Cortana for Android and iOS is looking better than ever after a facelift in December. Now with the overhaul finished, Microsoft has another plan for the Android edition of Cortana. MSPowerUser recently spotted the ability to add Cortana to an Android phone's lock screen in the testing version of Cortana (beta) on Android--that's right, there's a beta for the beta. Users in the testing program are seeing a pop-up window inside the Cortana app that asks them if they want to enable Cortana on the lock screen. Once approved, users see a Cortana icon on the lock screen and are able to swipe it to get access to Microsoft's voice assistant without unlocking the phone. It's not clear if Cortana replaces the Google Now microphone in the lower left corner of the lock screen or adds another icon to it.

If arranging meetings have become a bothersome chore, Mimetic.ai's Evie could be just the thing. Evie, a virtual personal assistant, is capable of talking to the other party and scheduling the right meeting time convenient for both parties without your direct intervention. I found it ridiculously easy to use. After signing up on the Singapore-based firm's website, I was prompted to connect my calendar, either Google's or Office365, thereafter which I simply selected the time slots where I'd be available for meetings.

Is that an AI in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? The consumerization of IT describes the reversal of traditional enterprise technology adoption. What was once a centralized top-down process where the IT department had sole control over what technology was used in the enterprise, we're now far more likely to see the opposite, a decentralized bottom-up process where individual employees influence what technology is used due to the choices they make as consumers. After all, there are far more consumers than there are enterprise employees. Technology companies tend to pursue success in the general marketplace rather than struggle to find adoption in the enterprise (which becomes far easier once consumers have decided to love you and your products).

It's easy to imagine a future in which your virtual personal assistant is everywhere you are. Before long, Alexa, Siri, Google, and others like them will be woven into the fabric of your home, ready to fulfill your every need whim. Forgot to close the garage door? Want to order your post-marathon double cheeseburger and fries before even crossing the finish line? This isn't as outlandish as it might sound.

In an ordinary conference room in this city of start-ups, a group of engineers sat down to order pizza in an entirely new way. "Get me a pizza from Pizz'a Chicago near my office," one of the engineers said into his smartphone. It was their first real test of Viv, the artificial-intelligence technology that the team had been quietly building for more than a year. Everyone was a little nervous. Then, a text from Viv piped up: "Would you like toppings with that?"

There comes a point in every adult's life when one stops and thinks: I could really use a personal assistant. The Washington Post's budget, however, doesn't stretch to provide each reporter with a personal aide. But thanks to the magic of technology, I have regular access to five digital assistants: Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Google Now and an email-based scheduling assistant called Amy. It should be a breeze for anyone trying to get themselves organized as part of a New Year's resolution. But, if I'm perfectly frank, I'm really no closer to getting anything done.

Apple's digital assistant gets an upgrade in the newest version of iOS. Users will no longer have to press a button to summon Siri, instead they can set their smartphones to constantly listen to their conversations -- just waiting for an opportunity to give directions or tell a joke. But privacy advocates worry that this type of technology could become a hazard that users aren't prepared for. "When you enter the realm of always-on devices, there are real privacy implications that need to be addressed," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "Even if the user of the device consents, it doesn't necessarily mean other people who are there consent to the routine recording of everything they might say."

The problem with using the human voice to control computers is well known and well documented: it doesn't always work. You can find yourself adopting the aggressive tone of a belligerent tourist in a foreign land while digital assistants employ a range of apologetic responses ("I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that", "I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question"). We throw our arms up and complain about their shortcomings. Plenty of us have tried them, plenty of us have dismissed them as a waste of time. We tend not to hear about them doing the job perfectly well, because few people write impassioned tweets or blog posts about things that work flawlessly.

Siri: Okay, from now on I'll call you "an ambulance." Apple fixed this error shortly after its virtual assistant was first released in 2011. But a new contest shows that computers still lack the common sense required to avoid such embarrassing mix-ups. The results of the contest were presented at an academic conference in New York this week, and they provide some measure of how much work needs to be done to make computers truly intelligent. The Winograd Schema Challenge asks computers to make sense of sentences that are ambiguous but usually simple for humans to parse.

NOW your phone knows you better than ever. The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system learns what your voice sounds like, and can identify you when you speak to Siri, ignoring other voices that try to butt in. Siri, the intelligent personal assistant, is not the only one who knows your voice. As learning software improves, voice-identification systems have started to creep into everyday life, from smartphones to police stations to bank call centres. More are probably on the way.