Then you might have a hard time getting those right swipes. For almost two months, dating app Bumble has been letting users put special election filters onto their profile to let potential matches know where they stand on the political spectrum. Aside from Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz (who has since dropped out of the race), as well as the overarching Democratic or Republican filters, the options also include fictional candidates like Frank Underwood from "House of Cards," Kanye West and, naturally, pizza. For users who couldn't care less about the election, there was also a #IDGAF filter. Bumble offered its 5 million users the option to choose from these 10 filters, and though using them was not required, the company told The Huffington Post that 1.8 million filters were swiped on daily.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle natural language queries on a smartphone. Today the pair showed off their newest creation, Viv, a next generation AI assistant that they have been developing in stealth mode for the last four years. The goal was to create a better version of Siri, one that connected to a multitude of services, instead of routinely shuffling queries off to a basic web search. During a 20-minute demo onstage at Disrupt NYC, Viv flawlessly handled a number of complex requests, not just in terms of comprehension, but by connecting with third-party merchants to purchase goods and book reservations. Viv's approach is much closer to Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third-party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase goods or book reservations.

No one knew what to make of the Amazon Echo when it first debuted. Originally described as a Siri-like, tube-shaped home assistant, how could this glorified speaker be more useful than similar phone features? But in its year-plus of existence, the Echo has been quietly taking over households everywhere. Amazon hasn't released official sales information, but we can deduce the device has experienced some success based on more than Alec Baldwin's endorsement. According to Slice Intelligence, the Echo's sales grew an average of 342 percent during Q3 and Q4 of 2015.

Dag Kittlaus wants you to imagine buying a consumer electronic device in the near future. You take it out the box, plug it into the wall, unlock it with a biometric thumbprint, and then the device comes to life. "Hi, nice to meet you," it says, before walking you through its setup via natural conversation. That scenario isn't too far away, according to Kittlaus, who used today's TechCrunch Disrupt in Brooklyn as part of a coming-out-party for Viv, a new voice-activated digital assistant. After three round of venture capital (VC) funding and more than a year in development, Viv is ready for primetime.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, who created the software behind Apple's Siri, have spent the last four years building a new digital assistant: Viv. At TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday, Kittlaus finally demonstrated Viv to the public -- and it makes Siri look antiquated in comparison. Let's first get one thing out of the way: Siri is pretty awful to use. Much of the time, asking Siri to do anything feels like you're just speaking into a Google search. It only has a few functions it can do well, and feels closed.

Amazon's digital assistant, the Echo, next to a can of Pringles potato chips, whose size it is often compared to. SAN FRANCISCO -- The smartphone's grip over our every moment may be slowly loosening as digital assistants leap into speakers and other devices that bring the Internet into the public sphere. So far, the field belongs to Amazon's Echo and its voice-activated assistant Alexa. An early hit since it became widely available a year ago, it is still in only a sliver of homes. But its interactions, distinctly different from smartphone use, have caused academics to take notice.

All of those nifty Google voice commands are one of the major strengths of using an Android phone. But they're even more powerful if you enable "Ok Google" detection from any screen. This means whether your phone is locked or you're using another app, you can just speak a question or command to put Google's search power to use. To start, launch the Google app and open Settings Ok Google detection. Next you'll be prompted to say, "Ok Google" three times so the app can learn how your voice sounds.

Rob Marvin is the Assistant Editor of PCMag's Business section. He was previously an editor at SD Times covering software, managing social media, and writing narrative-driven features on any offbeat story or trend he could find. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment blogging on movies and TV, reads epic fantasy and historical fiction, and enjoys having his heart routinely broken by the...

Digital personal assistants have been with us for quite a few years already, and this is valid for Android smartphone users as well as fans of iOS and/or Windows Phone. Needless to say, the biggest players in this segment are Google Now, Siri, and Cortana. These personal assistants are present on their respective operating systems out-of-the-box, and a relatively large number of third-party digital assistants are also available for download, some being more powerful and successful than others. However, as clever as the majority of personal assistants may have become, due to a variety of limitations they have yet to completely change the way we interact with our smartphones. But with the passage of time, personal assistants could become more relevant to smartphone users, and to prove this during a recent tech event in New Your City, Dag Kittlaus – one of the developers behind Apple's Siri – took the veil off "Viv", or what looks to be the most advanced personal assistant created to date.

As someone who recently bought--and was quickly enchanted by--Amazon's Echo connected speaker, I've been thinking of ways to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more rooms of the house. Of course, I could just buy another Echo speaker, or some other Alexa-infused device such as the Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, or Invoxia's Triby. But what if I could just use my smartphone to access Alexa instead? Or better yet, what if I could repurpose an old smartphone to act like an Echo full-time? Such is the promise of a couple new smartphone apps that have Amazon's Alexa assistant built-in.