One of China's most popular smartphone assistants, HTC's Hidi, has ambitions to serve as the voice and personality of countless home robots. The company behind Hidi, Turing Robot, supplies voice recognition and natural-language processing technology for a growing array of hardware, including car systems developed by Bosch and home appliances from Haier. Now the company has developed an operating system for service robots. So far, Turing Robot provides the voice--and brains--for several popular Chinese home entertainment robots. Supplying the intelligence for home robots could be a shrewd move.

Apple's Siri made a big splash when the wisecracking digital assistant debuted on the iPhone five years ago. But as other tech giants jockey to build intelligent "chat bots" and voice-controlled home systems capable of more challenging artificial-intelligence (AI) feats, Siri at times no longer seems cutting edge. On Monday, Apple is expected to demonstrate an upgrade to Siri's smarts as it kicks off its annual software conference. It is a potentially momentous time for the company; sales of its flagship iPhone are slowing, and AI is emerging as a key tech battleground. Apple, Google, Facebook and others are racing to create digital services that consumers will find indispensable for shopping, chatting, controlling other appliances and simply getting through their daily lives.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) today closed down 1.49, or 1.5%, at 97.34, following the company's developer conference in San Francisco earlier today, and the Street is just now catching up with some research views on the matter. Highlights of the presentations included new features for the company's Apple Watch smartwatch, such as handwriting recognition; enhancements to the iOS software of the iPhone and iPad to allow for integration of third-party apps; and several "machine learning" functions, such as an ability to automatically have an iPhone perform image recognition tasks on one's photos collection. There were no new hardware announcements, despite some users pining for updates to the MacBook Pro laptop line. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster reiterates an Overweight rating, and a 153 price target, writing that "the event was largely incremental and a warm-up for new products in the fall." "The two biggest announcements were opening up Siri and Messaging to iOS developers and adding Apple Pay to the browser (Mac and iOS)," he believes.

Easier to use and bigger emojis, facial recognition in photos, and iPhones and iPads that will be able to understand your conversations and predict words you will use are just some of the new updates Apple has announced. Apple is introducing more artificial intelligence as part of the iOS 10 update, revealed at their World Wide Development Conference (WWDC) in San Fransisco. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that should lift humanity" and that the update across Apple's four platforms was a "huge moment" for the company. Siri, the techology giant's virtual assistant, will now be able to predict the words you will use in a text conversation. Siri will also be able to find faces in your photo albums.

Back in December, when Slack integrations launched, I wrote Clippy's Revenge about the potential of "smart messaging" to become a new platform. Since then, big players have done much to nurture that possibility -- as if on some secret, jointly agreed-upon master schedule. This looks like the battleground of the next tech war, and all eyes are on Apple this week. But how much of the bot craze is hype, and what's worth paying attention to? The frenetic energy around this emerging ecosystem is well-placed, but often confusing. After meeting with more than 50 founders in this space, I'd like to offer a structured explanation of the emerging Conversational Economy, and propose some opportunities (for both big companies and startups).

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday, June 13, in San Francisco with one of the company's signature product keynotes. Many expect Apple to announce big new features for Siri, its AI-powered assistant. These include new tools that would finally allow other companies to make their apps and information accessible via Siri, according to a May report from Amir Efrati at The Information. Opening up Siri -- if true -- would be a big step for Apple, which has tightly controlled Siri's capabilities since its debut almost five years ago. Select third-party information and features, such as Yelp restaurant reviews and OpenTable bookings, have long been available via specific partnerships.

Apple's biggest move was to open up the talking iPhone assistant to third-party developers for inclusion in their apps, paving the way for users to hail a ride from Uber [UBER.UL] or send a message with Tencent's ( Tencent Holdings Ltd) WeChat using voice commands. Experts in artificial intelligence applauded the move as an important step forward, in part because the more people use an artificial intelligence system, the better it becomes. But some wondered why Apple had not made Siri an open platform much sooner, noting that competing products including Amazon.com's ( Amazon.com, Inc.) Alexa, Microsoft's ( Microsoft Corporation) Cortana and the Google ( Alphabet Inc) app are already open to developers. "Is it too little too late?" "Siri is five years old and still trying to learn how to play well with others."

Apple's wisecracking digital assistant Siri could have a big role as the company's annual software conference opens in San Francisco. As voice technology has improved, people are getting more comfortable with services like Siri and the service Google calls "assistant" to interact with online services for entertainment, shopping and the like. A report by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins says nearly two-thirds of U.S. smartphone owners used a voice assistant last year -- more than double the rate in 2013. Even so, many people are still reluctant to use voice-enabled services in public settings, like the office or the street. That makes the home an important battleground.

Analysts are saying that Apple's upcoming updates to its Siri voice assistant should help the company address criticisms that it can't compete on artificial intelligence. Apple is now opening Siri to apps made by other companies, and like Google and Microsoft, it's bringing the digital assistant to desktop and laptop computers. It's also making Siri smarter by using what Apple calls differential privacy. Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy explains it as Apple using non-personal information in aggregate to teach Siri new tricks, then having all the personalization take place on the individual device. It's in contrast to Google's approach of doing everything over the internet -- that is, in the "cloud."

To hold its own against digital assistants from Google, Microsoft and Amazon, Siri needs an IQ boost Last month, Google took the stage in Mountain View, California, to show off improvements to its digital voice assistant. Its signature ability is to have a conversation with it like you would a normal person.