Applications that use some sort of AI are a dime a dozen. Artificial intelligence is now running robots, speech-to-text programs, cars, and doing everything from creating movie trailers to composing music. Google wants to take that to a whole new level. The search giant has announced its newest product this weekend: the Google Assistant, a voice-activated digital helper powered by AI. Now, Google doesn't normally build its own smartphones or gadgets, but they did for Assistant. On their own, these devices have merit but don't really stand out next to Amazon's Echo or Apple's iPhone 7. What makes them interesting is Assistant, which is controlled through simple voice commands and offers a more conversational style than Apple's Siri.