Netflix has spent years building and improving its recommendation engine, and even sponsored a $1 million contest to improve its algorithm. But now anyone can download and tinker with this kind of software, thanks to a new open source project. "We wanted to build fast," says Shelby.tv CEO Reece Pacheco. "We were impressed with the product and the team [Mortar Data] had built." The company also wanted the freedom to build its own recommendation engine in the future.

'Hello, this is a Tinder robot. Would you like to meet for a romantic candlelit date?' Robots clean our floors, mow our lawns and (at least in Japan) check you into hotel rooms and carry your luggage. So why not turn over that pesky problem of setting up a date to a bot? Vancouver developer and Tinder user Justin Long did just that, creating software that puts the popular dating app Tinder on auto pilot. Tired of the time he spent swiping right and left to say yes or no on the popular app, Long combined facial recognition and artificial intelligence to let his bot – dubbed Tinderbox – prescreen potential dating partners.

Video game fans are familiar with the name Cortana. Now, Microsoft is hoping iOS and Android phone owners in search of a personal assistant app will get to know her, too. Microsoft's voice-enabled assistant Cortana -- named after the artificial intelligence featured in the Xbox franchise Halo -- launched for Apple and Android smartphones, giving users a way to quickly look up information or set reminders with simple voice commands. At times, Cortana is useful. But it appears clear it works best on its native home on a Windows device.

In the consumer universe, artificial intelligence is best known as a nice-to-have if stealthy feature that can suggest movies or book rides. But AI's greater worth could well be in the money-making enterprise arena, where sales, service and marketing initiatives stand to be streamlined by the data-crunching deductive power of machine learning. That's certainly the bet customer relationship management giant Salesforce is making by unveiling Einstein, the no-brainer name given to a suite of advanced AI capabilities. With Einstein, salespeople can focus on leads that statistically show the most promise of becoming clients, and customer service reps may be better prepared to answer a rainbow of consumer queries. "The strongest aspect of Einstein is that it is deeply embedded in the platform, it's just working automatically," says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose company officially rolled out the base product Sunday.

USA TODAY tech reporter Mike Snider looks into Microsoft's $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn and how it might help the company. A user demonstrates the look and feel of Windows 10 operating system for smartphones and at the Microsoft stall at the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany. SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft has made yet another acquisition designed to retool the former software king into an enterprise solutions leader. The Redmond, Wash-based company announced Monday that it was buying virtual-assistant start-up Genee for an undisclosed sum, according to blog posts by Microsoft and Genee executives. The move comes on the heels of Microsoft's $26 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn, a bold chess move by CEO Satya Nadella as he aims to make his company's cloud-based Office 365 platform ubiquitous in the business environment.

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 03: The Apple logo is displayed on the back of an iPhone on August 3, 2016 in London, England. Apple is continuing to make inroads into artificial intelligence. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech behemoth bought Turi, a machine learning platform, for $200 million, according to sources at GeekWire. Apple would not confirm the move to USA TODAY, but said the company buys smaller technology companies "from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The Cupertino-based tech behomouth appears to be coming to terms with slumping demand for the iPhone by expanding into other markets, including artificial intelligence.

On the eve of the Apple WWDC conference, some of the leading names in tech say bots may soon replace the apps we know and love. Ari Roisman, CEO and cofounder of Glide, a video-messaging app that hopes to capitalize on the coming transition away from texting and towards a voice-and-video interaction future. SAN FRANCISCO - Typing is so ... 20th century. And soon texting is likely to join it in that same communication dustbin. That's a view Ari Roisman, CEO and cofounder of video messaging app Glide, shares with some of the titans of tech ranging from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Apple is set to unveil a new and improved Siri, the personal digital assistant, and widen its reach, to Mac computers and third-party apps. Philips Hue is now compatible with Apple Home Kit, meaning you can use Siri to control your lights. LOS ANGELES -- Siri is expected to expand beyond the iPhone and iPad to third-party apps and Macs, a move designed to hike the usefulness and IQ of Apple's personal digital assistant. Analysts who cover Apple predict an expanded role for Siri will be one highlight of Apple's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in San Francisco. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Google is showing off a new smart-home speaker and a chat service called Allo during its annual conference that serves as a launching pad for its latest products and innovations. SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple is planning to make Siri smarter by linking it to the vast menu of iOS apps and eventually will deploy the digital assistant on a standalone device similar to Amazon's best-selling Echo, according to a published report. The news, reported Tuesday by tech media site The Information, answers an oft-asked question about why the iPhone-maker seems to be sitting on the sidelines as a growing number of companies, from Google to Siri-offshoot Viv, make big announcements about the coming age of voice-activated machine learning. Citing unnamed sources, the article said Apple was preparing to release a software developer kit, or SDK, that would allow app-makers to allow their products to integrate with Siri. Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is scheduled for June 13 in San Francisco.

Developers gathered at the Microsoft BUILD developers conference in San Francisco to hear about the latest and greatest from Microsoft. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, speaks at the keynote ceremony of the Microsoft Build Developers conference. SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off the company's Build developers conference with a vision of the future filled with chatbots, machine learning and artificial intelligence. "Bots are the new apps," said Nadella during a nearly three-hour keynote here that sketched a vision for the way humans will interact with machines. That's the world you're going to get to see in the years to come."