Like a lot of teenagers, Aanya Nigam reflexively shares her whereabouts, activities and thoughts on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks without a qualm. But Aanya's care-free attitude dissolved into paranoia a few months ago shortly after her mother bought Amazon's Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud. After using the Internet-connected device for two months, Aanya, 16, started to worry that the Echo was eavesdropping on conversations in her Issaquah, Washington, living room. So she unplugged the device and hid it in a place that her mother, Anjana Agarwal, still hasn't been able to find. "I guess there is a difference between deciding to share something and having something captured by something that you don't know when it's listening," Agarwal said of her daughter's misgivings. The Echo, a $180 cylindrical device that began general shipping in July after months of public testing, is the latest advance in voice-recognition technology that's enabling machines to record snippets of conversation that are analyzed and stored by companies promising to make their customers' lives better.

At Google's annual I/O developers conference held May 28, the search engine giant unveiled new software features, as well as improvements to the Android operating system. Much of the event focused on new context-aware improvements to Google Now, Android's digital personal assistant, but one of the software's biggest features was actually rolled out secretly. This Tuesday, a representative for Google at the Search Marketing Expo in Paris premiered Google Now's location-aware search feature. The tool, which has already rolled out to most Android devices, was captured on video by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan and posted to Twitter. Location Aware Search is live unannounced feature in Google Search App.

Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen light. The first "smart" home gadgets that can be controlled by Apple's voice-activated digital assistant are going on sale this week, just days after rival tech giant Google announced it's building its own software for Internet-connected home appliances and other gadgets. The new products could be an important step forward for the emerging industry of "smart" or "connected" homes, where appliances, thermostats and even door locks contain computer chips that communicate wirelessly. While a number of companies are working on similar products, analysts say Apple could persuade more consumers to try them by making it easy to control different products from a familiar device, such as the iPhone. Apple announced its "HomeKit" software project a year ago, but isn't making the new products.

Google is looking to become a leader in instant-messaging with its purchase of Emu. The Emu instant-message system, Wired reports, can monitor chats, determine what people are discussing, and then insert links it deems helpful to users. Of course, Google could easily use this feature to get ads in front of users. In a blog post, Emu announced that it would be joining the search giant and closing down its app as of August 25. Starting then, Emu will no longer be available in the App Store and current users will no longer be able to send, receive, or download messages using the app. Although the purchase of Emu has been confirmed, it's currently unclear how much Google paid in the deal.

Cortana, the new voice-activated personal assistant for Windows phones, takes its name from an artificially intelligent character in the Halo franchise. The software is expected to launch in beta form later this month or early next, along with the Windows Phone 8.1 update. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's operating system group, promised that Cortana would go far beyond the capabilities of Apple's Siri assistant, to the point that Cortana could even (with permission) comb through a user's e-mail and anticipate any potential travel problems, long before the user recognizes those problems for him- or herself. "Siri is this anthropomorphized character, but Siri doesn't know you personally," Mr. Belfiore told the Times. Does this sound a little creepy?

Siri is introduced as a built-in feature with the Apple iPhone 4S smartphone in October. A voice-activated personal assistant, Siri could "understand" natural language requests and also adjust the information it retrieved from the web by learning user tendencies and preferences. Siri could perform a wide number of functions – from recommending local restaurants (using the web and the iPhone's built-in GPS navigation system), providing walking or driving directions, giving weather forecasts, showing current sports scores, and even answering seemingly meaningless questions like, "Who is your favorite NCAA college football team?" Although the program's "voice" was female by default, it could be changed to a man's voice.

To hold its own against digital assistants from Google, Microsoft and Amazon, Siri needs an IQ boost. Last month, Google took the stage in Mountain View, California, to show off improvements to its digital voice assistant. Its signature ability is to have a conversation with it like you would a normal person. You can ask "Google Assistant" what's on your schedule and then have it text the person you're meeting to say you'll be late. Google remembers your first question, so you don't have to start over with a new command.

It's been 25 years since "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" gave us nightmares about Skynet and liquid-metal assassin robots, and we're still freaking out about artificial intelligence breaking bad. Now Australian researchers are helping to resurrect fears of the movie's spooky T-1000 killing machine by developing self-propelled liquid metals reminiscent of the ones that made up its body. Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne plan to create elastic electronic components and soft-circuit systems that act more like live cells. For the most part, our modern electronics use fixed metallic tracks to create circuits that are stuck in a single configuration. This is why you can't simply ask Siri to split and rearrange your iPhone into four smaller iPods to share your music with friends.

Google may be getting even more serious about business. The company is in talks with Hewlett-Packard about expanding the Internet giant's Google Now voice recognition software to be able to search through corporate data, according to a report published Wednesday by The Information (subscription needed). The partnership would allow Google Now --- which serves as a "virtual assistant" that lets users ask it about restaurants, driving directions or sports scores -- to do the same thing with company data. For example, an enterprise user on a device running Android, Google's mobile operating system, would be able to ask the software about financial information or inventory data. HP would be valuable to Google in this case because of its wealth of relationships with corporate customers.