Now that Google Assistant is promising two-way conversations, Google wants to give the artificial intelligence a little more personality. The company has asked both a freelance artist (Emma Coats) and the head of its Doodle team (Ryan Germick) to make Assistant more relatable to its human users through multiple techniques, including a possible "childhood" that you might identify with. You could also see a more Siri-like playfulness, with both ready-made answers for silly questions as well as a little vulnerability.

Now that Google Assistant is promising two-way conversations, Google wants to give the artificial intelligence a little more personality. The company has asked both a freelance artist (Emma Coats) and the head of its Doodle team (Ryan Germick) to make Assistant more relatable to its human users through multiple techniques, including a possible "childhood" that you might identify with. You could also see a more Siri-like playfulness, with both ready-made answers for silly questions as well as a little vulnerability. There's a practical reason for making you feel more at home with Assistant, of course. The easier it is to get along with the AI, the more likely it is that you'll use it -- and that, in turn, could lead to more internet searches.

Apple is set to hold its biggest software event of the year, WWDC, in the middle of June. It'll use the San Francisco event to show off all of the software that's on its way to your Watch, phone and other computers – as well as potentially new Apple devices. The event comes at a big time for Apple. The company is fresh off the back of its first quarter of decline since the iPhone came out, and is feeling the heat from other companies like Google. It will intend to use WWDC as a way of showcasing the software and potentially other products that it hopes will prove its doubters wrong and get the company to grow again.

In 2010, IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast suggested that the future is a high-resolution game: Never before has humanity been able to encounter the future in such detail, to measure the forces of change at such vast scales, and to fill in the details with such fine grain. As we play this game, we find ourselves in ever more layered and nuanced futures that often look distinctly different across geographies, across cultures, and even across the various identities each of us claims. More than a fragmented marketplace or a contentious body politic, this future looks like a massively branching game environment where you can win without ever discovering half of the possible pathways--but you can lose by mistaking a clear line of sight for the whole story. As we try to grasp the future of blockchain and other distributed computing technologies, we have to start here, with this high-resolution gamescape where there is no single blockchain future. Rather, we face an ecosystem of futures as complex as the global superorganism that we are actually becoming.

Imagine owning an Amazon Echo, only it was in robot form and could perform tasks like entertaining kids or keeping tabs on seniors. On Tuesday, tech company unveiled the Zenbo home robot, a 599 tech companion capable of roaming your home and assisting users with requests from sharing recipes by voice to controlling the lights or air conditioning. The Zenbo was revealed during the tech conference Computex in Taiwan. "Our ambition is to enable robotic computing for every household," said Asus Chairman Jonney Shih in a statement. The robot's face doubles as a touchscreen users can tap or swipe for a variety of tasks, but it can also respond to voice commands. It also plays music, respond to questions, take pictures or make video calls and even tell stories to kids.

You no longer have to buy'Alexa' Echo hardware to test out its software. Amazon's voice-powered personal assistant can now be accessed on a browser. The technology answers questions, read audio-books and even reports on weather in response to voice commands. You no longer have to buy'Alexa' Echo hardware to test out its software. Amazon's voice-powered personal assistant can now be accessed on a browser.

The Taiwanese electronics manufacture Asus has unveiled a home robot called Zenbo that can talk, control your home and provide assistance when needed – all for the cost of a top-end smartphone. It is capable of independent movement, can respond to voice commands and has both entertainment protocols for keeping kids amused and home care systems to help look after older people. Jonney Shih, the Asus chairman, said: "For decades, humans have dreamed of owning such a companion: one that is smart, dear to our hearts, and always at our disposal. Our ambition is to enable robotic computing for every household." Zenbo will remind older people of doctor's appointments or medication schedules, and will monitor the home for emergency situations such as falls.

IBM Watson burst onto the scene in 2011 as a Jeopardy-playing computer and quickly became synonymous with artificial intelligence. Since then, AI has become a lot more commonplace thanks to the rise of digital assistants like Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant, but Watson is still chugging away in more ways than you might think, powering everything from cancer treatment software to hotel concierge robots (pictured above). I had a chance to talk to Maya Weinstein, Senior Interaction Design and Creative Director at IBM Watson, about everything from the current crop of AI assistants to how the technology can help save lives. Check out the full interview (with some light edits for clarity) below. Jacob Kleinman: What do you think of the rise of consumer AI products like chatbots or Amazon Echo?

Apple, Amazon, and Google say their virtual helpers--Siri, Alexa, and the less snappily named Google Assistant--can make our lives easier by acting on our commands to book cabs, order pizza, or check the weather. But like all the other free-to-use goodies that tech giants offer up, these new personal assistants must also earn their keep. The companies aren't saying much about exactly how their automated personas can boost their bottom lines, but they have clear potential to open up new lines of revenue. Perhaps most importantly, they could significantly increase the data that companies have on our preferences and everyday lives. "A deeper profile of the customer is possible," says Sridhar Narayanan, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford.

In today's guest post, Alex Casalboni and Giacomo Marinangeli of Cloud Academy discuss the design and development of their new Inspire system. Our Challenge Mixing technology and content has been our mission at Cloud Academy since the very early days. We are builders and we love technology, but we also know content is king. Serving our members with the best content and creating smart technology to automate it is what kept us up at night for a long time. Companies are always fighting for people's time and attention and at Cloud Academy, we face those same challenges as well.