Perceptions of system competence and communicative ability, termed partner models, play a significant role in speech interface interaction. Yet we do not know what the core dimensions of this concept are. Taking a psycholexical approach, our paper is the first to identify the key dimensions that define partner models in speech agent interaction. Through a repertory grid study (N=21), a review of key subjective questionnaires, an expert review of resulting word pairs and an online study of 356 user of speech interfaces, we identify three key dimensions that make up a users' partner model: 1) perceptions toward competence and capability; 2) assessment of human-likeness; and 3) a system's perceived cognitive flexibility. We discuss the implications for partner modelling as a concept, emphasising the importance of salience and the dynamic nature of these perceptions.

Ahead of Sunday's match between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, you can watch the ad Amazon will air during the Super Bowl. Titled Alexa's Body, it features an Amazon employee and the company's new $100 Echo model. Oh, and Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan makes an appearance too. The ad starts with the fictional employee praising the design of Amazon's latest smart speaker. "I literally couldn't imagine a more beautiful vessel for Alexa to be... inside," they say of the 2020 Echo, her train of thought drifting off as a bus pulls up outside, its side plastered with an ad for Jordan's new Prime Video series, Without Remorse.

Apps have taken over dating. Gone is the stigma of using a service like Match.com or OKCupid to find a partner -- nowadays, finding someone via Tinder, Bumble or Hinge is the norm. Swiping mindlessly through potential lovers is so common we now do it whether we're alone or hanging out with friends or even during another date. If you've ever sat down with a friend and asked to go through people on a dating app with them, Searchers is a film for you. If you're one of the lucky people who have never had to use a dating app and are curious about the experience, Searchers is for you.

Ford Motor Co. and Google announced a strategic partnership on Monday that's meant to more quickly modernize the 117-year-old automaker in unique ways and more aggressively use data to drive revenue and improve customer experience. Ford will start exploring this year the use of technology to provide oversight and quality control of factory robotics as well as additional training of United Auto Workers members on the plant floors, while Ford and Lincoln customers will start seeing new driver experiences in the 2023 calendar year. What does this all mean? Ford and Lincoln drivers will have access to voice technology, like Google Assistant, allowing them to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel while multitasking. And Google Maps offers information on real-time traffic, automatic rerouting and lane guidance.

Microsoft has unveiled a raft of new updates for its 365 mobile apps, with new AI and natural language features in Outlook, Teams, Office Lens (now Microsoft Lens) and Office mobile, the company announced. It also introduced a new feature called "micro tasks" that let you do quick forms, polls and more in Office and Teams. For Outlook on iOS users, Microsoft will soon introduce conversational AI technology with Cortana. Microsoft calls the feature its first for "interactive, voice forward assistive experiences that aim to provide helpful ways of organizing your daily life." In a sample video, it showed someone asking "Hey Cortana, play my emails," after which the voice assistant read back a recent message.

Wallbox is looking to make inroads in North America with its first home electric vehicle charger for the region. It created a new version of the Pulsar Plus, which the company has been selling in Europe, for the market. Wallbox says the charger works with all EVs. The features include Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice control, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, charge scheduling and flexible amperage setting. The device is available in two configurations.

In online advertising, recommender systems try to propose items from a list of products to potential customers according to their interests. Such systems have been increasingly deployed in E-commerce due to the rapid growth of information technology and availability of large datasets. The ever-increasing progress in the field of artificial intelligence has provided powerful tools for dealing with such real-life problems. Deep reinforcement learning (RL) that deploys deep neural networks as universal function approximators can be viewed as a valid approach for design and implementation of recommender systems. This paper provides a comparative study between value-based and policy-based deep RL algorithms for designing recommender systems for online advertising. The RecoGym environment is adopted for training these RL-based recommender systems, where the long short term memory (LSTM) is deployed to build value and policy networks in these two approaches, respectively. LSTM is used to take account of the key role that order plays in the sequence of item observations by users. The designed recommender systems aim at maximising the click-through rate (CTR) for the recommended items. Finally, guidelines are provided for choosing proper RL algorithms for different scenarios that the recommender system is expected to handle.

Amazon's new Echo Show 10 (third-generation), the first Alexa device with a motorized swiveling display, is now available for preorder for delivery starting on February 25. The new model, which was announced in September 2020, retails for $249.99 and is available in two colors: charcoal and glacier white. With the Echo Show 10, you can stream your favorite shows, follow along with recipes, call your friends and family, and more. The main draw for the Echo Show 10 is its smart motion. The touch-enabled display and embedded camera rotates atop a round base, which allows the built-in smart technology to keep the camera and screen in your line of sight automatically.

When motion is detected, the Kangaroo Doorbell Camera captures images, creating a two-second GIF-style clip that's delivered quickly to your phone. Instead of capturing videos, the doorbell stitches together GIF-like images when motion is detected or the doorbell is pressed. While Kanagroo's doorbell comes with basic features like motion detection, smart alerts, and night vision it lacks two very common smart doorbell functions: two-way talk and live video. For those reasons, comparing Kangaroo's doorbell to other smart doorbells is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, as it's designed to be a simple smart doorbell with limited features. It's still worth noting that the 70-degree field of view is narrow when compared to the 160-degree angles of other top doorbells we've tested from Nest and Eufy.

Google's latest Chromecast streaming media dongle is a bit different. With a full interface and a remote, the new Chromecast with Google TV costs £59.99 and sits above the basic £30 Chromecast. You can still Google Cast to the new device, but the new flat plastic dongle is more than just a simple receiver, running the full Android TV software similar to the Nvidia Shield or smart TVs from Sony and others. Once plugged in, the new Chromecast is set up using the Google Home app on an Android, iPhone or iPad in about five minutes. Scan the QR code on your TV, log in with the required Google account, and choose some apps to install.