Google just debuted a digital assistant, which it hopes to place inside smartphones, watches, cars and every other imaginable internet-connected device. It's already hit a snag. The Alphabet division launched new smartphones last week with the artificially intelligent assistant deeply embedded. It also rolled out a speaker with the feature at its core and announced plans to let other companies tie their apps and services to the assistant. A day later, Samsung, which just announced it was ending production of its problematic Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, said it was acquiring Viv Labs, a startup building its own AI voice-based assistant.

The "ubiquitous" part of AI may sound visionary or scary, depending on which way you look at it. But it is in any case the end game for Viv, according to Viv's (and previously, Siri's) founder, Dag Kittlaus. That's why Viv has chosen to partner with Samsung, the #1 vendor in mobile devices sold, also present in the market with a number of other devices ranging from TVs to refrigerators. Intelligence as a utility is Viv's motto, and they aim to make AI as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi or search. But besides being present on as many devices as possible, Viv also intends to build a developer ecosystem and utilize as many data sources as possible, and this is where it gets interesting from the data point of view. One of the things that allegedly makes Viv better than Siri is the ability to utilize more data sources.

What do Siri and machine translation have in common? They both produce strange, sometimes ridiculous language that leave us shaking our heads with confusion. Here at IVANNOVATION we frequently use Siri as well as Google's dictation function to get our work done. Siri instantly adds items to our to do lists, adds events to our calendars, and tells us answers to important questions like, "Siri, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" (Ask Siri yourself.) Likewise, Google dictation helps us avoid the ruthless onslaught of carpal tunnel syndrome by typing up our articles and emails for us.

Between Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid and the plethora of dating apps available, finding someone to hook up with has never been easier. But the endless supply of options has also made it much harder to connect with someone on a deeper, longer-lasting level. To tackle that problem, Hinge is rebuilding itself to focus on connecting people looking for relationships. It's also incorporating a new 7 monthly membership fee, in part to make sure that subscribers are actually invested in looking for relationships. The app has been revamped to more heavily feature on people you've matched or interacted with, instead of constantly presenting more options in a deck of cards.

Hinge is taking a hard left swipe at its own business model. The dating app relaunched Tuesday from a free swiping app into a members-only company -- for 7 per month. Instead of competing with the likes of Tinder, Bumble and Happn (to name a few), Hinge has rebranded itself as the Match.com While some apps define themselves as a way to "meet people" or "discover people," Hinge is now a relationships app. SEE ALSO: Tinder's new function could get you more matches but it'll cost you "When I started Hinge in 2011, there were no other dating apps period. It felt like at this point, there were so many swipey, game apps, and we were just another one," Justin McLeod, founder and CEO, told Mashable.

Major technology firms are racing to infuse smartphones and other internet-linked devices with software smarts that help them think like people. The effort is seen as an evolution in computing that allows users to interact with machines in natural conversation style, telling devices to tend to tasks such as ordering goods, checking traffic, making restaurant reservations or searching for information. The artificial intelligence (AI) component in these programs aims to make create a world in which everyone can have a virtual aide that gets to know them better with each interaction. Google is making a high-profile push into AI, with the internet titan's chief referring to it as a force for change as powerful as powerful as smartphones. Google Assistant software is being built into new Pixel handsets -- aiming to outdo Apple's Siri -- enabling users to organize and use information on the devices and in the cloud -- to check emails, stay up to date on calendar appointments, news or ask for traffic and weather data.

Artificial intelligence continues to have its moment in the spotlight, with a surge of interest in startups and efforts from huge tech companies to push the boundaries of how we might best use machine learning, computer vision and other areas of AI in the future. The latest development on that front comes from China's Huawei, which today announced that it would form a research partnership with UC Berkeley focused on AI, and fund it to the initial tune of 1 million. The alliance, between Huawei's Noah's Ark Laboratory and Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR), is being billed as a "strategic partnership into basic research", and it will cover areas like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. "The two parties believe that this strategic partnership will fuel the advancement of AI technology and create completely new experiences for people, thus contributing greatly to society at large," Huawei notes. Some of these areas of AI you will have heard a lot about already.

Google is hiring writers from the farcical newspaper the Onion and the computer animation film studio Pixar to humanize its Assistant AI voice service, a Wall Street Journal report said. Google's new Pixel phone, which will hit stores Oct. 21, will be the first device to feature its Assistant voice service. After Amazon launched its AI voice service, Alexa, it found that people spoke to it as if it were a person. AI in its current form isn't really artificial intelligence since the device doesn't understand the conversation. Google is hiring writers from the Onion and Pixar to "infuse personality" to its voice service, Gummi Hafsteinsson, product-management director of Google Home, told WSJ Sunday.

From gender-neutral bots to period-friendly healthcare trackers, cars with more storage and clothes with bigger pockets - the world could be a very different place if there were more women working in tech. We asked a group of women who are working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) how the world might be compared to now, if more women were present in these male-dominated industries. Now in its sixth year, the annual celebration of women working in Stem is named after the woman regarded as the world's first computer programmer - Ada Lovelace - because of her work with inventor Charles Babbage on his idea for an "analytical engine" in the 1800s. "If there were more women working in bots & Artificial Intelligence (AI), women wouldn't be an afterthought when building new technology. "Early voice recognition software didn't always recognise female voices, because none of the developers had been female and no-one thought to test out the technology on women (Car safety failed to take into account female anatomy - female-sized crash test dummies were only enforced in the US in 2011).

With its new desktop PC, Samsung hopes it has another hot product on its hands -- just not that kind of hot. In news that will surprise no one, the Korean company appears to be inspired by Apple yet again when it comes to the design of the ArtPC Pulse. If a computer shaped like a cylinder seems familiar, that's because the Mac Pro has taken that form for the last couple of years. The shape has made its way into so-called connected speakers as well, such as Amazon's Echo and the new Google Home. Not so coincidentally, Samsung has made the built-in speaker a big part of the ArtPC's appeal, making sure the Harmon Kardon label is emblazoned on the top part of the computer (much as HP has the Bang & Olufsen logo displayed on the Pavilion Wave).