Samsung currently has no plans to take on HomePod with a smart speaker of its own.

Recent rumors have claimed the South Korean company is working on a standalone Bixby device, but a source familiar with its plans says the market is too small to be profitable.

On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.

Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.

But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.

When Macphun entered the imaging software game, it wanted to make products as powerful as Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom yet with fewer clicks to well-styled photos.

Today, Macphun released an update to its all-in-one editing app Luminar that can make a photo beautiful in still fewer steps.

How does one sound?

Sitting on a cash pile of billions, Apple’s not a company that’s used to being left behind. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, that’s exactly what has happened in recent years. While companies like Google and Facebook led the way with cutting-edge AI, Apple lagged. It was embarrassing for a company in Apple’s position to miss out on the single best tech revolution taking place at the moment.

But during Monday’s WWDC 2017 keynote, Apple went a long way toward making amends.

Apple is allegedly planning to take its Artificial Intelligence game to an all-new level an AI-powered iPhone chip.

In a race to catch up with the competition at Amazon and Google, Apple has a team of engineers working on a new piece of silicon that’s dedicated to processing artificial intelligence commands which could lead to improved battery life.

Google brought its Google Assistant to iOS this week, finally giving iPhone fans a taste of the best virtual assistant on the planet. But those on Android are in for so much more, with major improvements on the way, including impressive Google Lens integration.

The changes make it harder than ever for Siri to catch up. Despite the improvements Apple made with iOS 10, it still feels like Siri is well behind its rivals. Is that gap now too big, or can Apple catch up? Will Siri ever be as good as the Google Assistant?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we wage war over virtual assistants.

Apple has acquired an AI company as part of its continued push to embrace artificial intelligence.

The company in question is the Menlo Park-based Lattice Data, which specializes in taking unstructured, “dark” data and transforming it into more useful, structured information. Apple acquired around 20 engineers as part of the deal.

Apple’s not the only smartphone-maker with ambitions to take over the self-driving car market.

Samsung is the latest tech company to receive permission to test their self-driving vehicles on public roads, after the South Korean government granted the company approval to start hitting the streets this week.

A Siri smart speaker will bring better audio (and a higher price tag) than the Amazon Echo, and we might get our first look next month, according to a prominent analyst.

KGI Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo says it’s increasingly likely Apple will debut its high-end audio device at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, paving the way for Siri to move into a prominent place in your home.