By now, we've grown accustomed to our devices listening to us. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Bixby, Cortana, and every other disembodied virtual taskrabbit has been hearing our commands--and who knows what else--for years. But, with its last two smart hub devices, Amazon has pushed one step beyond the microphone, asking users to install cameras in their homes. Yesterday, with the announcement of the Echo Show, Amazon reaffirmed its plan to have Alexa see you in addition to hear you. It's a small step forward in terms of usability, but a major can of worms when it comes to our security and privacy.

From marketing, IT, and HR to customer experience and even finance, artificial intelligence (AI) seems destined to profoundly impact all aspects of business. While there are certainly some fine examples of AI at work today today--Alexa, Nest, and Amazon.com Wants To Know," we reached out to experts and perused some of our recent AI-related content to provide a better understanding of what might await. Simon Morris, Senior Director, Campaign Marketing, Consumer And SMB, Adobe: A study late last year by Weber Shandwick revealed that 55% of CMOs across five global markets think AI will transform the marketing landscape even more than social media has, and nearly six in 10 believe that companies will need to compete in the AI space to succeed. From my personal perspective, I am incredibly excited about the possibilities AI brings, and there are two areas that particularly excite me.

Speed is of the essence in our modern age of fast-swipe online dating. So much so that the process of swiping, matching, and chatting can feel like a race to to that great (or not so great, depending) finish line we call a date. But a brand new dating app wants people to take things slow -- real slow, in fact -- using the ancient art of conversation to seduce matches. SEE ALSO: Not quite dating but not hooking up either? Appetence, which is free to download on iOS from the iTunes store and claims to be the world's first "slow dating" app, forces users to talk to each other before they can see each other's profile pictures.

Microsoft is finally ready to open its assistant up to developers. The Cortana Skills Kit, which allows developers to integrate their services with the assistant, is now in public preview, Microsoft announced. The news comes just days after Harman Kardon unveiled the Invoke, its Cortana-powered speaker. SEE ALSO: Hey, Siri: How'd you and every other digital assistant get its name? Microsoft first teased the Cortana Skills Kit when it announced the speaker late last year, but hadn't made it widely available to developers.

Google Home owners can now use the smart speaker to issue commands to iDevices smart-home products. This brings online a number smart switches, outlets, and sockets for command and control through the Google Assistant. The company announced yesterday that you'll be able to configure this connection with the company's iDevices Connected app for iPhone and Android. To make this happen, you'll need to enable the iDevices Service inside of the Google Home app, which is also available for both mobile platforms. The iDevices app is the centerpiece of controlling the company's products.

Amazon's Alexa is miles ahead of rivals like Microsoft and Google with its "skills" -- around 10,000 mini-apps that let you use your voice to control your lights or music, order an Uber, learn first aid and more. To help close that gap, Microsoft has finally launched the Cortana Skills Kit in a public preview, allowing developers to build new skills or convert them from Alexa or Microsoft's new Bot Framework. Developers will be able to use the kit to build skills and publish them to a new Cortana channel on its Bot Framework. Right now, the skills will work on Cortana for Windows 10, Android, iOS and the recently announced Cortana-enabled Harman Kardon Invoke speaker. A key piece of Microsoft's Cortana strategy is Echo-like hardware, but it hasn't revealed its own device (yet).

HP and Intel are both working on connected-home devices that run on Microsoft's Cortana platform. Microsoft announced the devices as part of its Build 2017 conference this morning, but didn't provide details about form, function or release window. The gadgets from HP and Intel follow this week's announcement of Invoke (GIF below), the first-ever third-party Cortana device. The connected speaker comes from Harman Kardon and it can "favorite music, manage calendars and activities, set reminders, check traffic, deliver the latest news and much more." The Invoke and other Cortana-run devices will encroach on a hot IoT market currently dominated by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Microsoft has revealed it is betting big on AI - and says half a billion devices are now running its Windows 10 software. It comes as the firm unveiled new tools intended to democratize artificial intelligence by enabling machine smarts to be built into software from smartphone games to factory floors. Improving programs with artificial intelligence that could tap into services in the internet'cloud' and even take advantage of computing power in nearby machines, was part of a vision unveiled as the US technology titan's annual Build Conference opened. Microsoft says a half billion devices are now running Windows 10, its latest operating system. That's up from 400 million disclosed last September, but far short of a goal of 1 billion by 2018. Microsoft has already acknowledged it won't hit 1 billion in time.

Windows 10 has hit a milestone: 500 million devices have installed it, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Wednesday in his keynote opening the company's Build 2017 developer conference. Another number, however, is more troubling: Just a fraction of those devices frequently use Cortana, Microsoft's digital spokesperson for its push into artificial intelligence. That stands in sharp contrast to what Microsoft calls the "intelligent cloud," the next phase in the evolution of the "mobile first, cloud first" mantra that Nadella has talked up since he became CEO in 2014. At Build, Microsoft executives will describe how data used to be pushed from "edge" devices like phones or tablets to a cloud server, analyzed, and then sent back to the user. Now, Microsoft's trying to build in those analysis capabilities as close to those data-generating devices as possible.

Two more hardware manufacturers are lining up behind Microsoft's new Cortana-powered appliances: HP and Intel, indicating that Microsoft is turning to its tried-and-true PC partners to usher Cortana into the living room. Microsoft announced support from both companies at its Build conference in Seattle on Wednesday, though what each company will eventually manufacture isn't known. According to Microsoft, the company signed a partnership with HP to build products, and with Intel to provide reference platforms for Cortana-powered devices. Though an alliance with HP is nothing to scoff at, Intel's support should make the most difference. So far, Cortana competitors like Google Home and Amazon's small ecosystem of Alexa-powered Echo devices are made just by the individual companies themselves.