Google is internally building two Android Wear smartwatches, according to Android Police, and they could be Nexus-branded. The report says one of the smartwatches will be larger, with a diameter of 43.5mm, and features LTE, GPS, and a heart-rate monitor. The smaller Android Wear smartwatch will not include LTE nor GPS, and it has a diameter of 42mm. Android Police, citing multiple sources, adds the two smartwatches could feature Google Assistant integration -- the platform Google unveiled at Google I/O 2016 -- as a way of users gaining contextual information through "an ongoing two-way dialogue".

Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing to a possible deal on July 8, 2016.

Every year, Apple fans around the world line up to buy the newest iPhone the minute it goes on sale. But Apple's software updates for the iPhone, which the company usually reveals during its annual developer's conference, are met with far less fanfare. This is largely because Apple's new software releases, as important as they may be for keeping your iPhone fast and secure, have recently been minor upgrades. Apple's iOS 8 introduced iCloud Drive for accessing files across multiple devices and a new Health app to house fitness data from several fitness apps; iOS 9 brought Apple's streaming music service and a slightly improved version of Siri. While helpful, these additions didn't alter the overall iPhone experience in a significant way.

If you've been following the news recently, you've probably heard a few of the breaking stories about robots beating humans in fairly complex tasks. It started with game show contestants, evolved into outperforming human instinct, and now computers are even outperforming fighter pilots in tactical simulations. What does this all mean for you? Although Hollywood loves to depict artificial intelligence as robots out to destroy humans, that's far from the case in the real world. Chances are you've been using artificial intelligence for awhile and haven't even noticed.

"Conversation is the new interface." The tech community's use of this expression does not mean that we are going to start talking to each other more on a human-to-human, face-to-face level. It means rather that we will be talking more to robots, specifically those artificial intelligence programs that pop up on the likes of Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Slack and so on, to help you with tasks from scheduling to shopping. Rather than going to a website to find information or downloading yet another app, we will summon these artificial intelligence assistants to do our bidding. Bark "find me a flight to Chicago on Saturday" into your phone and a "bot", which understands your location and the fact that you mean this Saturday, will return with some choices.

Bots (and articles about bots – oops!) are popping up everywhere these days. Indeed, very few concepts have shot up the hype curve so fast, especially considering that the idea of conversational UI has been with us for a long time in various forms, and under different denominations. It looks like a jungle, but all bots are essentially doing the same thing: adding conversational capabilities to FAQ and search. You can read a good evolution and state of the art here and here. Personally, I had the pleasure of working for two companies that developed their own virtual assistant (basically a chatbot with a cute face).

I've just run my second briefing on intelligent assistance. Much happened in the few months between sessions. This time, the second half of the day was dominated with stories about bots and their use cases on messaging platforms. It also included the amazing things now possible via automated voice which Amazon's Alexa Challenge exemplifies. Meanwhile IBM's Watson continues its conquest of carbon life forms with the trashing of an extraordinarily talented Go grand master.

As financial services organisations predict and plan for the way consumers will manage their money in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is high on the business development strategy for 2016 and beyond, says Gideon Hyde from design consultancy Market Gravity. The co-founder shares his thoughts on the emerging technology and explains how businesses can embrace AI to enhance their offerings, meet consumer demand for speed, personalisation and convenience, and launch new products and services to stand out in the competitive marketplace. AI is already around us and used every day within payments, money management and for robo-advice, particularly in the area of intelligent digital assistants that handle regular customer service enquiries and tasks. It can process'big data' far more efficiently than humans and can recognise speech, images, text, patterns of online behaviour, for example to detect fraud as well as appropriate advertisements for upselling. Smart machines and technology can turn data into customer insights and enhance service provisions, bringing the digital experience closer to the human interaction for consumers.

Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing Elizabeth Weise

Recently, artificial intelligence ('AI'), has been booming, and with good reason. The reasons behind this can be explained fairly simply, as technology advances we see advancements in particular sectors, in this instance, AI. AI has been around for a long time, with earliest known uses in the 1950s. But the tech has evolved to a point where it can be used on the mainstream today. As a technology advances, it becomes much more accurate, which is the case here in AI as we see Apple launching AI in its Photos app and within Siri.