en apple news

Want a smarter Alexa, savvier Siri, brainier Google Now or a cleverer Cortana? So do Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft -- and each is working to make its voice assistant your personal Einstein of choice. Amazon recently enhanced its efforts by nabbing an AI expert from eBay, The Wall Street Joual reported Friday. Hassan Sawaf is now Amazon's director of artificial intelligence, focusing on "the user experience for users of Amazon's search capability across all products and businesses," according to Sawaf's LinkedIn page. The Joual was one of the first to spot Sawaf's updated responsibilities on LinkedIn. "eBay has wide and deep capabilities in AI across the technology organization, and r...

Enlarge ImageThe Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat and the Amazon Echo smart speaker. Ecobee Last year, Amazon established the $100 million dollar "Alexa Fund" for developers and manufacturers both large and small. The idea was fairly straightforward -- support people with good ideas on how to put the voice-recognition technology in the Amazon Echo smart speaker to good use. Now, the online mega-retailer is ponying up for its biggest investment yet and joining in on a$35 million-dollar funding round for the makers of the Ecobee smart thermostat. The funding round brings Amazon in with Thomvest and Relay Ventures, and comes several months after the Ecobee3 became the first smart thermostat to sync up ...

Amazon@Pe probably doesn't look like any store you've ever visited. The brightly lit space includes no shelves, no standing inventory and no checkout. It's likely debatable the location is even a "store" at all. Yet this 3,500-square-foot space, which hosted a grand opening Friday at the University of Pesylvania in Philadelphia, serves as another example of Amazon's evolution, as the world's biggest e-commerce company starts building physical locations to draw itself even closer to its millions of customers. "We see lots of opportunities with this model," Ripley MacDonald, director of Amazon's student programs, said in the store's media center, which includes couches, conference tables and T...

Enlarge ImageAmazon's first physical bookstore opened late last year in Seattle. Amazon Amazon usually drives the books you order to your home. Now, it wants you to drive to your books. The online retail giant's concept -- known colloquially as a "bookstore" -- is to open as many as 400 locations nationwide, according to Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of US mall operator General Growth Partners. "In the mall business, the impact of ecommerce is a lot less," Mathrani said during an eaings call Tuesday. "It's actually your friend, not your enemy." Amazon and GGP declined to comment. It's unclear where Mathrani got the figure for Amazon's plans. Building out a chain of bookstores would be an...