With the aim to bolster its virtual personal assistants to deliver an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based ecosystem across its devices and services, Samsung Electronics has acquired Viv Labs, an AI start-up. Viv was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham who were part of the original virtual assistant Siri team that Apple bought in 2010. Viv has developed a unique, open AI platform that gives third-party developers the power to use and build conversational assistants and integrate a natural language-based interface into renowned applications and services, Samsung said in a statement on friday. "Unlike other existing AI-based services, Viv has a sophisticated natural language understanding, machine learning capabilities and strategic partnerships that will enrich a broader service ecosystem," said Injong Rhee, Chief Technical Officer of the Mobile Communications business at Samsung Electronics. "Viv was built with both consumers and developers in mind. This dual focus is also what attracted us to Viv as an ideal candidate to integrate with Samsung home appliances, wearables and more," Rhee added.

But cars more fully integrated into the so-called internet of things -- everyday devices able both to send and receive data -- could become more of a seamless piece of the daily digital fabric of people's lives. Even now, Amazon's voice-activated home assistant, Alexa, can order up an Uber ride or find out how much gas is in a car's tank while the driver is still in the house. BMW announced this month that its Connected services would enable Alexa owners to lock the car doors and check car battery levels from the comfort of their sofas. Ford Motor plans to introduce Alexa integration into vehicles, including the Escape and Fusion, before the end of this year, said James A. Buczkowski, who oversees advanced engineering at Ford. "Your spouse could add things to the shopping list, which your car would alert you to," Mr. Buczkowski said.

If you have and you want to learn the science behind them, you have come to the right place. In this course, I will show you how these companies use Recommender systems or Machine Learning to influence your purchasing decisions. This course is timely and extremely relevant now as almost all major service-oriented companies function on recommender systems. You will understand how these systems work and learn how to build and use your own recommender systems, just like these big companies do. Learn how to build the recommender systems that are being used by almost every big service-oriented company in today's world with this introductory course for beginners.

You know that bots are coming of age when Google hires comic writers from satirical site The Onion and scriptwriters from Pixar and they're being launched on major learning platforms such as Duolingo. They know that real conversations between humans and machines need to cope with light conversation idle talk and humour. The banter has to get better if we are to use voice or text activated bots regularly. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all in the chatbot game and dozens of startups are creating bots - MykAi (banking), GoButler (personal assistant), GoodService (Concierge). Conversational interfaces and conversational commerce have arrived and, as Chris Messina, Uber's'experience' guy says'chat is the new black'. Messaging services are among the most popular services online and young people have flocked to them, away from the more staid posting.

Every year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sets himself an ambitious goal and this year it is to create a personal home AI assistant. Using Facebook, he asked his followers who should lend their voice for his artificial home assistant, and some of their responses were hilarious. At the beginning of the year, Mark Zuckerberg announced his interest in coding his own assistant to help him around the house and assist with his work. His assistant may have alikeness to'Jarvis' from Iron Man. Jarvis helps Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) manage his business, as well as offering any info he needs and fight crime. Lets hope Mark Zuckerberg omits fighting crime from his assistant and replaces it with a relentless need to squash bugs from code.

When I see my parents use computers, it's clear that there's something that gets lost in the communication between computer and person. I think often that a big part of this is a lack of understanding of bugs/exceptions. In a way, there is a lack of fault tolerance in how my parents interact with their computers. When an app crashes, an email doesn't send, or a screen freezes, there's a sense of bewilderment, even incredulity. But when you grow up natively with computers, your fault tolerance is higher and you learn to navigate the bugs that inevitably arise because you understand at an almost innate level how they work.

Nearly three years ago, the team behind X.ai began researching and developing a smart personal assistant to help us schedule meetings and make sense of our calendars. Today, the company's dream is being realized as it moves out of beta and launches a professional version of its A.I.-powered assistant to the world. For 39 per month, you can schedule an unlimited number of meetings each month, while having access to VIP contacts and personalized signatures. If you're not familiar with X.ai, its main products are two "assistants" named Amy and Andrew that you communicate with through email. There's no app that needs to be downloaded -- you just include a special email address in all of your correspondence, asking the virtual assistant to find time on your calendar to set up a meeting with whomever you want. The company has a free plan that is capped at five meetings per month.

"Let me at least pull the hosts who had contact with him," Elsie asks Bernard.

Samsung, announced that it has agreed to acquire Viv Labs, the intelligent interface to everything. Viv has developed a unique, open artificial intelligence (AI) platform that gives third-party developers the power to use and build conversational assistants and integrate a natural language-based interface into renowned applications and services. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. The deal showcases Samsung's commitment to virtual personal assistants and is part of the company's broader vision to deliver an AI-based open ecosystem across all of its devices and services. With Viv, Samsung will be able to unlock and offer new service experiences for its customers, including one that simplifies user interfaces, understands the context of the user and offers the user the most appropriate and convenient suggestions and recommendations.

Apple had a significant head start over Google when buying Siri, but Apple has fallen way behind in the AI race as far as usability. Walt's column this week argues that Siri seems dumb, and might be a major problem for Apple in the coming tech war. This week on Ctrl-Walt-Delete, Walt and Nilay discuss Apple's artificial intelligence strategy and how it's just not up to speed with what customers are doing today. We love your feedback on the topics of the show and suggestions on how to make our show better and more fun -- you can tweet at Walt at @waltmossberg and Nilay at @reckless. And of course, we'd love it if you subscribed in iTunes (here's the direct RSS feed, if you like), along with The Verge's other great podcasts like What's Tech, and The Vergecast.