Nokia's trademark application for Viki comes just as the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 launches. A new trademark application by Nokia suggests the former mobile-device giant could be building a phone-based digital assistant called Viki. Nokia filed the European trademark application for the name Viki just ahead last week's launch of the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 from HMD Global, the sole licensee of Nokia handsets, which plans to sell its first Nokia mobile exclusively in China this year for around $250. Nokia's involvement in the new phones is limited to branding and IP. However, the new trademark application could suggest it still may be eyeing a prominent place on Nokia-branded Android devices via Viki, which could be its answer to artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, and Microsoft's Cortana.

It's poised to be an exciting year in artificial intelligence. Last year, artificial intelligence deals topped a billion for the first time. The White House started publishing reports on AI and the economy. Samsung just announced a new $150 million fund for early-stage AI startups. Their recent acquisition of "super-Siri" Viv Labs must have whetted their appetite. There's are even AI startup incubators popping up, like deep learning mastermind Yoshua Bengio's Element in Montreal.

An on-air comment by a US TV presenter activated Amazon Echo gadgets in viewers' homes across San Diego. The comment was made by presenter Jim Patton after a news item on a child who accidentally ordered a doll's house via the voice-activated gadget. Reacting to the report, Mr Patton said: "I love the little girl saying'Alexa ordered me a dollhouse'." This reportedly prompted Echo devices in some homes to wake up and try to order some of the toys. The original CW6 TV report Mr Patton reacted to was about six-year-old Brooke Neitzel from Dallas who had been talking to her family's Echo Dot while playing.

At CES 2016, Microsoft announced that it is building a platform to enable automobile manufacturers to deliver connected car experiences to customers. Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform is a set of services that is integrated with Azure, Cortana, Office 365, Power BI, and Skype. In the last couple of years, Microsoft has doubled down its investment in machine learning (ML) and analytics. The company is embedding ML in almost all its products. Powered by Azure, these new set of services such as Azure ML, Microsoft Cognitive Services, Cortana Intelligence Suite takes advantage of the abundant compute and storage resources exposed by the underlying infrastructure.

Volkswagen recently announced it's adding Amazon's virtual assistant to its lineup. That means you'll be able to buy things while on the road. Sean Dowling (@seandowlingtv) has more. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Volkswagen recently announced it's adding Amazon's virtual assistant to its lineup.

Amazon Echo is apparently always ready, always listening and always getting smarter. So goes the spiel about the sleek, black, voice-controlled speaker, Amazon's bestselling product over Christmas, with millions now sold worldwide. The problem is that when you have Alexa, the intelligent assistant that powers Amazon Echo, entering millions of homes to do the shopping, answer questions, play music, report the weather and control the thermostat, there are bound to be glitches. And so to Dallas, Texas, where a six-year-old girl made the mistake of asking Alexa: "Can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?" Alexa promptly complied by ordering a $170 (£140) KidKraft doll's house and, for reasons known only to the virtual assistant, four pounds of sugar cookies.

It's been 10 whole years since the first iPhone was revealed to the public. On Jan. 7, 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the never-before-seen phone, describing it as "a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device." Love it or hate it, the iPhone has not only revolutionised the the way we date online. It's also transformed the way we feel about online dating. Hark back to 2007, and the dating landscape looked very different to how it looks now.

It is supposed to make life easier – but owners of the new Amazon Echo have fallen foul of the high-tech gadget's automatic features. Owners of the device been warned after a number accidentally ordered dollhouses that were being discussed on a TV show. The Amazon Echo, which includes a virtual assistant called Alexa, was a popular Christmas gift this year. Alexa performs tasks at the vocal request of her owner – including internet shopping. But a recent incident in America has revealed the technology could prove costly to unsuspecting users.

Since the earliest days of the Internet, most government agencies have eagerly explored how to use technology to better deliver services to citizens, businesses and other public-sector organizations. Early on, observers recognized that these efforts often varied widely in their implementation, and so researchers developed various frameworks to describe the different stages of growth and development of e-government. While each model is different, they all identify the same general progression from the informational, for example websites that make government facts available online, to the interactive, such as two-way communication between government officials and users, to the transactional, like applications that allow users to access government services completely online. However, we will soon see a new stage of e-government: the perceptive. The defining feature of the perceptive stage will be that the work involved in interacting with government will be significantly reduced and automated for all parties involved.

Large platform companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft want to provide the operating system for our lives, and they will fight hard in 2017 to establish their foothold in the emerging technologies we will likely come to rely on in the future. Those with the most complete product offerings have an advantage. Since people like to buy products that play well with the other products they already own, a platform company risks losing customers by not having a product in a hot category. These large companies already have an advantage over smaller companies due to their massive R&D budgets and their ability to hire the best people to build the stuff we want now and to anticipate the technology we'll want in the future. And if a hot product is developed by some ambitious startup, these giants can easily swoop in and acquire both the product and the people who created it.