It was Assistant, the artificially intelligent digital helper that caters to your every whim and powers your every interaction. Assistant is invisible, in the design-jargon sense. The omnipresent concierge works in the background, predicting your needs, processing your requests, and offering neatly parceled answers to your questions. You never see the cogs behind it, you merely type (or speak) a command and read (or hear) tailored responses served on screen or through a speaker. This requires more than a smartphone, which explains the gadgets Google announced Tuesday.

It's 8:00 am on a Tuesday morning. You've awoken, scanned the headlines on your phone, responded to an online post, ordered a holiday sweater for your mom, locked up the house, and are driving to work, listening to some great new music on the radio. You've also used artificial intelligence (AI) more than a dozen times -- to be roused, to call up local weather report, to purchase a gift, to secure your house, to be alerted to an upcoming traffic jam, and even to identify an unfamiliar song. AI is already pervasive in our world, and it's making a huge difference in our everyday lives. But this is not the AI you've seen in sci-fi movies, with nervous scientists clacking on keyboards and attempting to halt machines from destroying the world. Sometimes it's obvious, like when you ask Siri to get you directions to the nearest gas station, or Facebook suggests a friend for you to tag in an image you posted online. Sometimes less so, like when you use your Amazon Echo to make an unusual purchase on your credit card (like that goofy holiday sweater) and don't get a fraud alert from your bank.

Artificial intelligence has played a role in customer service for some time now, but it's only recently that its full potential for transforming the customer experience has come to light. Conversational commerce is redefining the role of messaging apps in customer engagement, while self-service tools continue to simplify the customer service process and shift the role of human customer service agents in the contact center. Here are six ways artificial intelligence is reshaping customer experiences of both the present and the future. Targeted marketing practices based on customer behavior. Big data is a key player in targeted marketing practices, offering brands important insights into customer behavior.

Samsung could use a big hit after its huge misstep with recent reports that some of its Galaxy Note 7s were catching fire and not in a cool Hunger Games kind of way. So, is artificial intelligence (AI) potentially one of the ways to recover? According to reports this week in The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, it very well could be one of the company's planned tactics. According to the WSJ, "people familiar with the matter" indicate that internal prototypes of the premium Galaxy S8 handset have a side button that can launch an advanced AI virtual assistant similar to Apple's Siri. Of course, the operative word in that sentence is "prototypes" so what actually comes to pass is not a guarantee.

The major selling point of Android Auto is that it brings smartphone-like apps and services to your vehicle. Google Maps, access to music and weather updates are now taken for granted, but it's remained a mystery over why one of Android's most useful hands-free commands -- "OK Google" -- has taken so long to come to the infotainment software. Luckily, the search giant has finally recognized the need for the feature and is in the process of rolling it out, albeit at a slow pace. The feature was first spotted by Reddit user neo5468, who noticed that the latest versions of the Android Search and Auto apps enabled a new toggle for OK Google commands while driving. However, even if you have the new updates installed, Google appears to be limiting the expansion on an per account basis, so you may need to wait your turn.

You've seen it in the movies: super smart robots finally come to the conclusion that we humans are making a mess of things. Still think that's the stuff of science fiction? We're building machines that are smarter than we are, that can do our jobs for us, and that we will very soon come to depend on to maintain our technology-saturated lifestyles. With so much going on in the world of AI, we are becoming all but desensitized to the technology. So let's pause for a moment and look at the slightly creepy, but really cool advances taking place in AI today.

Though movies and TV shows would have us believe that artificial intelligence means machines rising up against us, the truth is much more benign. Indeed, many of us use AI on a regular basis: Just ask Siri for directions to a restaurant or tell Shazam to name a song. This is certainly true of Facebook too, which uses AI and machine learning for a variety of tasks such as identifying images, translating languages and, yes, ranking your News Feed. With such a vested interest in AI, Facebook is releasing a series of videos today to offer a brief introduction to what it is and how it works. "We want to tell people it's not magic," says Yann LeCun, Facebook's director of AI research.

The Android Auto improvements promised by Google at its I/O Conference earlier this year have been slow to roll out. Last month it released a standalone phone app for people who don't have the car-centric technology already built-in to their dashboards, but we're still waiting for the first wireless cars and the native Waze app to make an appearance. Google is making good on another promised feature, though: OK Google support. High on the list of most Android Auto users' wish lists, OK Google brings a true hands-free experience to your cars, letting you summon directions, send texts, and make calls without needing to leave the 9 and 3 position on your steering wheel. As spotted by eagle-eyed Redditor neo5468, you'll find the setting inside the Google app rather than the Android Auto one, but you'll need to have the latest Android Auto app build (2.0.6427) installed as well.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' According to a recent Gartner report, by 2020 the average person will have more conversations with AI-enabled bots than they will with their spouse. In fact, a lot of people are already doing it, often without even knowing. Half of US teens use voice control functions on their phones on a daily basis. As well as smartphone AIs like Siri and Cortana, organizations are incorporating bot experiences into their customer communication strategies with increasing frequency. Devices such as Google Home and Amazon's Echo are increasingly being used to interact with machines without using a screen – in fact Gartner also predicts that by 2020, 30% of browsing sessions will be done via a screenless interface.

The Telegraph has proclaimed: "The end of apps is here…" TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, and others also shared their belief that mobile applications as we know them are a dying breed. But how did mobile apps become endangered? Recently, IO's creators changed the app's name to Luka and added several little helpers, meaning it's now in charge of 12 other bots: Foodie (for restaurant recommendations), Weather, Wiki, Video, Gif, Pic, News, Founders, Search, Calculator, Quiz, and QuestHero. As of July 2016, Luka had around 5,000 downloads on App Store, with a monthly income of less than $5,000 (according to Sensor Tower). Nevertheless, having announced the recent close of a $4.42 million Series A funding round, Luka's creators are more than optimistic about the app's future.