Hardly a day goes by that we don't cover virtual assistants. If it's not news about Siri, there's some new development with Alexa, or Cortana or Google Assistant. For one week, we asked five Engadget reporters to live with one of the major assistants: Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana and Samsung's Bixby. This week Engadget is examining each of the five major virtual assistants, taking stock of how far they've come and how far they still have to go.

By acquiring the Viv virtual assistant from the makers of Apple's Siri, Samsung has joined the AI smartphone wars. Now, Google, Apple, and Samsung all have their own AI-driven personal assistant to put at the center of our mobile devices. Apple has been developing Siri as the core of its mobile and desktop operating systems since buying the technology in 2010, and Google's first true smartphone will exclusively have Google Assistant. The message from these companies is clear: just as apps defined smartphones in the 2000s, the next frontier of mobile computing is a virtual entity that helps its owner manage the barrage of information coming their devices. Phones by Apple, Google, and Samsung are similar in design, computing capability, and each have access to roughly the same pool of apps--but each will pursue a slightly different path through their artificially-intelligent assistants.

A resident expresses her anger about police-involved shootings in South Los Angeles. A resident expresses her anger about police-involved shootings in South Los Angeles. Prop 64 divides medical marijuana community, the battle to seize Mosul, the vice presidential debate is tonight, and Southern California's earthquake fears. Prop 64 divides medical marijuana community, the battle to seize Mosul, the vice presidential debate is tonight, and Southern California's earthquake fears.

Samsung plans to make its range of smartphones smarter with its acquisition of Viv, an AI virtual assistant platform started by the man who created Siri. The South Korean electronics company, which has been grappling with extended fallout from its recalled Galaxy Note 7, announced Wednesday that it was buying Viv, the machine-learning virtual assistant company started by Siri founder Dag Kittlaus. Where interactions with many of today's virtual assistants still requires users to dumb down their requests into somewhat robotic language, the AI goal is natural language interaction with a virtual assistant that can process layered requests and remember contextual user details. Dag Kittlaus, founder of AI company Viv, was also the man behind Siri, which he sold to Apple.

The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are three technologies that are converging to disrupt nearly every industry. IoT refers to a connected network of objects embedded with technology that enables the collection and exchange of data. Cloud computing is the storing and retrieval of data, and accessing application programs via the Internet. Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. We are currently in the midst of the rise of the first wave of this technological convergence.

The virtual reality industry is exploding. Practically everywhere you look, VR is flooding into the mainstream consciousness at an increasingly rapid rate. Huge sums of money are being pumped in for content creation, and it's all thanks to 360-degree video. Let's be honest, we would not have the level of public interest in VR that we have now without easily accessible content. Reaching millions of individuals meant that the processing capabilities to power an experience needed to be'dumbed down.'