Personal digital assistants are on the rise (and they want to talk)

NEW YORK--You may already be on a first-name basis with Siri, Cortana, Google or Alexa, the Fab Four of voice-activated digital assistants. Now that relationship is expanding from one device (typically a smartphone) to many. The major tech companies are putting these digital assistants, powered by artificial intelligence algorithms and activated by voice, into multiple products. And the field is about to get a new name, with the founders of Siri poised to unleash an AI-driven virtual assistant called Viv at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Brooklyn this week. "Speech is no longer a parlor trick, and [it's] more useful day to day," said Scott Huffman, Google vice president of engineering for search.