Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) said that it is "at least twelve months ahead" of the competition when it comes to its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for banking customers called Luvo, and will release it to the public in twelve months, according to managing director of digitisation Chris Popple. RBS announced that it was working on an AI assistant back in March and speaking at the inaugural AI Summit in London today Popple talked about how the pilots have been going and where Luvo will eventually live (the answer is everywhere). Luvo is a natural language processing AI bot which will answer RBS, Natwest and Ulster bank customer's questions and perform simple banking tasks like money transfers. If Luvo is unable to find the answer it will pass a customer over to a member of staff. Luvo "talks to you through WhatsApp-type interaction" and what sets it apart from digital assistants like Siri and IKEA's Ask Anna is its ability to understand context and perform tasks.

Amazon has hired Ashwin Ram, an ex-Xerox PARC employee and a researcher in cognitive science, in an effort to step up its AI R&D department. Although Amazon have not officially released a statement, Ram announced on Twitter that he was "excited to join Amazon." A spokesperson from Amazon has confirmed his appointment but refused to provide further comment. Ram is described as Alexa AI senior manager on his LinkedIn profile. Ram had served as the Chief Innovation Officer at Xerox PARC, a venerate Silicon Valley R&D powerhouse whose noted luminaries include the creators of Ethernet, the world's first WYSIWYG editor, the GUI, the mouse, and laser printing.

If you don't use Cortana, Microsoft's voice-activated personal assistant, you're missing out on some handy, hands-free functionality -- especially now that she's fully integrated into Windows 10, and Windows 10 is everywhere. Like Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now, Cortana is an intelligent personal assistant who can help you with everything from launching applications to scheduling appointments. She can even adjust a handful of device settings, such as toggling your Wi-Fi on and off. Microsoft hasn't published a full list of Cortana commands, so we pulled together this unofficial list of all the things you can ask or say to Cortana on Windows 10 devices.

When Robyn Exton first launched her dating and social networking app for lesbians and bisexual women, a lack of cash for advertising meant she'd go to nightclubs armed with bottles of spirits. "In the early days I'd go to nightclubs with a bottle of sambuca in one hand, and tequila in the other, and encourage girls to download the app in return for a shot," says the 29-year-old. Then at UK lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) festivals Manchester and Brighton Pride, she targeted women by standing outside the portable toilets handing out toilet paper with flyers promoting the app. This was back in 2013, and Ms Exton's low cost, but innovative, approach to marketing soon saw user numbers rise steadily, then further gaining traction thanks to positive word of mouth. Founded in London, but with its headquarters moving to San Francisco last year in order to be closer to US investors, and to be in the thick of the burgeoning social network scene, the Her app now has more than one million female users around the world.

While several of today's leading "robo-advisor" companies were founded in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it wasn't until early 2012 that they finally converged on a common low-cost "automated investment service" model… which, coupled with a surge of media coverage, quickly suggested that they could become the future of financial advice (or at least investment management) for consumers. However, in the year since established players like Schwab and Vanguard launched'competing' services, a fresh look at the robo-advisor landscape reveals that their growth rates are falling rapidly, to just 1/3rd their levels of one year ago. Their apparent demise: an inability to scale their marketing to sustain growth rates in the face of increasing competition and challenging client acquisition costs, coupled with a similar inability to grow their average account sizes. In fact, the combination of rising client acquisition costs and declining average revenue per client may be an outright death knell for the direct-to-consumer robo-advisor movement, as they approach the unsustainable crossover point where the lifetime value of a client, cumulatively, is less than the cost to acquire a single client (given that some have a mere average gross revenue per client of just 50/year!). Accordingly, it's not surprising to see many of the early robo-advisor players pivoting in other directions, using their long runway of available dollars to try to find greater growth traction, with at best one or two that might manage to build a viable brand that survives.

Everyone has an AI in their pocket these days -- Siri, Cortana, Google Now and Amazon's Alexa have given everyone easy access to virtual assistants. But one promising startup could wind up beating them all: Viv. Viv is still in its early stages, but it has caused a lot of excitement in the tech community, and according to a profile in The Washington Post, it has drawn bids from some major players. Here's what you need to know about Viv. Viv is poised to be the next big AI assistant.

A woman accused of "capitalizing on her physical attraction" to steal the identities of people she met on dating and home rental websites will face a judge Wednesday after she was arrested at a luxury hotel in Santa Barbara, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Maria Christina Johnson, 43, is believed to have dated or rented from her victims to gain access to their homes, where she'd scavenged through their belongings to obtain enough personal information to open new lines of credit without their knowledge, authorities said. Johnson -- also known as Maria Hendricks, Gia Hendricks, Maria Christina Gia and Maria Hainka -- has been arrested and charged multiple times before for various forms of fraud, identity theft and burglary before, according to a statement from the sheriff's department. After she successfully assumed an identity, investigators say, she moved into high-end hotels and charged thousands of dollars of goods and services to her victims, even attempting to purchase a car at one point, authorities said. By the time she was arrested as a guest of a luxury, beachside coastal resort in Santa Barbara on Thursday, investigators estimated Johnson, who lists her occupation as a dog trainer, had spent more than 250,000 of her victims' funds.

When it comes to sports teams, marketing is everything. You have to sell tickets, merchandise and get the deals for TV coverage, though the latter is usually covered by a deal with the league. Now the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers is teaming up with Microsoft in an effort to obtain the data it needs to increase its revenue. To accomplish that goal the team is turning big data and the power of the Cortana Intelligence Suite, Microsoft's digital assistant. The goal is selling more season tickets, a tough sell given that most ticket buyers tend to not change their habits from year to year according current data.

NEW YORK--You may already be on a first-name basis with Siri, Cortana, Google or Alexa, the Fab Four of voice-activated digital assistants. Now that relationship is expanding from one device (typically a smartphone) to many. The major tech companies are putting these digital assistants, powered by artificial intelligence algorithms and activated by voice, into multiple products. And the field is about to get a new name, with the founders of Siri poised to unleash an AI-driven virtual assistant called Viv at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Brooklyn this week. "Speech is no longer a parlor trick, and [it's] more useful day to day," said Scott Huffman, Google vice president of engineering for search.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display