In the near future, you'll be able to launch and navigate Android and iOS apps using Alexa voice commands. Today, Amazon released a bunch of new developer tools. The most interesting might be Alexa for Apps, which allows developers to add Alexa functions to their Android and iOS apps. Amazon has tested the tool with companies like TikTok, Uber, Yellow Pages and Sonic. So already, you can ask Alexa to start your TikTok recording or open the Sonic app so you can check the menu.

Salesforce has quietly shuttered Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills as it shifts focus towards its newly released Salesforce Anywhere app. The Einstein Voice Assistant first launched in beta last year. It's an extension of the company's Einstein Voice platform and allowed users to interact with the Salesforce platform via a mobile app or smart speaker device. Salesforce claimed the AI helper was more advanced than other digital assistants on the market, such as Alexa and Cortana, as it could be taught to recognise a company's specific jargon and acronyms. Einstein Voice Skills, which debuted in beta last November, enabled developers and admins can build custom voice-powered apps for employees to replace any type of manual data entry or manual Salesforce navigation.

The potential for the Internet of Things to lead to distortion in market competition is troubling European Union lawmakers who have today kicked off a sectoral inquiry. They're aiming to gather data from hundreds of companies operating in the smart home and connected device space -- via some 400 questionnaires, sent to companies big and small across Europe, Asia and the US -- using the intel gleaned to feed a public consultation slated for early next year when the Commission will also publish a preliminary report. In a statement on the launch of the sectoral inquiry today, the European Union's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said the risks to competition and open markets linked to the data collection capabilities of connected devices and voice assistants are clear. The aim of the exercise is therefore to get ahead of any data-fuelled competition risks in the space before they lead to irreversible market distortion. "One of the key issues here is data. Voice assistants and smart devices can collect a vast amount of data about our habits. And there's a risk that big companies could misuse the data collected through such devices, to cement their position in the market against the challenges of competition. They might even use their knowledge of how we access other services to enter the market for those services and take it over," said Vestager.

AI isn't the end-all-be-all when it comes to conversational experiences like Amazon's Alexa. In fact, manual solutions to problems are sometimes superior to automated, AI-driven fixes. That's according to Amazon Alexa AI director of research science Janet Slifka, who spoke during a session today at VentureBeat's Transform 2020 conference. "If someone calls customer service and says something to the effect, 'Alexa doesn't understand me,' in many cases, we can be faster to the customer with a manual fix," Slifka said, describing her team's work in triage. "In some cases, it's almost required when you need words to enter the lexicon. You're probably not going to wait until you rebuilt and deploy a statistical model when a new word gains prominence, like'Brexit.'"

Google Assistant users in India using KaiOS feature phones will now have access to Google Lens, a year after the capability first expanded to India. Now, anyone who owns a feature phone or other device built on the KaiOS operating system will be able to use Google Assistant to identify any text in the image and read it out loud or translate it to another language. Google first debuted Lens three years ago in the U.S. and brought it to India in 2019. Lens combines machine vision to see any text in an image, then applies the voice AI to read the words out loud in the original language or any number of other tongues. It can even define the words in the food label, graffiti, or, as in the example image, a street sign.

Conversational interfaces are powered primarily by natural language processing (NLP), and a key subset of NLP is natural language understanding (NLU). While NLU is a subset of NLP, NLP doesn't always involve NLU. The terms NLP and NLU are often used interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings. Developers need to understand the difference between natural language processing and natural language understanding so they can build successful conversational applications. Natural language processing is a subset of AI, and it involves programming computers to process massive volumes of language data.

TierPoint, a leading provider of secure, connected cloud and data center solutions at the edge of the internet, announced it will host the third annual BraveIT conference as a virtual event, the morning of September 16 and afternoon of September 17, with title sponsor support from Dell Technologies, Nutanix, and VMware. The opening keynote will be delivered by Tom Gruber, who led the design team responsible for Siri, the intelligent assistant. The closing keynote will be delivered by Dan Doctoroff, formerly the Deputy Mayor of New York City and now CEO of Sidewalk Labs, a leader in the development of smart cities. And, back by popular demand from last year's conference, Major General Brett Williams, USAF (Ret.) will help enterprise teams assess their Cyber IQ. Tom Gruber was cofounder, CTO, and head of design for the team that created Siri in 2011, bringing AI to the mainstream user experience.

One of the more useful features you can access through Assistant on Android and iOS is Google Lens translations. The tool allows you to snap a photo of something in the real world and let Lens transcribe the text into a language you can read. Google is now making that functionality available on KaiOS phones in India. KaiOS, if you need a refresher, is an operating system for feature phones that includes select Google services. As of last year, the software was running on more than 80 million devices globally.

The Google smart display in your kitchen or bedroom is perfect for watching YouTube TV, Hulu, or casting Disney, but up until now, it hasn't been able to play video from the most popular streaming service on the planet: Netflix. Google just announced that its Google Nest Hub and Hub Max will be the first smart displays to support Netflix. Google says that Netflix on the Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max will start rolling out today, and it will be supported anywhere that Netflix and the two Google smart displays are available. To watch Netflix on your Nest Hub or Hub Max, just go to the Google Home app and link your Netflix account. You can do so by tapping the " " button in the top-left corner of the Google Home interface and selecting Video under the Add services heading.

Jasco's new Enbrighten in-wall Zigbee smart lighting controls take some of the guesswork out of home wiring, an experience that can be daunting for the uninitiated. While the black wire is typically the "line" wire (the one bringing electricity to the switch), and the red wire is typically the "load" wire (the one carrying electricity to the light fixture), you're just as likely to discover that the line and load wires are both black. Reverse the line and load wires and the switch won't work. A voltage tester will tell you which wire is which, but since most people don't own one of those tools, they fall back to trial and error: 50/50 isn't bad odds, right? Wire up one of Jasco's Enbrighten in-wall dimmer or switches and Jasco's SimpleWire technology will automatically detect which wire is line and which is load, rendering those terminals interchangeable.