Microsoft Acquires Semantic Machines for Conversational Artificial Intelligence

Earlier this month at its I/O developer conference, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL)subsidiary Google wowed everyone by demonstrating a new conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology called Google Duplex, a system that will become part of Google Assistant and will allow the virtual assistant to make phone calls on a user's behalf.

The demonstration was striking because it sounded uncannily human, which has raised all sorts of ethical questions.