At long last, it appears the Siri virtual assistant is making it to Mac desktops. MacRumors reports that sources close to Apple have shared screenshots that show Siri icons appearing both in the dock and menu bar of early versions of Mac OS X 10.12, due in the fall of this year. The site did not have any other evidence at the time beyond what its sources were telling it. Macrumors says the images come from a source that provided "reliable information about Apple's software plans in the past." Apple is widely expected to unveil Mac OS X 10.12 at WWDC next month.

Google, playing catch-up with Amazon's surprise hit Echo speaker, unveiled a rival device called Home that promises even more dazzling artificial intelligence. The Home, slated for release later this year, will be powered by the impressively chatty Google Assistant, a voice-activated rival to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri that Google execs said can better understand human speech and complex queries. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai -- who took the reins of the search giant last year after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created its holding company, Alphabet -- showed off the assistant's abilities at Google's annual I/O developer conference Wednesday in Mountain View, Calif. In addition to showing it ordering movie tickets, arranging travel and answering trivia questions, Pichai demonstrated how the Assistant can answer queries about photographs. It can even group them into surprising categories, like those that show "hugs."

If opening musical numbers are any indication, Google wanted to make sure everyone knew it was going to be a mind-blowing yet quirky day right from the start. After two years holed up in San Francisco's Moscone Center, Google's annual I/O developer conference kicked off outside on Wednesday, in a white-tented amphitheater on the company's campus in Mountain View. To begin, two musicians, placed in what looked like giant crows' nests, played strings that ran the length of the forum, stretching from their perches to the metalwork above the stage where Google CEO Sundar Pichai would soon appear. The tune was a number by Yann Tiersen, whose jaunty French folk music has found a wide and loving audience through films like Amélie. The video that followed took that vibe and gave it a Four Loko.

Google (GOOGL) kicked off its developer conference Wednesday by highlighting its progress with artificial intelligence. CEO Sundar Pichai opened and closed the closely watched event at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters by outlining the Internet giant's research in AI and machine learning. Among the applications Google sees for this technology is teaching computers how to "see" what's in a person's photo, as well as understanding what users are asking a software program to do, rather than simply deciphering spoken language. All of that baseline research, which companies such as Facebook (FB), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) and China's Baidu (BIDU) are also pursuing, today is already being used in Google products in some way, he said. Notably, Pichai explained, Google's focus on AI shows its efforts to move away from its search engine's reliance on links and instead delivering information based on where users and what they have asked for in the past.

Pepper the robot participates in a Japanese ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this year. Its manufacturer, SoftBank Robotics, is opening new offices in San Francisco and releasing a development kit for Android programmers. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Pepper the robot is coming to our shores later this year, and its creators want the help of Android developers to help make it smarter. Japan-based SoftBank Robotics announced Wednesday at Google I/O, the company's annual developer's conference, that it is opening a new Pepper-focused outpost in San Francisco and unveiling an Android SDK, or software development kit, in the hopes of enticing programmers to write code for the robot. "Pepper is ultimately an unfinished product, and we just wanted to incentivize developers to expand the ways in which people can engage with a humanoid robot," says Steve Carlin, vice president of SoftBank Robotics Americas, which has an existing office in Boston.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai had good reason to be excited Wednesday. Pichai, who is probably most often described as "subdued," was unusually energized as he emceed his team through a host of product announcements -- several genuinely impressive. He kicked things off with Google Home, the company's answer to Amazon Echo. Then came Allo and Duo, a pair of messaging apps that look well poised to compete with the likes of WhatsApp and FaceTime. And Android Instant Apps -- apps that download themselves directly from links -- could change the face of mobile, ending the cold war between apps and the mobile web.

You just unveiled your widely anticipated smart home device, Google Home. Like Amazon Echo, it's an always-listening device that can answer queries, check schedules and work with third-party smart home devices, including those from Nest. Dotted around my home are four Nest devices: two Nest Thermostats, a Nest Cam (formerly a Dropcam) and Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector. I can control the thermostats with my Amazon Echo. By the fall, I might be able to get my hands on Google Home and let it access and control these devices. Chromecasts are Internet set-top devices that, unlike Apple TV, don't really sit on top of or beside the TV, they tend to hang off an HDMI port.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Amazon's Jeff Bezos is a Star Trek-loving space geek, but unlike Elon Musk, he's got no plans on for heading to Mars. People haven't really thought this through," he said. Bezos spent 45 minutes in a convivial public conversation at the Washington Post's Transformers Conference in Washington D.C., which was also webcast live. He was interviewed by Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post, which he bought in 2013. After a few jokes about whether or not he'd have a job when the conversation was done, Baron asked Bezos about Amazon's Echo device and its cloud-based voice recognition agent Alexa. The Echo got more competition Wednesday in Mountain View, Calif. Amazon's CEO said the original inspiration for the Echo was the talking computers of Star Trek. While the Echo team is still quite a ways away from reaching that goal, he didn't feel too badly because after all, Star Trek was set more than 250 years in the future. "We still have a couple of centuries, but I don't think we'll need that much time," Bezos said. Bezos said he grew up playing pretend Star Trek every day with his friends when he was in fourth grade in Houston. "We would fight over who got to be Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, and somebody played the computer too.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during Google I/O 2016 at Shoreline Amphitheatre on May 19, 2016 in Mountain View, California. "We're at a seminal moment for AI," Google CEO Sundar Pichai told 7,000 people attending I/O, the tech giant's annual developers conference at a sun-splashed Shoreline Amphitheater, an outdoor concert venue near Google's worldwide headquarters here. Pichai, who has repeatedly stressed the importance of AI and machine learning, anticipates a momentous shift in computing: super-smart machines on every device we use guiding every moment of our days. "We're entering a golden age of machine learning and artificial intelligence," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a public conversation Wednesday at the Washington Post's Transformers Conference in Washington D.C. Google was an early pioneer in artificial intelligence, which drew on its massive data files derived from consumer searches on Google.com. But it's seen its mantle slip after breakthroughs by its rivals, such as Amazon's Echo and Facebook's bot platform.

Thousands of people gathered near Google's headquarters on Wednesday to hear the company's vision for the future. In past years, Google has used its developers conference to unveil all sorts of shiny new toys and services. Not all of them have been smash hits. Google Glass had its big coming out party at IO back in 2012, after all. Google TV was the star of 2010. And remember the Nexus Q, the orb-shaped music player that never even reached the market?