The arms race in Silicon Valley is on for artificial intelligence. Facebook is working on a virtual personal assistant that can read people's faces and decide whether or not to let them in your home. Google is investing in the technology to power self-driving cars, identify people on its photo service and build a better messaging app. Now Apple is adding to its artificial intelligence arsenal. The iPhone maker purchased Emotient, a San Diego maker of facial expression recognition software that can detect emotions to assist advertisers, retailers, doctors and many other professions.

Ask Ziggy, the world's most advanced Natural Speech search engine for mobile devices, has closed a $5 million round of funding with a publicly traded multinational corporation and has expanded its list of strategic partners. Working closely with Nuance Communications, Ask Ziggy will use its most recent round of funding to deliver downloadable mobile apps for nearly all Android, Apple and Microsoft mobile devices by Q3 2012. "Each major funding event is a milestone in the growth of a rapidly developing company like Ask Ziggy," explained Shai Leib, CEO and Ask Ziggy Visionary. "Although we've had prior key investments via Sunbelt Technologies Management, when major publicly traded multinational companies begin to recognise the value of Ask Ziggy's cloud-based contextual search solutions, as was the case with this strategic investment, we have to celebrate. Ask Ziggy's Natural Speech search engine empowers and expands the user experience and convenience for all mobile devices, not merely cellphones. Speaking directly into a device and getting a voice reply, with zero typing required, is here at last. This funding will now enable Ask Ziggy to deliver multi-language, accent-independent, Natural Speech personal assistant apps running on all devices, including cellular handsets, tablets and even computing headsets, which will immediately change our world."

Apple's next iPhone will be always listening to the people around it, ready for its digital assistant to help out if it is called. Saying "Hey Siri" to the phone at any time will wake it up and get it ready to respond to requests, according to new rumours ahead of the iPhone 6s launch this evening. That event is thought to have cast Siri in a leading role -- as well as the changes to the iPhone's "Hey Siri" feature, the company is expected to show off its new search capabilities as well as giving it a central role in its new Apple TV. The company teased the central role of Siri in its invitations for the event, which came with the tagline "Hey Siri, give us a hint". Apple already lets people call up the digital assistant by saying "Hey Siri" when the phone is plugged in.

Apple's Siri is dropping new hints ahead of the iPhone 6s event this week -- though they're mostly frustrating jokes. The company's invites teased the event with the tagline "Hey Siri, give us a hint". Ever since then, excited fans have been asking the digital assistant for some idea of what might be going on -- and having little look. But Apple seems to be loading new hints into the digital assistant. While none of the updates actually say very much, they do at least offer new ways of being frustrated.

Do we want our phones, tablets and watches to have a personality? Would we like them to be meek and compliant, bold and outspoken or hovering somewhere in between? This week it was discovered that Apple's voice assistant, Siri, certainly doesn't mess about if anyone dares to ask how tall former American Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner is. "Caitlyn Jenner is 6ft 2in tall," it replies, with no reference to the recent transitioning of arguably the world's most famous transgender woman. Siri has since been widely applauded for having no truck with people who insist on using Jenner's old name, but others have railed against the "left-leaning tech elites" who dared to program Siri to respond in such a way.

At Mobile World Congress on Monday, Sony unveiled a trio of smartphones as part of its new X series, which focus on the core smartphone features customers are most concerned about: camera, battery life and design. After the announcement, Jun Makino, senior product manager at Sony Mobile, told International Business Times that the next 12 months will be crucial for the company's smartphone division. "[In] 2016, we obviously need to deliver profit, and that is something the company is committed to," Makino says. Key to that success could be a range of new accessories, like the just-announced Xperia Ear, which promises an always-on, voice-activated digital assistant in your ear. Sony has confirmed it is working on a smartphone VR headset that will take on Samsung's Gear VR market-leading device.

The launch of the Apple iPhone 6S is just days away, but the development of the company's line of handsets doesn't stop for anything. While the limits imposed by physics mean a smartphone can only get so much lighter and thinner, one area where the iPhone can still improve exponentially is in its smarts -- and that is where the firm is putting a lot of its focus. According to an analysis of job openings posted by Apple Inc. that was carried out by Reuters, the company is currently looking for at least 86 artificial-intelligence experts in the area of machine learning alone, while also seeking prospective employees with doctorates specializing in AI. With the amount of data being collected from users' computers and smartphones growing rapidly, companies are looking at developing systems that will allow them to leverage this information to deliver more tailored services to their customers. While Apple's voice-activated personal assistant Siri launched on the iPhone long before Google Now or Microsoft's Cortana did on Android devices or Windows Phone, both competitors have now eclipsed Apple's technology by serving up information they believe users want based on time or location, rather than simply based on requests made by users.

Amazon introduced Thursday two gadgets similar to its voice-controlled Echo speaker, which can be used to check the weather, order Domino's pizza or hail an Uber car. The Amazon Tap, a portable speaker that streams music, sells for $129.99. The $89.99 Echo Dot is a hockey puck-shaped device that responds to prompts to control smart appliances and connects to external speakers. For now, the Echo Dot is available only to Amazon Prime members who already have the original Echo device and Amazon's Fire TV set-top box. The original Echo, launched in 2014, is larger and cannot connect to external speakers.

Cubic's intelligence core makes it a friend. Like a human, Cubic becomes familiar with your interests and personality the more time you spend with it; the cloud-based mind is always updating. If you continue to make Game of Thrones references, Cubic will keep track of the next episode and update you on the date, or offer Game of Thrones jokes. The patented multi-topic conversation system also gives Cubic long-term memory for a more natural speech. Later, you can command "And the ones in the bedroom."

Making things simple is hard,