Smart Speakers are also making themselves at home with Amazon's Alexa and the Google Home. Google Home is pretty new and doesn't have a wide range of features yet aside from the ability to search the web and play music. It has a lot of catching up to do though because Amazon Echo can tap into third-party apps, control your lights and control your other devices. There are some brand limitations, but it's still the most impressive Smart Speaker available today and it's encouraging consumers to integrate AI into their homes. Google may be behind in smart speakers, but it set itself apart in October when it released its Pixel smartphone with Google's Assistant built right into the phone. This translates into a more personalized assistant that remembers your past interactions and adjusts future ones.

If you needed any clarification that Artificial Intelligence is on everyone's mind, you need only tune into HBO's new buzzed-about series Westworld. But AI is quickly making its move from the futuristic and fictional to the realm of reality with many practical AI tools already available today. From space, robotics, transportation, healthcare, marketing, music, photography and more, many industries are affected by AI, and we've only just began to see the changes that are yet to come. Since AI is developing at such an astonishing rate, many industries are reaping the rewards of its integration. How much better can you manage your time, tasks and deadlines if each had a personal assistant to help schedule your calendars, tell you what's important and help you become more productive?

Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it. Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too. By measuring biometrics in sports, data can help measure how an athlete's playing time impacts injury likelihood.

Amazon Alexa, the voice assistant that lives in various Echo hardware is, apparently, now a bit of a political junkie, obsessively tracking the presidential election returns just like you. Election results are, in truth, just another in a long line of Alexa skills Amazon adds to its artificial intelligence platform almost every day. According to Amazon, which announced the update on, naturally, Election Day, Alexa is watching who won which states, which candidate is in the lead and, most importantly, current electoral vote counts. With the first polls set to close hours from now, it is a little early for Alexa to be offering much -- if any -- valuable election information. Amazon Alexa can now give real-time election results.

Apparently, Samsung will include a digital assistant in the next year flagship, the Galaxy S8. To some levels this was not a surprise since Samsung acquired the developers from Siri, Viv Labs. For Reuters, Samsung said that the upcoming Galaxy S8 will feature a voice-driven assistant developed from Viv Labs. This means that Samsung will join Apple and Google in the competition for better artificial intelligence. Third party developers will also be able to integrate a personal assistant, but Samsung didn't say what services will be offered for that.

Westworld's AI world might not be science fiction. If you needed any clarification that Artificial Intelligence is on everyone's mind, you need only tune into HBO's new buzzed-about series Westworld. But AI is quickly making its move from the futuristic and fictional to the realm of reality with many practical AI tools already available today. From space, robotics, transportation, healthcare, marketing, music, photography and more, many industries are affected by AI, and we've only just began to see the changes that are yet to come. Since AI is developing at such an astonishing rate, many industries are reaping the rewards of its integration.

The term brings to mind robots, time-travel, science fiction, and other descriptions only fit for the far-reaching future. However, marketing experts are seeing that the future is now. Artificial intelligence (AI) marketing is playing, and will continue to play, a much more significant role in the way brands market to their customers. By 2017, AI marketing is projected to be the dominant force in the marketing industry. Using this technology will allow marketers to manage campaigns and know audiences through a more data-driven and more uniquely personal level than ever before.

On November 6 2014, Amazon announced Echo, a smart speaker featuring a voice-controlled assistant service called Alexa. The company didn't exactly go out of its way to whip up excitement for these newcomers. In sharp contrast to the rollout of its ill-fated Fire Phone--which kicked off with a press-conference extravaganza starring Jeff Bezos--it simply disclosed that Echo existed and would be sold, at first, on an invitation-only basis to Prime members. But Echo spoke for itself--and not just literally. People quickly saw that the pint-size cylinder was a genuinely new kind of consumer-electronics device.

The Amazon Echo challenger Google Home is now available, and the teardown kings at iFixit wasted no time in ripping one apart. What they found inside wasn't all that exciting, but iFixit did discover that Google Home is a close cousin of the 2015 Chromecast owing to the similarity of components on both motherboards. Google Home has a Texas Instruments TAS5720 audio amplifier, for example, which the Chromecast doesn't need. However, both devices are rocking the same dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 media processor, and the the same kind of Toshiba NAND flash for internal storage--the Chromecast has 2GB onboard, while Google Home has 256MB. The two devices are also rocking the same Marvell Avastar wireless connectivity module for WLAN, Bluetooth, and NFC, and similar SDRAM from Samsung.

See those parts meticulously laid out in the image above? That's what a Google Home looks like after it's been torn down by iFixit. The team known for dismantling the hottest gadgets has opened up Mountain View's Echo competitor to confirm that it has two microphones. Echo has seven, but Google says Home has the capability to differentiate voice patterns from background noise despite having fewer mics. Before the team got to the motherboard, though, they had to deal with some super sticky adhesive that protects half of an array of capacitors in charge of detecting your fingers on the device.