On Monday, August 22, Microsoft Corp. has announced the acquisition of intelligent scheduling startup Genee, as part of the company's efforts to embed artificial intelligence in its digital experiences. According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft's Genee acquisition is part of the company's strategy to use artificial intelligence (AI) in order to improve the digital experience of its customers. The purchasing of the startup company and its app Genee will be used by Microsoft mainly for enhancing the intelligent capabilities of its Office apps suite. At the moment the details of the acquisition are not known, as the deal's terms were not yet disclosed. The vice president of Microsoft's Outlook and Office 365 business, Rajesh Jha, explained in a blog post that Genee is a startup that provided a virtual assistant for scheduling appointments and the acquisition will help building new Office 365 productivity services and capabilities.

South Africa's CLEVVA is making AI-powered virtual advisors a thing Artificial intelligence start-up Octo.ai raises 200000

By 2020, we will all have an Invisible Friend. Whether we call it Siri, Alexa, OK Google, or a chatbot, we are entering a world where an intelligence assistant recognizes our "intent." This could spawn a massive consumer behavior shift, as AI-influenced bots would mean far fewer Google searches by humans. This invisible friend would learn from its mistakes, maintain context, and continue to expand into new areas of expertise through judicious use of Knowledge Management (see below landscape). Although 2020 is our destination, now is a time of heightened activity among the companies that provide the elements of Intelligent Assistance.

Back in June, reports came out that Amazon plans to launch a 10-a-month standalone music service similar to Spotify, Apple Music and other subscription-based options out there. According to Recode, though, the tech titan is also gearing up to introduce a second, cheaper offering that will only cost you 5 a month. It will only work with the company's Alexa-powered Echo speakers. Other than that, Recode says it's just like your typical paid music service: you can choose what to play, and you won't get interrupted by ads. Amazon's Echo speakers can already play music from various sources, including Spotify, Pandora and its very own Prime Music.

Microsoft has acquired Genee, a startup that provided a virtual assistant for scheduling appointments. The deal, announced Tuesday, will bring the Genee team into the Microsoft fold and put them to work on bringing intelligence into Office 365. Genee's service lets users loop in an artificial intelligence assistant that could interpret sentences like "set up lunch at some point this week" and turn them into calendar appointments. Acquiring Genee is part of Microsoft's ongoing crusade to build intelligent productivity software and services using AI. The company has focused on that area under the tenure of CEO Satya Nadella, with features like Office Delve, which finds documents shared within an organization that are relevant to a user, and Focused Inbox in Outlook, which filters unimportant email into a separate tab so it's not cluttering a user's experience. The Genee service will be shutting down on Sept. 1 as part of the deal.

Just three days after releasing iOS 10 beta 7, Apple is rolling its equivalent beta for macOS Sierra this Monday. The new Mac OS beta is the seventh version for developers and the sixth version for public beta testers. According to Apple Insider, there are still no specific details about what macOS Sierra beta 7 brings, but it is expected to clean up serious bugs and performance issues found in the previous betas to polish the new operating system ahead of its launch sometime this fall. Based on the previous betas, macOS Sierra is going to introduce new features to Apple's Mac devices. First and foremost, the new OS is going to bring the Cupertino firm's intelligent assistant for the iPhones and the iPad tablets, Siri, to Macs.

Welcome to Essential Politics, our daily feed on California government and politics news. We've also got a brand new bill tracking page for some of this month's biggest state Capitol debates. Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) trotted out a high-tech prop to speak against a bill on Monday: Siri, the electronic personal assistant on Apple iPhones. Speaking against a measure by Assemblyman Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) that requires online entertainment subscription services to remove actors' ages and birth dates upon request, Olsen used her iPhone to demonstrate such information was readily available. When prompted, Siri served up the ages of Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

It's hard to imagine 2016 Presidential election candidates trying to figure out how to use an AI personal assistant, much less lead us into a new era of a digital solutions economy powered by AI. For the last 50 years, technology has been the fundamental driving force for the growth of our economy. My grandparents, who were born in Europe saw the advent of truly life altering technologies at that time such as automobiles, electricity and refrigeration. Over the years being a CTO and venture capitalist, I've recognized that the rate of change and innovation have been accelerating – in particular over the past decade it seems. Facebook, a social networking service was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard roommates in 2004.

A user demonstrates the look and feel of Windows 10 operating system for smartphones and at the Microsoft stall at the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany. SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft has made yet another acquisition designed to retool the former software king into an enterprise solutions leader. The Redmond, Wash-based company announced Monday that it was buying virtual-assistant start-up Genee for an undisclosed sum, according to blog posts by Microsoft and Genee executives. The move comes on the heels of Microsoft's 26 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn, a bold chess move by CEO Satya Nadella as he aims to make his company's cloud-based Office 365 platform ubiquitous in the business environment. Genee makes software that uses artificial intelligence to schedule appointments.

Singer Barbra Streisand doesn't have a great history when it comes to shaping her representation on new technology, but she has now scored at least one major victory. Streisand was irked at the fact that Siri, Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone and iPad users, was not pronouncing her name correctly. So she called Apple CEO Tim Cook directly, and he promised he would fix the problem. Siri will apparently soon say "Streisand" without pronouncing the second "s" hard, like a "z." "She pronounces my name wrong," Streisand told NPR. "'Streisand' with a soft's' like sand on a beach--I've been saying this for my whole career." "I called the head of Apple, Tim Cook, and he delightfully agreed to have Siri change the pronunciation of my name finally, with the next update on September 30. Let's see if that happens, because I will be thrilled."