Improvements to a number of Apple services - including a more personalised version of its virtual assistant, Siri - are to be powered with AI provided by Google. The tech giants have announced a multi-year collaboration which will see the iPhone-maker base some of its key tech on Google's Gemini AI models. In a joint statement, the two firms said the partnership would unlock innovative new experiences for Apple users. However, experts say it demonstrates how Apple's cautious approach to building and rolling out its own AI tools has left it reliant on other companies. By outsourcing the foundational layer of its AI to Google, Apple is effectively admitting that its internal efforts couldn't compete with Google's Gemini in terms of capability and scale in the short term, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said.

Nvidia saw its valuation soar to $1tn on Tuesday, making it the fifth most valuable American company and one of the first major corporate beneficiaries of the hype around AI. The chipmaker has been a major and in some cases dominant player in several industries for years. But no development has raised its profile – and its potential windfall – as much as the current excitement around generative AI. Nvidia has been around for 30 years. The company got its start in 1993 building graphics processing units (GPUs) for video games.

Put a microphone in front of Phil Spencer and the guy will always deliver. Spencer, who you may or may not know as the head of Microsoft Gaming (he's in charge of all things Xbox), sat down with the Wall Street Journal at its WSJ Tech Live event for a wide-ranging interview about everything from Microsoft's plans for mobile gaming to Spencer's personal feelings on the metaverse. Spencer is one of the few industry leaders who actually gives real answers to questions on occasion (and comes across as "one of the good guys" for it), so let's break down the highlights. Undoubtedly the funniest thing Spencer said at WSJ Tech Live came at the expense of Meta's Mark Zuckerberg-fueled metaverse efforts. As you can see at about the 1:15 mark in this clip from the WSJ YouTube channel, Spencer seemed to take a bit of a jab at Meta's work-focused metaverse, without naming names of course.

For Sonos, 2020 began in dramatic fashion. While the tech world was focused on CES, the company made a splash by suing Google for allegedly infringing five of its wireless speaker patents. Sonos said this was just a small portion of Google's overall infractions, noting that both Amazon and Google likely violated about 100 patents each. Google counter-sued in June, and Sonos filed more charges in September. Sonos is well within its rights to defend its patent portfolio -- and the company has been working on wireless music-streaming tech for longer than just about anyone, so it's entirely possible its claims have merit.

Qualitative analysis takes into account variables that are very complicated to be encoded into a mathematical model. These are only some of the questions in the process of assessing if a company is a proper investment or not. Another big chunk of the analysis to assess if a stock is going to be performing or not is by inputting the numbers in a mathematical model. Accounting data, including management of resources and investments, can be easily accessed by the company reports, and, if you use a model that is sufficiently reliable, it may give you the indicators that you are searching for. Nasdaq is one of the main indexes where hundreds of stocks can be traded.

Before COVID-19, most people had some degree of apprehension about robots and artificial intelligence. Though their beliefs may have been initially shaped by dystopian depictions of the technology in science fiction, their discomfort was reinforced by legitimate concerns. Some of AI's business applications were indeed leading to the loss of jobs, the reinforcement of biases, and infringements on data privacy. Those worries appear to have been set aside since the onset of the pandemic as AI-infused technologies have been employed to mitigate the spread of the virus. We've seen an acceleration of the use of robotics to do the jobs of humans who have been ordered to stay at home or who have been redeployed within the workplace.

Every person who brings a new Echo speaker from Amazon into their home gets automatically recorded every time they utter the "Alexa" wake word. That is, unless they mute the microphone on the device itself. Or diligently go to the Alexa smartphone app, to manually delete the recordings. Amazon could offer the option of not recording us, but it doesn't. And it will tell you every way but Tuesday how important the recordings are to "improve" the Alexa experience.

Facebook has publicly spoken about its interest in robotics in the past, but on Monday, the company finally shared details regarding the specific projects it's working on. The social media giant unveiled three robotics projects that it hopes will contribute to solving the ongoing challenge of building artificial intelligence systems that don't have to rely on large quantities of labeled data to learn new information. To do so, the company is conducting research aimed at teaching robots how to learn about the world, similar to the way that humans do. "The real world is messy, it's difficult," Roberto Calandra, a research scientist in Facebook's AI division said when speaking to Business Insider. "The world is not a perfect place; it's not neat. So the fact that we are trying to develop algorithms that work on real robots [will] help to create [AI] algorithms that, generally speaking, are going to be more reliable, more robust, and that are going to learn faster."

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham takes a look (and listen) to the new Sonos Beam which incorporates Amazon's Alexa.voice The Santa Barbara, California company is set to go public. Sonos' premium wireless speakers have been a hit with consumers. Now the audio company is about to find out how it plays on Wall Street. The Santa Barbara, California-based company's shares will begin trading on Nasdaq on Thursday.

Pokemon Go could be about to become even more addictive. An incredible new video has revealed updates to the way the game's augmented reality technology works, making it far more realistic. The new technology lets characters disappear behind real-world objects. Called occlusion, the technique is being promoted by its creators as the firm opens up their Real World Platform for developers to create new AR apps. Pokemon Go players could soon be treated to the sight of Pikachu hiding behind static plant pots and even moving people.