Original or replacement, power down your Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone. Samsung plans to make its range of smartphones smarter with its acquisition of Viv, an AI virtual assistant platform started by the man who created Siri. LOS ANGELES -- Just how bad is the situation with Samsung and its Galaxy Note 7 woes? Samsung has halted production and sales of its water-resistant, high-end smartphone as the company and U.S. regulators investigate reports of overheating replacement Note 7s. These are the devices that Note 7 buyers swapped for the first run of the large, high-powered phones after a massive consumer recall, also linked to overheating batteries. Some 2.5 million worldwide of the Note 7, Samsung's "phablet," with a 5.7 inch LCD, as of early September when Samsung said it would exchange the 850 phones.

BRISBANE, Australia – A New Zealand tourist was so afraid of an Australian man she met through the dating app Tinder that she fell 14 floors to her death while trying to escape from his apartment balcony, a prosecutor told a court on Monday. A woman was so terrified of her Tinder date'she fell 14 floors to her death in bid to escape him' https://t.co/E6KTEeSwdG Gable Tostee, 30, pleaded not guilty in the Queensland state Supreme Court in Brisbane to the murder of 26-year-old Warriena Wright in Gold Coast city in the early hours of Aug. 8, 2014. Tostee and the Lower Hutt woman met for the first time in the tourist center of Surfers Paradise on the night she died. Prosecutor Glen Cash told the jury that Tostee did not throw Wright to her death, but intimidated and threatened her to an extent that she felt the only way to escape was to climb down from his balcony.

Google announced some exciting hardware releases at its #MadeByGoogle event this week, and at these products' core is software that is increasingly focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Recently, Google has made strides at becoming an AI-first organization and immersing virtual reality into users' daily lives; marketers should take note of Google's movement in order to begin fully leveraging their location data today. Artificial Intelligence Consumers expect answers to their questions and accurate, locally-relevant results from their mobile devices and personal assistants. CEO Sundar Pichai predicted that the world will move from being mobile-first to AI-first in the near future. Google is acutely aware of the need for a personalized user experience, which is why the goal is to "build a personal Google for each and every user."

Google is about to launch its new artificial intelligence and personal assistant. However, consumers should stay aware in using this kind of technology. The form of this Artificially Intelligent personal assistant is a voice-activated speaker that enables a user to get a dinner reservation, remind them things such as a sheduled flight or playing his or her favorite music. Even if this particular device makes life easier, it also provides the company with an uncontrollable access to human patterns, as well as the preferences that may be crucial to the next stage of AI. An AI agent, when integrated in a personal assistant, which a lot of companies are developing lately, could create an impact to humanity itself.

Last night at dinner, a tech-industry pal of mine was trying to puzzle out why the term "artificial intelligence" had suddenly become the in-vogue buzzword of the month. I pointed out that Marc Benioff has telegraphed that an A/I-like thing called Einstein will be the centerpiece of his Dreamforce keynote. That still didn't satisfy him. "Why artificial intelligence?" he demanded. "Well, first off, we're going with artificial intelligence because we don't need artificial stupidity – there's already plenty of natural stupidity," I said.

It's one that Alexa told me last week while I was reviewing the new Echo Dot. That's the thing -- however intelligent your AI might be, that doesn't mean it's got a good sense of humor. To really set itself apart from the likes of Alexa and Siri, the next great artificially intelligent assistant is going to need some better material. For its part, Google is looking to step up its new Assistant's game with writers who have honed their skills with gigs at some beloved places All of this is part of a bid to move the products from simple Q&A'bots to the kind of thing a user might actually form an honest to goodness emotional connection with, as though Her weren't enough of a cautionary tale already. According The Wall Street Journal's vaguely ominously titled article Your Next Friend Could Be a Robot, Google Home has already picked up some folks from places like The Onion and Pixar, somewhat echoing Anki's recent hiring spree for its adorable upcoming robot, Cozmo.

A new artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant that helps people on the Autism spectrum organize their lives and stay employed will be available in iOS and Android app stores next month, according to Identifor CEO Cuong Do. Do was one of more than a dozen speakers at the Intelligent Assistants Conference, a two-day event held Sept. 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Called Companion, the app includes a virtual assistant named Abby. Abby is designed to identify an individual's interests and needs and to support a person on the Autism spectrum throughout the day. The virtual assistant uses artificial intelligence to learn the routines of users and keep their work, school, and social life on track.

As Google Home gets closer to launch, the AI assistant is not only getting smarter, but also a little more friendly and -- hopefully -- a whole lot funnier. As the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mims notes in a piece about friendly AI like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, Alphabet's big play for the space includes hiring up comedy writing alumni of Pixar and The Onion. While none of the major AI assistants on the market today or coming soon are truly "artificial intelligence" (that is: the device itself doesn't actually understand the conversation) people have a natural tendency to form an emotional connection with the little robot voice in the kitchen speaker. So, subtle improvements like a witty joke or unexpected bit of humor can go a long way to improving the user experience, especially as voice and conversation becomes the interface itself. Although Siri and Alexa already have a few jokes in their repertoire, they tend to be pretty bad and definitely don't have quite the same punch as the topical humor of "America's Finest News Source."

Perhaps Samsung has more pressing matters to address, and that's why we never received an official release on the ArtPC Pulse, a cylindrical desktop PC that's now available for pre-order on Amazon. But if you're interested in computers with modern art aspirations, check out the product page and consider, well, what it all means. Looking much like HP's Pavilion Wave (minus the Wave's more tasteful fabric covering), the ArtPC Pulse stands 10.7 inches tall, and is designed with a full metal body and circular lighting. You also get 360-degree omni-directional Harmon Kardon audio, suggesting hints of Amazon Echo and Google Home. The Amazon listing advertises removable expansion modules, and notes that an optional 1TB hard drive module is available separately, though it's unclear exactly how the modular system works. Nevertheless, the 1,200 version of the PC comes with a 2.7GHz sixth-gen Core i5, a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and USB-C and HDMI ports.

Last week, Microsoft took the unusual step of placing its Cortana and Bing product teams inside the same organization as Microsoft Research. The new Microsoft AI and Research Group will be led by computer vision pioneer and executive vice president Harry Shum, whose 20-year Microsoft career involves leading Bing's search efforts from 2007 through 2013 and helping launch Microsoft Research China. We asked Shum how this new organization will benefit Microsoft's digital assistant in the following interview, which has been edited for length and clarity. The language of the blog post announcing the formation of Microsoft's new AI division, together with how Satya Nadella has characterized it, suggests that Microsoft thinks it's in a space race of sorts when it comes to artificial intelligence. I just feel that the timing's right to go big on AI.