Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it.Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too. By measuring biometrics in sports, data can help measure how an athlete's playing time impacts injury likelihood.

Cognitive computing is rapidly infusing every aspect of our lives. As 2017 approaches, the cognitive revolution--riding on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science -- is coming home to roost more rapidly than many realize. Here are my predictions for the many ways in which you may encounter cognitive technology. Most e-commerce applications now include in-line chatbots that pop out automatically and/or at your request to answer your questions, recommend products for you to purchase, and otherwise make your customer experience more seamless and satisfying. Behind the natural-language conversational interface are cognitive algorithms that are built and tuned by data scientists through real-world experiments, A/B tests, machine learning, and predictive analytics assets in line to merchants' applications.

Intel and Microsoft are working on technology allowing you to shout out commands to Cortana or activate a Windows 10 PC from sleep mode without being all that close to it. The chipmaker is working with Microsoft to add "far-field speech recognition" technology, where one can shout out Cortana commands to a Windows PC from longer distances. "Soon, you'll be able to speak to your PC from a distance and access all of your information on the device and in the cloud," Navin Shenoy is senior vice president and general manager for the Client Computing Group for Intel, said in a blog entry this week. Also, users will also be able to use Cortana to start a PC from standby. Users will have to say, "Hey Cortana."

Microsoft's slow advance into the mobile territory held by rivals Apple and Google continues this week with updates and expanded availability of a key mobile application that runs on the opposition's platforms. As iOS and Android circle the wagons to make sure that no other OS platforms can become established in the mobile space, Microsoft is playing a slightly longer game with a different target. Although Windows 10 Mobile is a great environment (and one that I personally enjoy) it does not have the market share or volume of mobile users that are needed to be self-sustaining. Which is why Microsoft is not only focusing on cloud-based services, but also ensuring they are usable on both iOS and Android as well as Windows 10. A quick glance at the app stores shows the prominence of Outlook, the utility of Outlook365, and the quiet magic of OneNote all riding high.

With marketing becoming taking a central role in many companies, CMOs are forced to think more strategic. While they wade through the thousands of martech and adtech software out there, they must also align with the board and line of business heads to ensure that their marketing strategies meet corporate goals. It has ushered a new interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help CMOs succeed. Such needs as created a frenzy among vendors to build the ultimate AI. Amazon, for example, recently announced three new AI tools – Lex, Polly, and Rekognition -- drawing on the character of the company's personal AI assistant Alexa. Together, they will help developers to create apps that consumers can have easy conversations with, seamlessly turn speech to text and vice versa, and allow a product to recognize face and objects (and identify who it is talking to).

When Amazon first coined the strapline "Ask Alexa" for its virtual assistant, it couldn't have predicted the X-rated nature of some of the requests. "She" may boast an encyclopaedic knowledge, but research by consumer behaviour analysts Canvas8 reveals that some users are more interested in a virtual hook-up than fact finding. And she's not the only target: the equally smooth voice of Microsoft's Cortana is getting customers just as hot under the collar apparently. From perma-smiling avatars in traditionally female support roles, to hyper-sexualised "fembots" pandering to male fantasies, the female form is everywhere in techno-world - attractive, servile and at your command. A little more conservative, but just as eager to please, is virtual personal assistant Amy Ingram, the brainchild of New York start-up X.ai.

Google Pixel and Pixel XL have turned quite a few heads since it's released. The primary reason behind this are the set of features that it provides. Experts believe that the recently released Android device is the best android based smartphone ever manufactured till date. One of the most popular features is the new AI based Google Assistant. The assistant is also a part of Google's new messaging application Google Allo.

For anyone that hasn't been hiding under a rock for the last few years, it's become abundantly clear that the largest IT firms on the planet are moving quickly to build up their capabilities in artificial intelligence. But the largest of them all, Apple Inc., has been the least public about its plans. A revelation about a closed-door meeting in Europe suggests that might change. Given Apple's fondness for secrecy, that's probably not going to reverse overnight. But a recent article in Quartz has revealed some of what's going on under the AI covers in the $500 billion-plus company.

Aim is to build an ecosystem around the smart home device. Google wants to make its Assistant smarter so it is opening it up to third-party developers. The Google Assistant, which brings together technologies such as Knowledge Graph and Natural Language Processing, is to have its API made open so that the company can build an ecosystem of developers around it. This will hopefully mean that it will be able to connect to more apps and services, making it a more appealing system to customers. In October the company previewed Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant, now developers will be able to build Conversation Actions for Google Home, the company's smart home speaker.

Two months after rolling out its digital assistant, Google is opening its doors to outside developers to help the company chase rivals, particularly Amazon.com On Thursday, the Alphabet Inc. unit launched a system for developers to build chatbots that work with Google Assistant, its voice-based virtual helper. The tools, called Conversation Actions, will let companies and other third parties interact with Google users by building bots that answer questions and, eventually, sell and book things through voice controls. Developers can seek approval for phrases that come after "Ok, Google" (the words that summon the Assistant) to launch the interactive bots. So, in the future if someone says, "Ok, Google, talk to Target," a chatbot for the retailer might appear and help the person buy things through a conversation, for example.