Innovation is all around us, and the new conversational world is changing our world. If you are one if those unique innovative CIOs or CTOs, you also know that this change influences not only the way users interact with businesses but also the way businesses deploy and secure applications. The shift from a direct interaction using a browser or a mobile app to a mediated interaction using a third-party device or a platform such as Alexa, Messenger, and Siri creates new challenges for business, especially in highly regulated sectors like financial services or health. Security, compliance, and privacy is the basis for any digital strategy. The good news is that all major providers take security, compliance, and privacy seriously.

AWS said it is opening up its Amazon Lex artificial intelligence service to all customers so they can build applications. The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started. Amazon Lex uses the same machine learning technology as Amazon Alexa. Amazon Lex features algorithms that enable applications that can have conversations and process voice and text.

AWS said it is opening up its Amazon Lex, artificial intelligence service, to all customers so they can build applications. The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started. Amazon Lex is the technology behind Amazon Alexa. Amazon Lex features algorithms that enable applications that can have conversations and process voice and text.

If you're in college and have the chops to build an Alexa-based "socialbot," Amazon wants your help -- so much so that the company's launching a new year-long contest for a chance to tap into a prize pool worth 2.5 million. The contest is called Alexa Prize, named after Amazon's voice-recognition technology, Alexa, which powers a number of voice-controlled devices, including its super popular speaker Echo. The goal of the contest, only open to college students, is to build the best possible conversational app using Alexa that can talk about popular topics and news events without sounding like a machine. The final winner will be announced at AWS re:Invent 2017. "The Alexa Prize challenges students to build socialbots that can acquire knowledge and opinions from the web, and express them in context just as a human would in everyday conversations. This challenge and the immediate feedback students will receive on their best ideas from millions of engaged Alexa customers will make what we previously thought impossible, possible," Rohit Prasad, Amazon Alexa's Vice President and Head Scientist, said in a statement.

Tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Baidu know that people aren't filling their devices with apps anymore. Just 35 percent of smartphone users download a single app in an average month, and the average app loses 90 percent of its daily active users within 30 days of release. While it might be fun to slice fruit or slingshot cartoon birds while waiting for the bus, these apps can't offer the frictionless experience users crave. Consumers want a new, on-demand kind of app: one clad in a conversational interface, ready to serve, and capable of complex actions. Want to check your flight status, book an Uber for when you land, and schedule your meetings for that afternoon?

When the only option you have is to talk with a chatbot, you cringe when you have to engage with that awful robot that embarrassingly pretends to be human. While you'd love to be chatting with a human, resources are thin and we would all just rather have a better middle ground. Init.ai, the company that was born out of necessity is taking a different approach with chatbots with a smarter and less robotic way of engaging with customers. With a more advanced understanding of language, slang, and context, Init.ai is a glimpse into the future of chatbots. AlleyWatch chatted with cofounder Will Dawoodi about the startup and what companies really want from their chatbots.