You have the right to remain silent -- but your smart devices might not. Amazon's Echo voice-activated speaker has more "skills" than you may be using. SAN FRANCISCO -- In what may be a first, police in Arkansas asked Amazon for recordings potentially made by an Echo device in connection with a murder investigation. Police in Bentonville, Ark., asked Amazon for audio and other records from an Echo digital assistant in the home of James Andrew Bates after Victor Collins was found dead in Bates' hot tub last year, The Information reported Tuesday. Bates was charged with killing Collins on Nov. 22, 2015, according to court documents.

A live stream of two Google Home devices talking nonstop is as surreal as you'd expect. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A live stream of two Google Home devices talking nonstop is as surreal as you'd expect.

Those incidents were all triggered by saying Alexa's name, which though inconvenient is at least the command that's supposed to trigger it. But since Alexa is always listening, it can sometimes get confused and respond to something that's not its name. The podcast Dear Hank and John, run by internet-famous Vlogbrothers duo Hank and John Green, had one listener write in to say that Alexa had sent a giant plush teddy bear in response to something John had said. This listener had asked Alexa to play the most recent episode of Dear Hank and John, and somehow interpreted a portion of the podcast (in which John discussed his refusal to use Mac keyboard and also Kenny Loggins albums) to be saying "do you like being here with your big bear?" That might not seem like a command to you, but apparently Alexa thinks that means "please order me a huge teddy bear." John went on to jokingly ask Alexa to order copies of his book The Fault in our Stars and to play the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album. He got at least a handful of people's Alexa's to respond.

IEEE Spectrum explains why all these robotic home assistants look the same. The LG Hub is powered by the same software that runs Amazon's Alexa, and has the additional advantage of being able to control the various LG smart home devices the makers are hoping you will buy. We'll have to wait and see whether this thing can outcompete its nearly identical, adorable foes.

Amazon doesn't have an official presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it's making no shortage of headlines thanks to its Alexa smart assistant. Don't assume, though, that the AI butler will be king forever. If you've been following the news coming out of CES this year, you'll have noticed that voice-controlled AI assistants are everywhere. Conversational interfaces, which we predicted would be a breakthrough technology in 2016, have already made a big impression on consumers, and now companies want to bake them into as many pieces of hardware as possible. Leading the pack by a wide margin is Alexa. It's made its way into third-party speakers similar to Amazon's own Echo device.

If you happen to live in one of the six million US homes that have so far purchased an Amazon Echo, you may think Alexa is just a voice emanating from a cylindrical speaker that knows a couple of tricks. It plays the Beatles on command. It can order more toilet paper. It has jokes, some of which are even kind of funny. Just as Apple taught us that a small portable phone could be a more powerful computing method than our lumbering desktops, Amazon is introducing us to a new computing interface -- a voice devoid of a screen--that will eventually grow to be more ubiquitous and more useful than our smartphones.

The fortune of Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, rose by $3.8 billion in the first week of 2017. The new year has just begun, and Jeff Bezos' net worth is already up almost $4 billion. Coming off a difficult three-month stretch in which Amazon lost more than 10% of its value, the company's stock is once again surging. Between Monday morning and Friday afternoon of this week, Amazon's share price rose by nearly 4%, closing at $795.99 per share at the end of normal trading at 4 P.M. EST Friday. For Bezos, who owns more than 80 million shares and whose personal fortune is almost entirely tied to the business, that increase has led to big personal gains.

Alexa is featured at the Whirlpool booth. LAS VEGAS--Bark out "Alexa" in the congested halls of CES, and you would have heard a chorus of devices, from cars to smartphones to household appliances, answer back. OK, so not literally, but Alexa is assuming an increasing role across numerous products, a sure sign Amazon is leaning on its vocal digital assistant to spread its artificial intelligence system everywhere, and certainly go well beyond the popular Echo speaker where Alexa got its start. Rival Google Assistant wasn't as prominent at this CES, though hot chipmaker Nvidia aims to expand the artificial intelligence-powered assistant's reach throughout the home. Also, Google announced integrations with Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai, and Rishi Chandra, the vice-president for Google Home, gave a talk on smarter homes.

If 2016 seemed politically tumultuous, 2017 promises to be equally tumultuous on the technology front. The pace of change is accelerating at a dizzying rate, with profound implications for the way we we work, play and communicate. So what are the big technology trends to watch out for in 2017? Cybersecurity will undoubtedly be the dominant theme of 2017, as all tech innovations could be undermined by data thefts, fraud and cyber propaganda. Forget Kim Kardashian, it's hacking that could break the internet - and much more besides.

We're barely into the new year, which means it's time for the planet (or the developed world, at least) to get its collective geek on and marvel at the latest electronics at CES. If you've been living in a cave for the past decade or so, CES is the Consumer Electronics Show. It's where newfangled gadgets debut, TV manufacturers try to convince us all that we need to upgrade from our hi-def sets, and techno-hucksters attempt to convince us, yet again, that virtual reality and smartwatches have truly, finally arrived, for real this time. Well, only the cutest little robot you ever did see! His name is Kuri, and you can find him on heykuri.com.