If the battle between rival digital assistants can be summed up by the NBA championships, then Google's take would be the Golden State Warriors? That's assuming, of course, the record-setting Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to defend their NBA title. It's the analogy used by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who characterized the competition as more friendly than bloody. "This is not like'Game of Thrones,'" he said Wednesday at Recode's Code conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California. Artificial intelligence is already a hot topic at the conference, and it's a big part of Google's future.

In-home robots to help with everything from cooking and cleaning to childcare and companionship have been the stuff of sci-fi for decades. But, with the unveiling this week of the Wall-E-like Asus Zenbo, this is the year that science-fiction could turn into science-fact, introducing home assistants that can talk to you, control your electronics and help out with the chores. Here are five that could be knocking at your door in the near future. The latest robot to offer help around the home is Asus's Zenbo, which, at 599 ( 410), costs about the same as a smartphone. Designed to be a do-it-all smarthome assistant, Zenbo can drive itself around your place, using various cameras to keep it from bumping into the walls.

On an unseasonably hot Wednesday at the end of May, a little voice in my head was telling me to run faster. "It's time to get your heart rate up," she told me. This wasn't my inner masochist, like it usually is. On this particular run, it was the voice of Vi, a digital assistant baked inside a pair of prototype in-ear headphones. Vi is the first consumer product from wearable technology company LifeBeam, which has provided the tech backbone for products from Samsung, Under Armour, and JBL, among others.

Picture this: At every step of a patient's trip through the hospital, a virtual assistant awaits, ready to answer questions, pull up medical records -- or snap photos during surgery. Hospital staff and patients walked through that futuristic hospital scenario one recent afternoon at a new simulation center at Boston Children's Hospital. Fifty people came to dream up ways that Amazon's Alexa voice-recognition software program could help in the clinic and at home. The hospital dove into voice-assisted software last month, when it released an Alexa-based app called KidsMD that gives parents advice when their children catch a fever. Children's "is leading the way when it comes to hands-free work in hospitals" using Alexa, an Amazon spokeswoman said.

Last month, the Washington Post reported on a surprising new job in Silicon Valley: bot-writer. "Increasingly, there are poets, comedians, fiction writers, and other artistic types charged with engineering the personalities for a fast-growing crop of artificial intelligence tools," the Post's Elizabeth Dwoskin wrote. These personalities, Dwoskin reported, will soon be joined by more specialized bots developed by other companies, among them Sophie and Molly, "nurse avatars" that talk to patients about their medical conditions. There's even a "guru avatar" in development, designed to teach meditation. These products are exciting and futuristic--just a decade ago, the possibility of conversing with a computer program seemed like science fiction.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is very bullish on his company's artificial intelligence push. So bullish, in fact, that Amazon has invested four years of research into its key project in AI -- and stacked that project with a sizable staff. Bezos said at the Code Conference that the team on Alexa, Amazon's smart voice-assistant software, and Echo, its flagship device, is now more than 1,000 employees. "We've been working behind the scenes for the last four years," he said about Echo and Alexa. Other tech giants are moving into the space.

Where else but the Code Conference can you expect to hear from the Tech industry's biggest players like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai? Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a hit on its hand with the Echo connected speaker, said "it's hard to overstate how big of an impact this will have on society over the next 20 years. It doesn't mean phones are going to go away or that voice actions will replace screens. As long as people have eyes, they have screens." The Echo speaker can turn on lights, access online music and answer queries by waking the speaker by stating the word Alexa.

The rapid developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology have become a huge talking point within the online dating space, as companies look for new ways to innovate and remain relevant in a growingly saturated market. At GDI's European conference earlier this month, a number of top industry executives tipped AI as the next big trend within the industry, noting the obvious potential this type of technology offers dating companies looking to create an automated application. One new platform already looking to capitalise on this growing interest in AI within online dating is Quinn, a recently-launched mobile app which acts as an personal matchmaker for each user. Quinn – which stands for Questions and Insights – was founded by London-based Australian natives Dan Joyce and Jared Mooring, alongside the same team that launched friend-of-a-friend dating platform My Mate Your Date back in 2014. The app gets to know every user by asking them up to eight questions each day, all of which are selected from its library of over 200 questions using AI, in order to work out which questions are the most fitting to ask at that time.

As banks, financial services providers and brands 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. Gideon Hyde, co-founder of Market Gravity, explains how and why artificial intelligence (AI) could hold the key to standing out in banking and financial services. AI is already around us and used everyday 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.

For consumers seeking convenience and speed, it all sounds great. But how will any of it make Google money? The Mountain View, Calif., company's apparent transition from go-to search engine to omnipresent virtual assistant probably will require rethinking its advertising business. By tracking Web browsing, emails, chats and more, Google has become a dominant force in digital ads. It mines that wealth of personal data to present ads to the people most likely to care about them.