Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming personalized search, recommendations, and customer interaction in e-commerce. Customers increasingly shop across multiple devices, from voice-only assistants to multimodal displays, each offering different input and output capabilities. A proactive suggestion to switch devices can greatly improve the user experience, but it must be offered with high precision to avoid unnecessary friction. We address the challenge of predicting when a query requires visual augmentation and a cross-device switch to improve product discovery. We introduce Image-Seeking Intent Prediction, a novel task for LLM-driven e-commerce assistants that anticipates when a spoken product query should proactively trigger a visual on a screen-enabled device. Using large-scale production data from a multi-device retail assistant, including 900K voice queries, associated product retrievals, and behavioral signals such as image carousel engagement, we train IRP (Image Request Predictor), a model that leverages user input query and corresponding retrieved product metadata to anticipate visual intent. Our experiments show that combining query semantics with product data, particularly when improved through lightweight summarization, consistently improves prediction accuracy. Incorporating a differentiable precision-oriented loss further reduces false positives. These results highlight the potential of LLMs to power intelligent, cross-device shopping assistants that anticipate and adapt to user needs, enabling more seamless and personalized e-commerce experiences.

This is why her and David Harbour's marriage REALLY ended': Following Lily Allen's'revenge album' against her ex-husband, his furious friends hit back at the'false' singer'A common medication sent my sex life roaring back... it's definitely not a rare side effect': Surprising ways women revived their flagging libidos - including a Netflix show dubbed'female Viagra' King Charles is heckled by Andrew protester shouting'how long have you known' - as he and Fergie prepare to leave Royal Lodge for separate houses Buffalo Bills suffer serious blow to Super Bowl hopes as star man Ed Oliver is ruled out'indefinitely' The NBA Mafia betting scandal is the tip of the iceberg. Now match-fixing expert speaks on wider web of sports shame... and who it implicates: 'Dancing with the devil' Woke Dem Jasmine Crockett's secret stock empire exposed - as she plots Senate run Anguish of mother whose son, four, and daughter, six, vanished in Nova Scotia woods six months ago... as cops reject claims a stranger abducted them This is exactly how to lose up to a stone by Christmas. My expert diet helps you slim while you sleep, won't leave you hungry - and no, you don't need Mounjaro or Ozempic! Trump ally and fellow real estate tycoon warns Zohran Mamdani will destroy NYC's housing market: 'That's not affordability, that's insanity' Bionic Woman actress Lindsay Wagner, 76, makes a rare appearance at fan event... see her now I wish my selfish sister had never been born. When she died at 33 after a life of hedonism, she became a saint in our family... I'll never forgive her for it Urgent warning to Gmail users as 183 MILLION passwords are stolen in data breach - here's how to check if your account is affected What HAS happened to Bradley Cooper's face?

European diplomats reveal the'tough guy' US negotiator leading the charge on Greenland: 'He hates us' A former Marine was unmasked as the'Zodiac killer' after a bombshell new investigation. I suffered a horrific side effect of a drug used by millions of Americans... and my face'melted off' The ICE backlash isn't the end of Kristi Noem It may have just saved her career FedEx driver accused of abducting and killing little girl while delivering her Christmas present says he shouldn't be executed because he has autism Senator accused of steamy affair with her bodyguard in bombshell lawsuit from his WIFE: 'Bring MDMA so I can guide you' Hunter Biden's stripper baby mama asks for him to be ARRESTED over claims he is still failing to pay her child support Family of Tyler Robinson's transgender lover speaks out for first time since Charlie Kirk assassination and reveals where he is now Dodgers agree with Kyle Tucker'on $240m deal' as champs beat out Mets, Blue Jays for top free agent World's sexiest hockey star and OnlyFans model Mikayla Demaiter spills out of little dress in latest post Nicole Richie addresses her daughter's new identity after unveiling transformation on her 18th birthday Trump gushes over'young beautiful' hockey players and teases rebranding of famed presidential wall Trump's AG secretary sparks mockery with tone-deaf $3 dinner advice as food costs soar Karoline Leavitt reveals the thinking behind Trump's call to cancel elections Microsoft's paperclip mascot delights users as it returns - 18 years after it was axed from Office It was the original virtual assistant, released years before Siri, Alexa, and Bixby. Now, almost two decades after it was axed, Microsoft's Clippy is officially back. The friendly anthropomorphic paper clip has been spotted as an Easter egg in Microsoft's latest announcement about a new AI companion called Mico. Mico - whose name is a nod to Microsoft Copilot - is a small blob with a friendly smiley face, and doesn't look much like its much-loved predecessor.

Is AI the New Frontier of Women's Oppression? In her new book, feminist author Laura Bates explores how sexbots, AI assistants, and deepfakes are reinventing misogyny and harming women. After spending her early twenties as a nanny in the UK, Laura Bates noticed that the young girls she was caring for were preoccupied by their bodies, spurred on by the marketing they were receiving. In 2012, Bates, a London-based feminist author and activist, started The Everyday Sexism Project, a website dedicated to documenting and combatting sexism, misogyny, and gendered violence around the world by highlighting insidious instances of it such as invisible labor, referring to women as girls and commenting on their attire in professional settings. The site was turned into a book in 2014.

Asthma-related deaths in the UK are the highest in Europe, and only 30% of patients access basic care. There is a need for alternative approaches to reaching people with asthma in order to provide health education, self-management support and bridges to care. Automated conversational agents (specifically, mobile chatbots) present opportunities for providing alternative and individually tailored access to health education, self-management support and risk self-assessment. But would patients engage with a chatbot, and what factors influence engagement? We present results from a patient survey (N=1257) devised by a team of asthma clinicians, patients, and technology developers, conducted to identify optimal factors for efficacy, value and engagement for a chatbot. Results indicate that most adults with asthma (53%) are interested in using a chatbot and the patients most likely to do so are those who believe their asthma is more serious and who are less confident about self-management. Results also indicate enthusiasm for 24/7 access, personalisation, and for WhatsApp as the preferred access method (compared to app, voice assistant, SMS or website). Obstacles to uptake include security/privacy concerns and skepticism of technological capabilities. We present detailed findings and consolidate these into 7 recommendations for developers for optimising efficacy of chatbot-based health support.

TL;DR: A lifetime license of SwifDoo PDF Pro for Windows is now just 29.97 ( 129.00). Ever had that recurring nightmare that you're running and you can't get anywhere? It's like being on a treadmill that you can't get off, tiring yourself out until you wake up covered in sweat. No joke, that's what doing PDF paperwork feels like. Anyone with a laptop job (or literally any job that requires you to open a laptop and fill out documents or forms) understands that the second you dig into the figurative pile of paperwork in your emails, more comes to replace it.

At the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, an exhibit called The Home of Tomorrow laid out a vision of a futuristic living space. It included outlandish predictions including personal helicopter pads, but it also foreshadowed central air conditioning, automatic dishwashers, and other innovations that have become integral parts of modern life. As we envision the home of the future, it's easy to get caught up in sci-fi-inspired predictions of fully autonomous homes serviced by robotic butlers and disembodied virtual assistants that remove the humanity from our living spaces. Here at Popular Science, we reject that vision. For the inaugural Home of the Future Awards, we have selected 25 products that augment life at home by making it more efficient, affordable, accessible, and--ultimately--more enjoyable. We test, preview, and evaluate hundreds of products per year and these products deserve a chance to cohabitate with you and the people who matter to you. A flat top grill is one of the most versatile ways to cook just about anything from pancakes to burgers, but temperature control is key.

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Virtual Assistants (VAs) e.g., Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and High-Flyer Deepseek has turned them into convenient interfaces for managing emerging technologies such as Smart Homes, Smart Cars, Electronic Health Records, by means of explicit commands,e.g., prompts, which can be even launched via voice, thus providing a very convenient interface for end-users. However, the proper specification and evaluation of User-Managed Access Control Policies (U-MAPs), the rules issued and managed by end-users to govern access to sensitive data and device functionality - within these VAs presents significant challenges, since such a process is crucial for preventing security vulnerabilities and privacy leaks without impacting user experience. This study provides an initial exploratory investigation on whether current publicly-available VAs can manage U-MAPs effectively across differing scenarios. By conducting unstructured to structured tests, we evaluated the comprehension of such VAs, revealing a lack of understanding in varying U-MAP approaches. Our research not only identifies key limitations, but offers valuable insights into how VAs can be further improved to manage complex authorization rules and adapt to dynamic changes.

In this work, we present and evaluate SELMA, a Speech-Enabled Language Model for virtual Assistant interactions that integrates audio and text as inputs to a Large Language Model (LLM). SELMA is designed to handle three primary and two auxiliary tasks related to interactions with virtual assistants simultaneously within a single end-to-end model. We employ low-rank adaptation modules for parameter-efficient training of both the audio encoder and the LLM. Additionally, we implement a feature pooling strategy enabling the system to recognize global patterns and improve accuracy on tasks less reliant on individual sequence elements. Experimental results on Voice Trigger (VT) detection, Device-Directed Speech Detection (DDSD), and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), demonstrate that our approach both simplifies the typical input processing pipeline of virtual assistants significantly and also improves performance compared to dedicated models for each individual task. SELMA yields relative Equal-Error Rate improvements of 64% on the VT detection task, and 22% on DDSD, while also achieving word error rates close to the baseline.

Apple has agreed to pay 95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices. The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade. The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, "Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted. The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers -- a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve "a fundamental human right."