If you've been itching to talk to your Google Home about current events, travel, and pizza, you're in luck. The voice-activated speaker just added nearly three dozen new services that will expand its knowledge of what happening in your house and the world. Earlier this week, Google Home gained the ability to play Netflix shows through a Chromecast and display pictures stored in the Google Photos app, but these new actions are conversational, meaning you can talk to the specific service to get information. Similar to Amazon's Alexa Skills, if you're looking for a recipe for tonight's dinner, the Food Network can walk you through it. Or if you want to know what's happening in the world, hit up CNBC, The Huffington Post, or The Wall Street Journal.

San Francisco (AFP) - Mark Zuckerberg envisions a software system inspired by the "Iron Man" character Jarvis as a virtual butler managing his household. The Facebook founder's dream is about artificial intelligence, which is slowly but surely creeping into our daily lives, no longer just science fiction. Artificial intelligence or AI is getting a foothold in people's homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker which links to a personal assistant "Alexa" to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Analyst Carolina Milanesi of the research firm Creative Strategies said that "2016 was the year about raising awareness, and exposing consumers to the idea of AI in a more mass market way." Milanesi said it may take time for the technology to fulfill its potential, noting that companies need "a strong hook" to bring large numbers of consumers into this world.

In the sci-fi film Ex Machina, reclusive inventor Nathan Bateman foresees a bleak future, telling the movie's protagonist Caleb that, "One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa." When we don't understand something, we tend to fear it; which is one reason popular movies like Ex Machina and HBO's nail-biting new series Westworld like to imagine futures in which artificial intelligence plots to destroy humanity. Fortunately, AI is far more likely to recommend those titles to your Netflix queue than to result in a dystopian society out of a George Orwell novel. While technologies including Amazon's Alexa have been busy making people's lives outside of the workplace easier, bots were the big office story in 2016, helping companies handle routine tasks such as managing support tickets and streamlining workflows. In the coming years, machine learning will take on more of the non-routine work as well, ushering in the new era of artificial intelligence--one that looks to be far brighter than the future Hollywood typically envisions.

PayPal fights fraud with machine learning consuming more than 1.1 petabytes of data for 169 million customer accounts at any given moment. Airbnb uses Aerosolve Machine Learning package to help owners set a price for rental based on features of home, time of year, demand etc. Amazon's recommendation engine is one example where machine learning drives a lot of economic value Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, Google Prediction APIs, Amazon ML and IBM Watson Developer Services come with ready made algorithms that allow businesses to extract patterns from data, predict trends, identify language translations, understand social media sentiments, just to name a few. Apple Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft Cortana-like digital personal assistants are making use of Machine Learning for speech recognition to become smarter & creative therefore knowing more about you and your needs. By connecting the sensors and systems in each of their elevators to the cloud, ThyssenKrupp, a Garman Elevator Manufacturer, has been able to move beyond preventative maintenance to offer predictive and preemptive services, a service that has not been possible before in the elevator industry. Today after 56 years even the Barbie doll is going to become interactive and internet connected, that can talk to children and respond to their questions.

With its large icons and stripped back interface, Android Auto is a simpler, safer way to access music and maps in your car. It's also designed for voice, and finally Google has enabled "Okay Google" commands for everyone. That means you don't have to touch the screen, or your phone, to start speaking with Google's assistant. The feature might sound small, but for drivers this could be a revelatory addition. Whether you want to switch playlists, check the weather, or settle an argument (how old is Obama again?) you can do this without taking your hands off the steering wheel.

San Francisco: Mark Zuckerberg envisions a software system inspired by the "Iron Man" character Jarvis as a virtual butler managing his household. The Facebook founder's dream is about artificial intelligence, which is slowly but surely creeping into our daily lives, no longer just science fiction. Artificial intelligence or AI is getting a foothold in people's homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker which links to a personal assistant "Alexa" to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs. Analyst Carolina Milanesi of the research firm Creative Strategies said that "2016 was the year about raising awareness, and exposing consumers to the idea of AI in a more mass market way." Milanesi said it may take time for the technology to fulfill its potential, noting that companies need "a strong hook" to bring large numbers of consumers into this world.

The startup 30SecondsToFly, based in New York City and Bangkok, is aiming to use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automate and improve the travel processes currently performed by corporate travel agents. "We aim at becoming the scalable travel management company of the future," says Riccardo Vittoria, co-founder of 30SecondsToFly in an interview, saying his is among a handful of the trip tech enterprises that are pioneering a new generation of business travel. Every year companies around the world spend more than $1 trillion US on corporate trips. Even though this market is enormous, it is still dominated by a few giant travel management companies whose business model hasn't changed in more than half a century. Now this market is under attack.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' These were all prime fields of growth and innovation in 2016 and we can expect these trends to continue into next year and probably far beyond. In truth 2017 is likely to be the year when many of these technologies hit the mainstream – rather than something only those companies with the largest corporate budgets and most tech-friendly executive teams. A strong growth in the availability of technology delivered "as-a-service" through cloud platforms, as well as hardware improvements in the form of affordable sensor and display technologies, should help to bring into reality the "democratization" of data-driven enterprise which has become fashionable to talk about this year. So here is a run-through of my key predictions for the next year. Organizations wanting to stay ahead of the curve will want to ensure they are exploring all of the opportunities indicated by these trends.

Tech giants are hungry for artificial intelligence. In a race to create the best AI solutions in an increasingly hot sector, U.S. tech behemoths like Alphabet's Google and iPhone maker Apple have been quietly snapping up dozens of artificial intelligence companies over the last five years, according to a recent report from analysis firm CB Insights. The firm's data sheds new light on a trend that's been evolving for years. Nearly 140 private companies working to advance AI technology have been acquired since 2011, including 40 buyouts just this year, CB noted. From Google's Assistant to Apple's Siri; Microsoft's Cortana to Facebook chatbots, tech companies appear to be locked in a fierce competition to create autonomous technology that can understand users' needs, and provide information quickly and reliably, CB Insights noted.

More than 30 startups and companies like Domino's Pizza, Food Network, and Product Hunt launched new actions for Google Home today. Actions, like Amazon Alexa skills, give a user control and command of Google Assistant. This marks the largest rollout of actions since Google Home went on sale in October and since the Google Assistant platform to make commands for Google Home launched last week. There are currently 35 third-party conversation actions you can use on Google Home, 32 of which were released today. "Conversation Actions from early access partners will begin rolling out over the coming weeks -- starting today. We're excited to see what developers build!,"