Google is using AI to curate personalized news for smart speakers

Every morning, without fail, I ask my closest smart speaker to play NPR. Clearly, there's much more that a web-connected, voice-controlled speaker could do. And it seems Google has the same idea: the company announced today that it's developing an open audio news standard for the Assistant. When you ask your Google Home (or any other Assistant-powered device) to play the news, it'll automatically generate a playlist of stories based on your interests using the same technology behind the AI on Google News. Hopefully, that should be more useful than just jumping into whatever your favorite station is playing at that moment.