What does your voice assistant know about you? By simulating fake people while interacting with popular smart voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple's Siri, researchers have uncovered the different approaches each system takes to learning users' personal preferences and habits. "I don't know that consumers have the intuition that when you're talking out loud, that also could potentially be used to profile you and then target you with ads," says David Choffnes at Northeastern University in Massachusetts.

A man and a woman live together in a single household. Every time the man speaks, he speaks with impatience, cursing loudly at you when you don't understand his questions. He's gruff bordering on angry, only talks to you late at night, and only asks about nightclubs and bars. Every time the woman speaks, she either speaks in tears or in monotone. Her questions are more housework related -- recipes, shopping reminders, financial questions. She talks to you throughout the day, and often asks about mental health problems.

Amazon says its AI voice assistant Alexa can now guess what you might be thinking of – or what you've forgotten. At an event in Seattle on Thursday, the technology company unveiled a new feature called Alexa Hunches that aims to replicate human curiosity and insight using artificial intelligence. "We've reached a point with deep neural networks and machine learning that we can actually program intuition," said Daniel Rausch, the vice-president in charge of Alexa's smart home features. Once it is activated later this year, Alexa Hunches will observe its owners' interactions with connected smart home devices like locks, lights and electricity outlets. When Alexa believes it has detected a regular pattern, such as turning off a television set before bed, the voice assistant will remind owners if they forget to do it, and offer to fix the problem.

Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing to a possible deal on July 8, 2016.

Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Amazon's voice activated digital assistant Alexa appears to know more about Prime Day than she's letting on. All she'll do at this point is recite a cryptic poem pointing Elizabeth Weise

Amazon's virtual helper could learn a skill that some humans have yet to master - detecting a person's irritation and apologizing for it. The e-commerce giant is believed to be using new natural-language processing techniques for Alexa that will allow it to recognize emotional tone and apologize for misunderstandings. Sources say further improvements will help Alexa better communicate by remembering previous conversations and applying this information to subsequent interactions. Amazon is rumoured to be exploring natural-language processing techniques technology for Alexa that will recognizes emotional tone and apologize for misunderstandings. Alexa is the virtual assistant inside Amazon's Echo speaker and its smaller versions, Dot and Tap.