexually fantasizing about their virtual assistant. The study, which focuses on voice technology implications for brands, was conducted by J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group London, a platform for research and analytics, and the media agency Mindshare Futures. More than 30,000 respondents in the U.K. took part in a two-week self-ethnography project from January - March 2017, jotting down their behaviors and attitudes related to voice technology. Researchers then analyzed two focus groups of 12 of the thousands of participants.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham says Google Home is improved but is still a work in progress with some gaping holes. LOS ANGELES -- Typing is so yesterday. Why write it when you can say it? This week we turned our attention to a different way of talking -- to our phones and home speakers. And if Google's any guide, that will be the story (digitally synthesized in a computer's best dulcet tones) for the next months and probably, years.

As expected, the opening keynote of Google's I/O 2017 developer conference was a doozy. For two and a half hours, CEO Sundar Pichai and a handful of execs rattled off a staggering list of futuristic features and products: A camera that understands what it sees! AI tools a high-schooler can use to help detect cancer! To watch the address was to feel like the future had just arrived, all at once, right before your eyes. Then you go down the list of actual new things, the stuff you can try right now.

Artificial Intelligence Set to Transform Insurance Industry but Integration Challenges Remain, According to Accenture Report Insurers are investing in AI technology to enhance the customer experience, empower their own people NEW YORK; Apr. 19, 2017 – Insurance executives believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly transform their industry in the next three years, with insurers investing in AI to empower agents, brokers and employees to enhance the customer experience with automated personalized services, faster claims handling and individual risk-based underwriting processes, according to Accenture's Technology Vision for Insurance 2017. At the same time, however, the report found that insurers face challenges integrating AI into their existing technology, citing issues such as data quality, privacy and infrastructure compatibility. Titled "Technology for People," the report is based on the insights of a technology advisory board, interviews with industry technologists and a survey of more than 550 insurance executives across 31 countries. According to the report, three-quarters (75 percent) of insurance executives believe that AI will either significantly alter or completely transform the overall insurance industry in the next three years. One-third (32 percent) believe that their own company will be "completely transformed" by AI within that timeframe, and an additional 39 percent believe that AI will "significantly change" their company.