Amazon Prime customers will now have access to a new feature from the company called "voice shopping." From Nov. 18 till Nov. 21, the company will hold its first voice-shopping weekend. It will offer exclusive deals to Prime members who have an Alexa-enabled device. "This is the first holiday that Prime members will be able to use their voice to shop and we're excited to offer exclusive deals they won't find anywhere else," said Assaf Ronen, Vice President Voice Shopping in the official press release. "Voice shopping with Alexa takes the hassle out of the holidays, giving customers the ability to order from millions of items simply by saying the word. Make sure to ask'Alexa, what are your deals?' every day because we'll have exciting deals throughout the holiday season and beyond."

When you hear the term "artificial intelligence," you may think of tech giants Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, or Facebook. Industrial powerhouse General Electric is now aiming to be included on that short list. It may not have a chipper digital assistant like Cortana or Alexa. It won't sort through selfies, but it will look through X-rays. It won't recommend movies, but it will suggest how to care for a diesel locomotive.

As you might expect, a lot of Uber riders use the service to get to and from restaurants and bars. Thanks to its customer base, the ride-sharing company has a lot of info on which spots are popular in the cities where it operates. Uber announced this week that its putting all of those trip details to use with a new restaurant guide. The ranking system divides restaurants into six different categories: most popular, local favorites, up-and-coming, brunch spots, weekend picks and date-night destinations. All of those are pretty self-explanatory and the lists can be viewed on this web page.

With the backing of supporters as varied as the CIA, Samsung, Intel, and one of the biggest wireless carriers in the world, MindMeld launched its conversational AI platform today. MindMeld's AI, which has been referred to as "Siri on steroids," is sometimes considered more advanced than other voice-enabled intelligent assistants. The first generation of AI-powered assistants failed to live up to the hype, according to the company. "Deep-Domain Conversational AI promises to power a new generation of AI assistants which can streamline common daily tasks such as placing a take-out order at a local restaurant, booking a flight or hotel reservation, creating a service appointment at an auto repair shop or doctor's office, or finding retail store and product information," the company said in a statement shared with VentureBeat. Voice-enabled intelligent assistants and chatbots made with the platform can go virtually anywhere, from websites, apps, and devices to messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Slack.

Just in time for the holidays, Windows 10's Cortana has added a new feature: list making, which you can use to add all sorts of shopping items, to-do tasks, and other items as you think of them. The new feature works on your Windows 10 PC, as well as Cortana for iOS 8.0 or later and the Cortana app for Android 4.4 and later. Microsoft also connected Cortana to its Wunderlist app, allowing access to the lists you already have in that app and easy sharing with friends. For now, the vocabulary to trigger the list command isn't that forgiving. By default, Cortana includes three lists: Grocery, Shopping, and To-Do.

Today's home cooks have more options than ever before. New technology is slowly moving into the kitchen, but an appreciation for the basics of cooking continues to grow. We spent time with both the latest kitchen tech and some classics that wouldn't be out of place in our grandparents' home, and developed this list of the best cooking and smart home tech you can buy. Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant puts your voice in control of an ever-expanding universe of smart products, and the Amazon Echo speaker remains the best choice for getting Alexa into your home. Whether you want to play music, check the news, control your lighting, keep an eye on your oven, or even play a game, the Echo has you covered with its always-on functionality.

NEW YORK--I've been a big fan of the $499 eero Wi-Fi system since February when it solved the poky networking issues and dead zones in my house that had previously made my Internet hiccup and stutter all too often. For folks with an Echo, Echo Dot or Amazon Tap, Alexa brings three skill sets to eero. You can ask Alexa to turn off the LED lights on an eero router, when, say, you want to watch a movie in pitch black or go to sleep. If you've misplaced your smartphone or some other device that's connected to Wi-Fi in your house, Alexa can help you locate it, by letting you know which eero it is closest to. And here's a feature parents may come to love.

These days everyone in the tech sector is very much excited by AI. But what does it mean to you as a business now that software suppliers and vendors have decided to include it in their tools and offers? Even though, I could argue, that AI has been around and working already in the sector for a long time anyway. At its core, AI is basically machine learning – a type of Artificial Intelligence that uses algorithms to parse (or analyse) data, extract patterns, learn and make predictions and decisions based on the insights it has uncovered. This is the fundamental mechanics behind many of the technologies we see already every day that use AI – like search engines, face recognition apps and digital assistants.

Earlier this year, Eero launched a home WiFi solution that it claimed would solve all our wireless woes. The idea behind Eero's system is simple; instead of relying on one router to connect your whole house, it uses multiple hubs. Each Eero hub combines the functions of a wireless router, a range extender and a repeater, and you can easily connect them to one another with a companion app. The whole system is essentially a wireless mesh network for the home. Months later, and Eero is unveiling a massive update that not only brings faster and better performance, but also Amazon Alexa compatibility and a slew of new app features.

We keep hearing that robots are going to take our jobs, but a company called MindMeld is giving us an idea how with its "Deep-Domain Conversational AI Platform." It'll allow bots that can essentially replace customer service agents and even baristas by answering complicated voice or text queries over Google Assistant, Amazon Echo, Facebook Messenger and other popular platforms. Uniqlo, for one, will offer a Facebook bot that can answer questions about its products, services and retail locations with more detail than ever. The "MindMeld Language Parser" helps it understand and answer questions with "human-like accuracy," whether by talk or text, the company says. It adds that while current AI toolkits from Google, Facebook and others are great, they provide "little data suitable for production-quality applications" -- in other words, they can do deep learning, but don't give companies anything to teach them.