Is the Future of Smartphones a Walkie-Talkie That Talks Back?

Artificial intelligence is creeping into our smartphones in small, subtle ways. Google's Pixel 3, announced Tuesday, can answer robocalls on your behalf thanks to Google's Duplex technology and Google Assistant. Meanwhile, Android P, the latest operating system for Google's phones, can learn from how you interact with phone alerts to suggest stopping notifications for particular apps, reducing the amount of unnecessary intrusions your phone makes into your daily life. But there's another new phone in the pipeline that takes these kinds of developments further. By pairing them with more robust voice control, it may help fill in the picture of how we'll talk to the next generation of smartphones--and what they'll learn about us in order to talk back.