The bathroom of the future has been revealed at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, which predicts the augmentation of skincare and toileting with smart tech. Among the devices debuting at the Las Vegas-based show is a mirror that scans your face, a personalised cosmetic dispenser and a smart scale disguised as a bath mat. Meanwhile, Amazon's Alexa has truly arrived in the bathroom, appearing in conventional fittings from toilets to shower-heads. With their latest product, L'Oréal is bringing to the bathroom of the future the level of beauty personalisation normally reserved for high-end salons. The artificial intelligence-powered Perso device -- which stands at 6.5 inches (16.5 centimetres) tall -- uses a four-step process to deliver at-home cosmetics and skincare tailored to the user that are further refined as time goes by.

Artificial intelligence (AI) looks to be the most disruptive class of technologies in driving digital business forward during the next decade. Yet, even amongst the most tech-savvy professionals, there is divided-opinion over what AI can or cannot be defined as, and what it can and can't achieve. The most exciting aspect of applying AI in the legal profession lies in the automation of repetitive and straightforward tasks, like eDiscovery or judicial bill review, while enabling human experts to improve results beyond what machines or people could do alone. This combination allows for enhanced productivity while driving significant time and resource savings. This piece will clarify what AI is, how it's being used today, and how it can improve legal operations -- now and in the future.

Do you ever feel as if your voice assistants – whether Siri, Alexa, or Google – don't understand you? You might repeat your question a little slower, a little louder, but eventually you'll get the information you were asking for read back to you in the pleasing but lifeless tones of your voice-activated assistant. That's the question facing many of the 3 million people in the United States who stutter, plus the thousands of others who have impaired speech not limited to stuttering, and many are feeling left out. "When this stuff first started coming out, I was all over it," said Jacquelyn Joyce Revere, a screenwriter from Los Angeles who stutters. "In LA, I need GPS all the time, so this seemed like a more convenient way to live the life I want to live."

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) typically signals the arrival of new smart home appliances, and this year is certainly no exception. To this end, Moen today debuted a voice-activated faucet and water detector in its growing U by Moen product line, complementing its digital shower system that recently gained support for Google Assistant. The family flagship -- the U by Moen Smart Faucet -- lets users start and stop water flow with their voice. They're also able to perform other tasks through digital assistants, including Alexa and Google Assistant, or take advantage of the wave sensor to turn the water off with a simple hand gesture. The LED built into the wave sensor changes color from blue to purple to red to indicate when the water is heating or cooling, while a handle on the side of the faucet offers manual control over temperature.

In order to keep pace and be a disruptor in this digital customer experience battlefield, you should consider tapping into artificial intelligence. Machines and algorithms have become increasingly smart, to an extent that they can pick up the slack and speed up different business processes. In this guest post, Qeedle's Michael Deane shares some of the most effective ways AI-based automation tools can help you wow your customers. No matter whether there's a potential client who has a couple of questions about your product or an existing one, who needs their issue solved, you need to act quickly. Putting your customers on hold until one of your customer service agents is available can be highly detrimental to your conversion and retention rate.

Natural language programming is a promising approach to enable end users to instruct new tasks for intelligent agents. However, our formative study found that end users would often use unclear, ambiguous or vague concepts when naturally instructing tasks in natural language, especially when specifying conditionals. Existing systems have limited support for letting the user teach agents new concepts or explaining unclear concepts. In this paper, we describe a new multi-modal domain-independent approach that combines natural language programming and programming-by-demonstration to allow users to first naturally describe tasks and associated conditions at a high level, and then collaborate with the agent to recursively resolve any ambiguities or vagueness through conversations and demonstrations. Users can also define new procedures and concepts by demonstrating and referring to contents within GUIs of existing mobile apps. We demonstrate this approach in PUMICE, an end-user programmable agent that implements this approach. A lab study with 10 users showed its usability.

Microsoft made bold moves this year to position its voice assistant Cortana for enterprise customers, analyst Raul Castanon-Martinez said, and is uniquely poised to overtake competitors Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the workplace. Castanon-Martinez's firm 451 Research estimates voice user interfaces and digital assistants are among the top technologies organizations will adopt in the next two years – and Microsoft is in the best position to gain their business, he said. "Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant dominate the market on the consumer side, but Microsoft has a leg up in the enterprise, given its dominant position with its productivity and collaboration product portfolios," Castanon-Martinez said. Competition in the workplace is the latest development in the relationship between Alexa and Cortana. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year said the company no longer sees Cortana as a competitor to Amazon's Alexa.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to have a more profound impact on humanity than electricity or fire, according to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai. In the manufacturing business heavy investments are being made in AI. It is predicted to affect every step within the supply chain process in future, enabling more efficient procurement activities than ever before. Numerous vendors already claim to operate with this intelligent technology. But the reigning buzzword is not always understood, used and promoted correctly, which leads to confusion both by buyers and sellers.

You can't keep the big tech companies out of the news, can you? Smart home devices is one of the niches where they have been battling to gain supremacy -- Amazon's Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod are all popular smart home devices. Despite the involvement of these tech giants among other major players, Smart home tech adoption has been slow so far. In my opinion, one of the biggest hindrances in this regard has been the privacy concerns emanating from the use of such smart home technology, like smart speakers. Amazon, Google & Apple -- all three have been previously embroiled in controversies where they were involved in privacy breach of the customers using their devices.

While voice-based digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Assistant are becoming increasingly common at home – and smartphones and wearables can be used handsfree via speech – the use of voice in the workplace is just getting started. That's likely to change in 2020 and beyond. More efficient employees, "smarter" voice-based assistants, easier ways of completing routine tasks and a digital experience in the office that matches what's used at home. A survey by 451 Research in 2019 indicated that voice UIs and digital assistants are among the most disruptive technologies for enterprises (IoT and AI are the top two), with four in 10 respondents planning to adopt voice technology within 24 months. "I expect 2020 will be the year when voice user interfaces will become prevalent in the workplace," said Raúl Castañón-Martínez, a senior analyst at 451 Research.