Scientists claim they have had the first one-on-one conversation with a whale. The team from the SETI Institute and the University of California'spoke' with a 38-year-old humpback whale, named Twain, off the coast of Alaska. They used an underwater microphone to send out whale calls, 'whup/throp' sounds, and received 36 responses that seemed like Twain was actively engaged in a communicative exchange. AI-powered algorithms analyzed the replies, revealing Twain may have shared a greeting call with the team on a boat in the Pacific Ocean. While speaking to a different species has never been done in this manner, researchers are using the experience to hopefully one day converse with extraterrestrial life.

Like many students around the world, Eithne, 14, in Chorley, United Kingdom, was struggling to keep up in math at school after more than a year of COVID-19 related disruptions. In June 2021, her parents signed her up for a summer program offered by Eedi, an online math tutoring service. "Just dealing with lockdown, she hadn't had enough of a really good background," said her mother, Arianna. "She missed most of the Year 7 Maths, then Year 8. So, we thought, 'Let's give it a go, let's see where she needs a bit of help.'" Newly enrolled students on Eedi are asked to take a dynamic quiz of 10 multiple choice diagnostic questions that the service uses to learn where students struggle most in math. This information allows the service to place students on a learning pathway to overcome those specific obstacles, or misconceptions.

With conversational commerce mushrooming throughout the retail world, it surely must have the feel of déjà vu for the iconic 1-800-Flowers.com Founded in 1976 and branded with its workhorse 1-800-Flowers phone number in 1986, the company can point to its penchant for speaking directly to its customers as a reason for its longevity -- first through the phone and then across the internet. The process of conversational commerce uses remarkably intuitive technology tools such as voice messaging and chatbot applications to facilitate seamless interactions between brands and shoppers to drive transactions or trigger service. Voice protocols are emerging as the dominant technique fueling conversational commerce, notably voice assistants such as Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. In addition, text-enabled chatbots are proliferating to help consumers through human-like conversations.