We've seen a big rise in apps and bots, and a lot of them have something in common besides being based on artificial intelligence and machine learning: many of them are written first (or only) for English-speaking users. Now one of the more interesting personal assistant apps created first for Spanish speakers is announcing funding: Sherpa, a personal assistant app based out of Spain, has raised 6.5 million in a Series A round. Xabi Uribe- Etxebarria, the founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that the funding will be used to continue building out more functionality in the app, as well as on more hires and to expand the reach of the app as it gears up for a much bigger Series B and eventual expansion to other languages like English and Portuguese. Sherpa is filling an interesting niche in the market that most English speakers might not even realise exists: many of the interesting evolutions in AI and natural language processing have been focused on English applications, leaving large swathes of the non-English speaking world without the same kinds of services. Uribe- Etxebarria notes that while some apps do have Spanish versions they are basic.

Noida, India and London, United Kingdom, May 27th 2016 – HCL Technologies, a leading global IT services company, has been named the winner of the Best Innovation in Natural Language Processing (NLP) award at the AIconics Awards. The AIconics are the world's only independently judged awards celebrating the drive, innovation and hard work in the international Artificial Intelligence Community organised by AIBusiness and was hosted during The AI Summit on the 5th May. HCL was also named as a finalist in the Best Intelligent Assistant category, which showcases companies making ground-breaking advancements in virtual assistants and advanced voice/text recognition capabilities. This year's awards featured 5 categories, recognising industry leaders across a broad spectrum of AI technologies. In winning the Best Innovation in NLP award, the AIconics Awards judges recognised that HCL is ahead of the curve when it comes to NLP, at a time when many businesses are looking towards productivity and automation of roles and tasks.

AI & deep learning are powering interactive messaging services known as chatbots & virtual assistants, which use conversational interfaces to create deeper, more personalised one-to-one customer experiences. The Chatbot Track will explore the technical advancements in deep learning, NLP & predictive intelligence to create conversational self-learning bots for messaging platforms, healthcare, personalised services & more.

On May 10, the world-class admin behind John Chambers's success was honored with one of the top awards in her field: Debbie Gross received the Colleen Barrett Award for Administrative Excellence. Clearly, Debbie is a force. This CNBC story gives us a peek into her life keeping John at the top of his game. People are rightly saying she's a role model for next-generation administrators. But what people aren't saying is that some next-gen admins are made not of flesh and blood like Debbie but of compute cycles.

May 27--As technologists race to invent the next big thing after the smartphone, many have overlooked what is starting to seem obvious: That the human voice is a powerful, perhaps the most powerful, mechanism for controlling the world around us. And, more importantly, speaking is a behavior that doesn't require a user manual. Now, Amazon, Google and Apple are speeding toward a not-too distant future when your voice will dictate commands to a personal assistant, powered by artificial intelligence, and ultimately supplant your PC and phone for most quotidian computing purposes. In other words, your voice -- not a screen -- will become the primary interface for accessing the Internet, and even controlling your home or car. "The entire Silicon Valley startup community was more enamored over virtual reality and augmented reality, and in the process completely overlooked the transformative nature of voice-first technology," said Brian Roemmele, a Temecula-based researcher and consultant in voice-based technologies and online commerce.

Alexa's gradual procession toward ubiquity is proof that the Echo speaker isn't the heart of Amazon's voice assistant, it's the server farms that run it. Now you can tap into Alexa with the device sitting on your desk or lap thanks to Echosim.io, a website that replicates the experience of talking to Jeff Bezos' smart speakers. Sign in with your Amazon info, give the website permission to access your microphone and you're good to go.

"I am six feet tall and my hazel eyes reflect my olive skin... I seek to connect with women who are romantics at heart… that are open to the possibility of true love". These are lines from the online dating profile of Robert Torres - a man who is serving four concurrent life sentences for aggravated sexual assault, including the rape of Texas nurse Lori Williams at knifepoint 20 years ago, while her two daughters slept in a room nearby. His other victims included a 63-year-old woman and her 16-year-old granddaughter. The advert contains no mention of any of these crimes.

LOS ANGELES - This week we dived into everything from the potential dark side of artificial intelligence, to making sense of Twitter's soon-to-change 140 character limits on the #TalkingTech podcast. I ranted about Uber's ever-increasing surge pricing, and offered recommendations on how to deal with them, and talked to folks from Dell Computer about how Sony used 40 of their super-PCs to animate scenes in the new Angry Birds movie. These powerful machines could render a 30 second scene in an hour that would take 18 years on a standard computer, Dell insisted. For our longform fans, our Weekend Listen collection starts with the popularity of the connected speaker, like Amazon's Echo and coming soon, Google Home. How do we feel about having our kitchen conversations monitored?

Apple now has the tech in place to give its digital assistant a big boost thanks to a UK-based company called VocalIQ it bought last year. In fact, it was so impressive that Apple bought VocalIQ before the company could finish and release its smartphone app. After the acquisition, Apple kept most of the VocalIQ team and let them work out of their Cambridge office and integrate the product into Siri. Before Apple bought the company, VocalIQ tested its product against Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, and the results were impressive. Users asked each AI questions using normal language, not the robotic commands you're used to using with digital assistants.

At a recent financial technology conference I was invited to meet Cleo, a friendly automated spirit living within the confines of an iPhone interface that offers financial advice to those who chose to activate her. Described as an "AI assistant for your money," she playfully answered text message queries about bank balances, spending, and budgeting. Despite the futuristic jargon and growing wave of hype around such bots, automated assistants are not really that new. Our world is full of simple bots, like the automatic hand dryer in a public restroom that jets hot air if you trigger its sensor. By now many of us have experience with some that attempt to mimic basic personality, like the tinny voice of the supermarket self-service checkout machine as it coldly attempts to replicate one half of a stilted, human conversation. There are two new trends emerging, though.