Slated to hold its developer conference this week, Google is keeping up with the competition and bringing its artificial intelligence assistant to the iPhone, according to news reports. First reported by Android Police and confirmed by Bloomberg, Google is slated to bring its Assistant voice-powered assistant to the iPhone, as well as the company's existing Photos app and GE home appliances. Google I/O, where the company is expected to make the announcements, starts May 17. The Assistant is slated to be available in the App Store. Apple, which has its own virtual assistant, Siri, has been tight about allowing competing assistants on to its devices, but it has opened up the gates in recent months.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham says Google Home is improved but is still a work in progress with some gaping holes. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham says Google Home is improved but is still a work in progress with some gaping holes.

Google's voice-controlled Assistant has only been available on Android and Home so far, but it might just spread its wings in the very near future. To start, Bloomberg tipsters claim that Google will use its I/O developer conference to launch Assistant on iOS as a free app. It wouldn't have the deep integration that comes with Android, but you could use it to access content available in YouTube and other Google apps. The app would only be available in the US at first, but you might not mind so much when the same sources also hint that Assistant will also provide a boost to Google Photos and appliances. Reportedly, Photos will use Assistant to help you create coffee table books from your image library.

NEW YORK--You've been able to ask Amazon's Alexa to help you search for movies and TV shows and deliver other Alexa "skills" through your television set. But only if you connected Amazon's Fire TV external streaming media player or Fire TV Stick to the TV. On Tuesday, Amazon begins taking preorders on Element Electronics Ultra HD 4K smart TVs, the first televisions with the Fire TV Edition built in. Amazon had announced way back during the CES industry confab in January that TVs with the company's Fire TV platform would be coming later in the year. With the supplied voice remote control, you can summon Alexa and bark out various commands: to have Alexa change channels, access more than 300,000 TV episodes and movies from Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO NOW, Showtime, Hulu, Sling TV and other content providers. You can also tap into what Amazon says are 15,000 channels, apps and Alexa skills.

The company best known for its search engine wasn't kidding around: It made hardware the centerpiece of its Google I/O developers conference here and later poached Amazon executive David Foster, who ran the lab responsible for Amazon's Kindle tablet and Echo smart speaker, to head hardware product development. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has referred to hardware as "our next big bet." A year later, Google has discovered that hardware can be, well, hard. As Google gets ready to lay out its vision at this year's I/O Wednesday, it's still making that hardware bet pay off. Pixel phones are in short supply and relatively few have sold.

It used to be that you bought a cheap TV from budget brands and got pure garbage for what you paid for, but that's not so anymore. Case in point: Westinghouse and Element's new 4K Amazon Fire Edition TVs, the first smart TVs to include Alexa voice control. They start at $449 for a 43-inch and climb up to $889 for a 65-inch 4K set, but man are they anything but junk. SEE ALSO: Thanks to Amazon, it's time to kill your landline I was extremely reluctant to take a look at Westinghouse and Element's Amazon Fire Edition 4K TVs primarily because I didn't even know these two budget tech brands still existed. Still, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Keeping up with all the news about new and improved chatbots is becoming close to impossible, and AI is still not there to summarize it all for us. Recent developments include Amazon bringing out in quick succession the Echo Look and the Echo Show, aiming to improve further its commanding 70% market share (for more on this, see below). Google showed off its AI prowess and raised the stakes by allowing up to six different voices to control Google Home and Microsoft teamed up with Harman Kardon to produce a voice-activated speaker featuring Cortana. But the rush to the new voice frontier is not limited to the battle for the smart home and established enterprises are on the voice wagon in full force. At a recent fintech conference, Bank of America executives talked about Erica, an AI assistant it will introduce later this year, allowing consumers using bank's mobile app to chat via voice or text message.

Japan's obsessed with automation -- not because it's novel, but because there just aren't enough people. More small and medium-sized companies are buying robots to make up for a labour shortfall, reports Reuters, and robot manufacturers are seeing more orders coming in. SEE ALSO: The inevitable robot takeover is here, and it's starting at the mall The shortfall is due to a huge labour crunch in the country -- companies with staff ranging from 100 to 499 workers advertised to fill 1.1 million new positions last year, according to data from Japan's Labour Ministry. To meet that shortfall, companies are investing more to increase efficiency, according to officials. A Bank of Japan survey found that mid-sized companies are planning to boost investment in capital by 17.5 percent, though it is unclear how much will be spent on automation.

The HTC U11, the successor to the HTC 10, has officially been announced. The 5.5-inch flagship Android smartphone features Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, a squeezable metal frame and a camera that has a DxOMark rating of 90. HTC officially unveiled its flagship smartphone for 2017 during a special press event in Taipei, Taiwan. The HTC U11 comes with a 5.5-inch Quad HD Super LCD 5 display layered with Gorilla Glass 5. Its body comes with what the company calls a "liquid glass" design that's been refined from the HTC U Ultra and the HTC U Play. Like the front panel, the back is also covered with the Gorilla Glass 5.

A new rumor is circulating that the Google Assistant, Google's own voice assistant, will be heading to Apple's iPhones. It is currently believed that Google will announce its plans during its I/O conference this week. Google will announce Google Assistant for Apple's iOS devices as a standalone app, a "trusted source" told Android Police. The app could be announced at Google's I/O conference which takes place in the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California from May 17 to May 19. Android Police's report states that Google Assistant on iOS will blend the "chat" style functionality that's currently available on Google's smart messaging app, Allo, and the voice-controlled version of the Assistant that's on Android Nougat smartphones.