After Microsoft announced Microsoft Bot Framework at BUILD and Facebook announced Bots for Messenger, Google is turning Google Now into a chatbot with Google Assistant. Unlike Cortana, Google Assistant suggests topics for users to interact with suggests follow-up topics to continue the conversation. It also keeps a running tally of the conversation, allowing a user to scroll back and continue it from an earlier point in the conversation. Expectedly, Google Assistant will replace Google Now for Android. According to Harry Shum, the Executive Vice President at Microsoft in charge of the new AI and Research Group, Cortana was originally designed to quickly interact with the user, then get out of the way.

In this video, we build our own recommendation system that suggests movies a user would like in 40 lines of Python using the LightFM recommendation library. I start off by talking about why we need recommendation systems, then we dive straight into installing our dependencies and writing our script. Please share this video, like, comment and subscribe! That's what keeps me going.

Siri is about to get a lot smarter thank to Carnegie Mellon researcher Russ Salakhutdinov, who announced today that he is joining Apple to lead the company's artificial intelligence efforts. Excited about joining Apple as a director of AI research in addition to my work at CMU. Apply to work with my teamhttps://t.co/U2hQl2GdhA Although he's not a household name, Russ Salakhutdinov is one of the biggest deep learning figures in academia. His hiring by Apple comes after the company has been criticized for Siri's weak performance compared to rival digital assistants from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Before working at CMU, Salakhutdinov worked at Toronto University and MIT.

Today, the biggest technology players are in a mad dash to develop the smartest conversational interface. These personal assistants are helpful, entertaining and already a powerful connector between people and their digital lives. While they function a little differently, they all source every bit of data they can find to engage in unique, valuable conversations with their owners. The astounding pace of technology guarantees that there will always be a new connector, a new privileged broker that draws humans and the digital realm ever closer together. But this shouldn't be a threat to marketers.

The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated scientific and popular culture for decades. Most fictional works that explore the idea of AI focus on its dangers to humanity, with the premise often involving robots or super-advanced computer interfaces that have developed their own freewill and turned against humanity (a la HAL 9000 from Space Odyssey). But despite fearmongering around AI, scientists have been developing software and tech to make machines smarter than ever. We have already seen AI programs beat humans at complex games, computers that can reproduce classical works of art and robots that can play football (albeit not convincingly). One area where AI brings a lot of opportunity is the marketing industry.

NVIDIA's (NVDA) quarterly revenues have been surging at double-digit rates in the last three quarters and, looking at the guidance for the next quarter, it's clear that the company is expecting the growth rate to continue unabated in the near future. One of the key factors that has added fuel to their engines is NVIDIA's new growth drivers: the data center segment and auto segment. In the most recent quarter, NVIDIA's data center unit reported 151 million in sales, a growth of 109.72% The growth in data center revenues is much higher than other segments, and there are several reasons why this growth can, in fact, continue its breakneck pace for several more quarters. NVIDIA's expertise in the GPU segment has given it a range of must-have products for hyperscale data centers.

A matchmaking service aimed at "sugar daddies" and "sugar babies" is feeling the heat after posting a billboard advertising to undocumented immigrants in Austin, Texas. ArrangementFinders.com, a service that promises to link wealthy older men to young women who are hoping for a financial or other type of arrangement, posted a billboard on Interstate 35 in South Austin reading, "Undocumented immigrant? Before you get deported – get a sugar daddy." Residents are upset about the implication that people would break immigration laws by, presumably, marrying in order to gain citizenship. When asked by ABC affiliate KVUE about the billboard, Kylie Brumley said, ""I think it's really disrespectful to all women and illegal immigrants." Jesse Aguilera said, "To get around getting legalization like that, it's just really offensive." "On a billboard they're encouraging people to commit a federal felony," Thomas Esparza Jr. told Fox 7 Austin. "It's rare that you see a billboard that says, 'Commit a felony.'" Jacob Webster, who was identified as the Chief Marketing Officer for ArrangementFinders.com "I think you're going to have people that are against it, and then you're going to have people that are going to sign up for it," Webster said. ArrangementFinders.com was founded in 2010, and is owned by Avid Life Media, a Toronto-based company that also operates Ashley Madison, the infamous dating website for married people. Cost of membership to ArrangementFinders.com is 79 per month for men, free to women. The two can then meet off-line to determine what kind of "mutually beneficial relationship" they would like to have, according to the website. The site is known for its controversial advertising. In 2014, the company had billboards removed in Chicago and Los Angeles, including one that read, "Because the best job is a b--w job." Webster told Fox 7 that Latinas make up one-third of the women who sign up for ArrangementFinders.com, "How could we speak to this growing demographic for this site in a way where we could get the max effect?" he said. He added that the billboard had been rejected by other locations. "We had a couple approvals, but we got a lot more denials.

An Australian man was acquitted Thursday in the murder of a young woman who fell from his balcony two years ago after the two met through the popular dating app Tinder. What, exactly, caused 26-year-old Warriena Wright to plunge 14 stories is not known, but the encounter between the couple -- much of which was captured on an audio tape -- has prompted the question: Are mobile dating apps safe? The answer is complicated, according to dating experts and behavioral psychologists. "These incidents are very rare," said Sameera Sullivan, a relationship expert and psychologist who founded the matchmaking service, Lasting Connections, in 2012. "There's always going to be bad people out there," said Sullivan.

Apple is going all-in on artificial intelligence (AI). As it continues to work on Siri, its voice-activated digital assistant, a new interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook sheds a bit of light on just how far the company is willing to go to make Siri a central part of your life. Speaking to Nikkei, Cook waxed philosophical about Siri's intended abilities, saying "AI is horizontal" and should reach across all products. He said the technology should be able to do things like help you manage battery life, recommend music to Apple Music subscribers, and tell you where you parked your car. Cook also discussed Apple's incoming Yokohama research and development center, where it intends to focus on machine learning and AI.

On Thursday morning, feminist-leaning dating app Bumble posted a picture to Instagram that read: "For every like this post gets, Bumble will donate a dollar to Planned Parenthood." The post received 28,747 likes by the time the campaign ended at 3pm on Thursday. "This isn't a political post," the caption reads. "Our team is a mixing pot, some of us are Republicans, some are Democrats, some are Independents, and some aren't even from America. But every single one of us knows how important it is for women to have safe and affordable healthcare."