virtual assistants

Amazon reportedly readying its Alexa-powered answer to AirPods

Amazon is ready to challenge Apple with a cheaper, Alexa-powered set of wireless earbuds. If successful it would carve out a space for the popular digital assistant, and its deep connections to the re

Microsoft to acquire Xoxco as focus on AI and bot developers continues

Microsoft has been all in on AI this year, and in the build versus buy equation, the company has been leaning heavily toward buying. This morning, the company announced its intent to acquire Xoxco, an

Bose debuts new Google Assistant-optimized noise cancelling headphones

Bose’s rumored QC 35 II noise-cancelling headphones are rumored no more: Bose made them official today, revealing the update to the company’s popular QC 35 premium noise-cancelling cans. G

Amazon’s Alexa passes 15,000 skills, up from 10,000 in February

Amazon's Alexa voice platform has now passed 15,000 skills -- the voice-powered apps that run on devices like the Echo speaker, Echo Dot, newer Echo Show and others. The figure is up from the 10,000 s

How technology-enabled ‘selves-improvement’ will drive the future of personal productivity

Digital assistants and bots undeniably enhance our work lives in myriad ways. They’re terrific; your wish is their command. And they literally acquire more "skills" every day. But are better bots an

Leverage is building a project management application with outsourced virtual assistance built in

Using outsourced help – whether that’s using a virtual assistant to help you book travel or hiring a development firm to build your website – is something that nearly all businesses

Amazon to control 70 percent of the voice-controlled speaker market this year

Amazon is dominating the voice-controlled speaker market, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out this morning. The maker of the Echo-branded speakers will have 70.6 percent of all voice-enabl

Real humans

Technology has many societal impacts, but perhaps one of its most visibly evident is how the tools we use change how we communicate with each other -- so, literally, how technology rewrites language i

Why education should become more like artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is all around us. It’s in our cars, our homes and our pockets. With all this information, this intelligence, at our fingertips and lips, shouldn’t our educational system ca

Will the next Siri be empathetic?

Humans have forever personified their technologies. We engage emotionally, have expectations and establish a trust-based association with our technology. Technologies that are truly important to our w

The impending bot backlash

Everyone seems to be jumping on the bot bandwagon. Chatbots are not only being touted as the end of apps, but also the next paradigm in human-computer interaction -- and, if you believe the hype, the

Technological innovation is often simply an innovation in how we think about technology

It may slip our notice, but technological innovation is often reducible to an innovation in the marketing and conceptualization of technology. While there are undoubtedly many technological breakthrou

Apple prepping Siri SDK and Echo-like home assistant gadget

Apple is preparing an SDK that would allow developers much greater access to Siri — and the improved assistant will power a stationary hub device like Amazon's Echo. A report from The Information ta

Supahands Offers Multilingual Virtual Assistants For Clients In Asia

Southeast Asia is the second-largest outsourcing destination in the world, but a new company called Supahands wants to help locals by bringing virtual assistants to the region. Based in Malaysia and S