Daniel Rausch, Amazon's vice president of Alexa and Echo, is in the midst of a major transition. More than a decade beyond the launch of Amazon's Alexa, he's been tasked with creating a new version of the marquee voice assistant, one that's powered by large language models. As he put it in my interview with him, this new assistant, dubbed Alexa, is "a complete rebuild of the architecture." How did his team approach Amazon's largest ever revamp of its voice assistant? They used AI to build AI, of course.

Amazon's long-awaited update to its assistant is almost here. About 18 months after the company first previewed the "next-gen Alexa" built with generative AI, it unveiled Alexa, and early access will be available starting in March. Alexa will exist alongside the older Alexa and will cost 20 a month, unless you have a Prime membership, which will make it free to use. The new assistant will come with all the modern upgrades that its contemporaries like the redesigned Siri or Gemini offer, like more conversational interaction, better contextual understanding and the ability to "summarize complex topics" and "make suggestions based on your interests." But it does one thing differently, and it's the way Amazon purports to integrate with third-party apps and the rest of the internet that could set it apart.

It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday's Google event felt like the grand finale. While Google only sells a fraction of the number of phones and smartwatches pumped out by Apple and Samsung, the company's work in mobile software, large language models, productivity services, and computational photography make it just as much of a heavyweight when it comes to consumer tech. But Google's reach also extends far beyond your pocket and your wrist. Let us not forget about the company's dominance in search. In fact, it's currently in the throes of a protracted antitrust trial brought by the US government.

Dec 27 (Reuters) - At the Fashion X AI show in Hong Kong, attendees noticed a certain "alien" quality about the new clothes modelled on the event's narrow catwalk - and the designs were, in fact, not entirely human. The show put more than 80 outfits from 14 designers in the spotlight, all of which were created with the help of the artificial intelligence software AiDA, short for "AI-based Interactive Design Assistant". The software was developed by PhD students and academics at the Hong Kong-based AiDLab. Masked in monochrome blue, wearing outfits that ranged from down jackets to translucent skirts, models strutted past rows of critics and fashion designers. Attendee Cynthia Tse said it felt like she was witnessing the future of fashion at the show on Dec. 19.

Schools around the world are slowly adopting artificial intelligence to better tailor teaching to individual kids. Critics are skeptical that this technology is as effective as promised. Could surveilling students in this way do more harm than good?

For that reason, Square is now letting business owners automate the rescheduling process with a chatbot called Square Assistant. Business owners that are using Square's existing Appointments service can now confirm appointments with customers--or let them cancel or reschedule them--via text message, without any human involvement. It's the first product to come from Square's acquisition of conversational AI startup Eloquent Labs earlier this year. "For some of our customers, SMS is just a more efficient way to interact," says Ellen Blaine, a former Eloquent Labs engineer who is now a product manager at Square. "With Square Assistant, you can reschedule or confirm an appointment just by texting a couple of words."

Last night at dinner, a tech-industry pal of mine was trying to puzzle out why the term "artificial intelligence" had suddenly become the in-vogue buzzword of the month. I pointed out that Marc Benioff has telegraphed that an A/I-like thing called Einstein will be the centerpiece of his Dreamforce keynote. That still didn't satisfy him. "Why artificial intelligence?" he demanded. "Well, first off, we're going with artificial intelligence because we don't need artificial stupidity – there's already plenty of natural stupidity," I said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai thinks we are now living in an "artificial intelligence-first world." Artificial intelligence is all the rage in Silicon Valley these days, as technology companies race to build the first killer app that utilizes machine learning and image recognition. Today, Google announced an AI-powered assistant built into its new Pixel phones. But there's a pivotal downside to the company's latest creation: Because of the very nature of artificial intelligence, our data is less secure than ever before, and technology companies are now collecting even more personal information about each one of us. Google's new assistant, which debuted in the company's new messaging app Allo, works like this: Simply ask the assistant a question about the weather, nearby restaurants, or for directions, and it responds with detailed information right there in the chat interface. It is undoubtedly neat and useful.

The risk of artificial intelligence software becoming super smart is "way out in the future," Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told CNBC Monday. In the next 10 to 20 years, AI is going to be "extremely helpful" in managing our lives, Gates said in a "Squawk Box" interview. Instead of being glued to your computer or smartphone all day trying to keep up with emails, texts and all the other information flooding in, Gates said what he called "alter-ego software" is going to shoulder that burden. "It will look at all the new information and present to you, knowing about your interests, what would be most valuable," he predicted, saying Microsoft along with the Google unit Alphabet, Facebook and Apple are making great strides in artificial intelligence. "What we're [also] seeing is, for the first time, computers can see as well as humans. If you combine that with arm-like manipulation, then they could make us far more productive," Gates said, but acknowledged the job market will need to adjust to more machines doing rote work.