and wanted to win. it really win and wanted to win. it really broke my heart. she has a good talent, so it's good to see that attitude. serena is the sole surviving williams sister because venus was beaten by world number one simona halep this morning. novak djokovic faces a seventh aussie open title. he came through against his teenage opponent. he will play medvedev next. the third seeds one in just under two will play medvedev next. the third seeds one injust under two hours. in rugby union pots champions cup scottish rugby showed its strength. this drive from darcey - it

this drive from darcey graham. it means edinburgh finish top of their the win - helps glasgow as runner—up. i is - first bet‘aajaaer—m sides - first time both scottish sides have made itthfltfiln time both scottish sides have made itthflir. in the other night pots it through. in the other night pots game, newcastle lost narrowly. england pots preparations for the six nations opener against champions ireland in dublin in two weeks‘ time have been hit by an injury to captain owen fowle. he is been withdrawn from jumping to cut this afternoon and is having a minor procedure today. the recovery he is expected to travel to portugal with england for their training camp next week. in football, england for their training camp next week. infootball, liverpool england for their training camp next week. in football, liverpool have the chance to extend the lead at the top of the premier league. they are

likely to be without trent alexander arnold but he has signed a new long—term contract. it comesjust days after andy robertson signed a similar deal. leicester are at wolverhampton wanderers in the lunchtime kick—off and later relegation scrap between newcastle and cardiff. net it and cardiff. net bowlers seek to it could be a deciding the series. the cauld be. a dgciding eh; eefléi‘lh’e ”’ ” '” ssuis ss s sssising t'ns ssflssi‘lhis iii ii 'ii insists they are not coach insists they are not really getting ahead of themselves. the south africa game, we have to go away and do our homework on them. they will come out of cookies because everything is to play for in this quad series. it is set up to really challenge people like a world cup scenario. however, i can only

look at the south africa game because from my point of view taking one game at a time is really important. that is all the sport for now, you can find all the latest on those stories and follow the day‘s football including the game between wolves and leicester. it is goalless after three minutes. on the bbc sport website. coming up next now it is time for click. this week we can voice is and alexa, what are amazon spheres?

they are an unusual place to work, i have to say. the domes host a 40,000 plants, they also have waterfalls, meeting spaces and shops. slightly tropical, quite moist and give you a real sense that you are working in the future. who would have thought that in the middle of seattle there would be a rainforest? and amazon ra i nfo rest. would be a rainforest? and amazon ra i nforest. say would be a rainforest? and amazon rainforest. say amazon, think what? jungle? online shopping? or do you think of alexa? this is after all sending voice control to the masses.

vision for can use natural language to interact with technology. alexa is only going to be as successful as the partners are that support it. and that is why voices the next battle ground for the tech super giants. the more voice apps there are a more comfortable we are talking to them, the more they will integrate themselves into our lives. just this week in fact, alexa‘s voice has started sounding more human. developers have used artificial intelligence techniques to learn from news broadcasts how to intone and emphasise words in a sentence. american brides are continuing to reflect their own style. now, as a human being you will know that you can tell quite a lot from notjust

will know that you can tell quite a lot from not just what they mean but also how they are feeling and possibly whether they are ill. that is something for a computer really ha rd to is something for a computer really hard to do but nick has been looking at some technology that is working towards just that. i‘ve come to tel aviv, israel, to see a doctor with a difference. no cold stethoscope but ido difference. no cold stethoscope but i do need to say are as well make a bunch of other sounds. you are ambitious, you are curious, a little bit adventurous, and a little bit conservative. it is something in between. ifeel like i‘m getting my palm read by a psychic. 0k! and the graph is saying, "oh, you are very tired." i am very tired! but the reason i am here is the something far more important, because dr levanon says his system

can also be used to diagnose whether i have a disease, and even how bad it is, just by listening to my voice. we can show the early signs of parkinson‘s, heart problem, autistic children, early signs of prostate cancer. it isa it is a tuesday morning, we have to catch a flight later. by analysing my vocal intonation the doctor says his algorithm can infer my mood, attitude and personality. you are ambitious, curious, a little bit adventurous and a little bit conservative. it is something in between. white i feel like i‘m getting my palm read by psychic! the graph is saying you are very tired. iam very graph is saying you are very tired. i am very tired. but the reason i am here is the something far more important, because dr levanon says his system

can also be used to diagnose whether i have a disease, and even how bad it is, just by listening to my voice. we can show the early signs of parkinson‘s, heart problem, autistic children, early signs of prostate cancer. against an archive of recordings % so you can see that there is a weakness in this area of frequencies. you can see the same crater but also vibration here. these are the signs of ill person and you can see decay of the voice, the deterioration — is ill, tired, can‘t express himself well. if you combine all the signs together, we can see how severe is problem and what is his health problem. apparently, the system is 75% accurate and can tell you the severity of your condition. if for real, integrating the tech

into listening devices could change the way we interact with our gadgets. further down the road, with our technology, these machines would also be able to tell "hey, something is different with your health condition. maybe you want to go and do another check—up." maybe it will let my doctor know about this. so from the voice, there is so much information that can be gained, and we are just at the beginning. ok, reality check time, because as amazing as this sounds, you might be thinking this is all too good to be true. but the thing is voice is already used to diagnose certain conditions and medical professionals do see that this could have more potential. in london, i went to meet dr nijjer, a consultant cardiologist at hammersmith hospital, and honorary senior lecturer at imperial college london. well, there‘s no doubt that doctors use a patient‘s voice as a way

of diagnosing certain conditions and there are neurological conditions like motor neurone disease or parkinson‘s that have characteristic changes to the voice to help us make a diagnosis. but whatever a voice‘s potential, today beyond verbal has had only one paper published, in conjunction with the us—based mayo clinic, investigating the connection between voice and coronary artery disease. what this study has done is attempted to make a diagnosis of coronary artery disease using the voice alone. this is a completely new avenue and i would say that the technology at present needs a lot more work. the study that‘s been published doesn‘t give us definitive proof that this technology can make that diagnosis. the study has been formed in a highly enriched and highly selected group of patients. and actually, i would say the capacity of voice to be able to detect the severity of an individual lesion, as they‘ve proposed, is a little far—fetched. california—based telemedicine start—up salubermd has begun incorporating beyond verbal‘s mood—analysing system into its gp appointment app.

one second. bear with me while i bring up your data here. whilst remote doctors listen to problems over video call, the software can inform them about their patient‘s emotional state. how accurate is beyond verbal around the mood? very. how is accurate regarding the acute coronary syndrome? we don‘t know yet. at present, there is a very good feel about it but i, as a doctor, cannot trust a feel. i need to trust real correlation or real demonstration. beyond verbal isn‘t the only business claiming to understand our health via our voice. healthymize, sonde health, peakprofiling and even ibm are just some researching the connection between voice patterns and disease. we believe that we are better than 75% in many diseases. go to the doctor, make other checks.

having potentially inaccurate health warnings at our fingertips could come with repercussions. and do we want the tech giants to know so much about us? the problem with anything that‘s predicting a disease process is that it can be wrong or its sensitivity is not high enough or it‘s not specific. so it will often make diagnoses when there isn‘t that particular problem or it‘ll over—diagnose problems that don‘t need any investigation, so that would be a concern to me as a doctor that we end up testing too many people. and it would also be a concern for patients, because they may end up being told they have a problem when actually, there isn‘t that concern. further trials are being conducted in israel, china and soon, the uk.

and whilst it might be simply sci—fi, the idea of alexa in the future alerting me about my health is at once appealing, yet unsettling. hello and welcome to the week in tech. this was the week that the world came together for a truly noble cause. yes, it‘s my great honour to officially confirm that this stock photo of an egg is now the most liked instagram photo ever. truly inspiring! in non—egg news, orange shirt kid joined the list of people accusing video game fortnite of allegedly stealing dance moves. and the chinese space agency shared images of the first seed to sprout on the moon. youtube has said it will ban clips of dangerous and harmful pranks from the platform. the change comes in response to so—called challenge videos which, in some cases, have resulted in injuries or even death. following through with the change may be difficult, though, with critics arguing it could be hard to decide where to draw the line on what constitutes ‘dangerous‘. time to make room on the bedside table for yet another essential gadget. sportswear company nike has unveiled the latest incarnation of its self—lacing smart shoe.

controlled by an app, the $350 trainers adapt to your foot with a range of lace tensions. and if you‘re worried about getting stuck in them, no fear — the company says the battery will last at least ten days. and finally, spare a thought for the robots of henn na hotel this week, some of whom are looking for work. in a twist to the classic tale, japan‘s iconic robot hotel has had to lay off half of its 243—strong robotic workforce. velociraptor receptionist is gone, as well as dozens of the in—room assistant churi. as well as maintenance issues, churi kept on waking people up at night, mistaking snores for questions, and velocira ptor receptionist couldn‘t handle foreign guests. and now, we‘re gonna go back in time to the consumer electronics show in las vegas from last week, where voice was a massive deal. and we asked lara lewington and richard taylor to check out the big talk at the show. it‘s only taken a few years for voice—activated smart assistants to become an integral part of every

self—respecting techie‘s lifestyle. amazon‘s alexa started out as a small, self—contained box four years ago. today, it‘s enjoyed a phoenix—like rise, compatible with over 28,000 smart devices and myriad gadgets of all shapes and sizes. alexa, run the video. this bot vector isn‘tjust cute, it can also order you a pizza. fire up this alexa oven and pair your smart—cooked breakfast with a smart—brewed coffee. and when you‘re feeling the creative juices flowing, you can always kick back with your smart instrument. if you‘re a keyboard player, you know it can be really frustrating navigating your way through menus, just to get where you want. but with alexa built in, there‘s a world of possibilities that open up. so, for example, i can say "alexa, ask go:piano to select strings."

the tone is tuned to strings. and with this particular device, there‘s a number of built—in commands that work offline. so, for example, head up display. and there we go! ready to roll! google assistant may have been late to the party but is trying to catch up. it is built into this alarm clock with internet phone. hey, google. what‘s the weather? or is around for a chat whilst you get ready. google assistant: currently in las vegas, it‘s 57 and partly cloudy. meanwhile, apple — and to a lesser extent, microsoft — are making a play for voice domination too, but amazon and google remain clear front—runners. not that you‘d need to commit to just one. with this bluetooth headset from ov loop, you can simply say "ov phone" to activate either siri or google, and "ov alexa" to activate

its amazon rival. play gorillaz. but other voice—activated assistants are hoping to break new ground in specific environments. chris is supposed to work when you‘re in the car, even when you‘re off—line, letting you controlled music and even navigation with your voice and, somewhat curiously, with a few gestures too. and back in the home, some specialist devices are aiming to use voice function for slightly more human purposes. this is a social companion robot for the elderly. it combines google‘s voice recognition technology and niq‘s own platform to be able to not just respond but also initiate conversation. it can actually provide notjust the mind but also call for its users. so if somebody has been sitting down for too long, the motion sensors will alert it

and may get them to get up and do a bit of exercise. it could also be helping them keep in contact with their family through the tablet elements. but of course, these devices do have a way to go before they provide a totally seamless experience. and now it is going to pull out one of the... voice should be the most natural user interface that is out there, versus touch or using a mouse or keyboard, or anything else, and so making it conversational, like you and ijust having a conversation right now, that is how it should be with alexa, right? we shouldn‘t have to keep using her name, we should have ideas of knowing what we are about to say. this is a gesture controlled speaker, which works like this. the company behind it are hoping to install their technology in virtual assistants, and it is notjust about being able to wake you up by tapping, it is also going to track how far away you are in the room so that the volume can

be adjusted accordingly. a device‘s built—in speaker emits ultrasound waves and its microphone receives them, mapping where you are. the software acts on this information, it may be pausing something yau‘rs watching—l while oulldeasaceplenti/saboutboé for this year‘s ces, google and amazon certainly seem to be enjoying having the last word. thank you very much, goodnight. in the future, we will talk to our devices, and they will talk back. and that means that developers need to think in a much more nonvisual way. when you glance at the screen, you can selectively absorb a lot of information and selectively pick

out what is interesting and relevant to you, but when you‘re listening to a skill or voice application in action, you‘re forced to listen to whatever the skill is telling you. so it needs to get it right and it needs to get it right every single time. jargon was one of nine start—ups selected for amazon‘s 13 week alexa accelerator programme, which helps develop ideas that use voice and send them on their way towards more funding. despite having more than 10,000 alexa developers working inside amazon, the company is also inviting in ideas from start—ups, simple adaptations of home appliance controls to work in an office environment to much more complex speech recognition tasks, which is working towards understanding people who have problems with their speech. i love you. a small company comes up with a great idea that inspired us and we said wow, we could really help this company by creating new apis that they could

take advantage of. a company came in with our first accelerator, and they have this really interesting service where you read a physical book to your kid typically, and their backend is listening to the work you are reading, knows where you are in the book, and at certain points in time will play a sound effect. are you afraid of monsters? so imagine you are reading a harry potter book, and at the right point, there are storm affects that come on, right? and it's a magical experience. and yet, we are still only in the early days of speech recognition and there are plenty of hurdles still to overcome. we have made huge advances in voice control in a really short time, butjust where are we on the speech recognition journey?

well, that‘s what kate russell has been looking at. what does the internet sound like? dialup internet dial sound playing. oh no, that was 20 years ago. what does it sound like today? i‘m siri. jumble of computerised voices plays. : é 222! q g; gge of theg 2 £92! want to mute its microphone for ths' nsatfom‘mfrmtss more people now have mobile phones than have toilets, and of those people, 60% are already using voice to talk to their phone. experts predict that by next year, a third of all web browsing could be done without a screen. in a world where 66% of us say they want their lives to be simpler,

anything that removes friction, just by removing buttons and just letting us talk to things, is going be attractive. but a post browser world raises an interesting question for all kinds of businesses. how will our customers find us? it is a head scratcher for broadcasters, like the bbc, because without an audience, we might as well pack up and go home. so voice platforms are both really, really exciting and really, really challenging. they‘re exciting because they are a frictionless way to get audiences to your content. it is also a challenge though because you have other companies, amazons, apples, googles coming in, saying what does this mean for other businesses? and we, as the broadcasters, need to think really, really carefully about how we work with those partners in order to make sure that we protect our

business and do the right thing for audiences, and don‘t end up killing radio by accident. there is also the issue of search and discovery. for audiences to find content, it needs to rank highly in search results. if you type brexit into a browser, you get a page of links to choose from. when you say to alexa "tell me about brexit", she gets to choose, or more importantly amazon gets to choose which top result starts to get played out to you, which means it is a winner takes all environment. one of the key players in the day‘s smart speaker market, google is known to use algorithms to float content higher up the list based on interests you have already experienced. so how does click get to the top of google‘s list? it is the user list, that is what is important. we are simply the distribution of the content that already has a huge audience, so there are certain players that you just have to have, and there are other times when there is just unique

experiences out there that a partner has, that we believe is what the users really want. recipes is another, we said we had to make sure that we have the right recipe partners because that is a key use case for speakers. those are the two things that i would say really ranked on what the users really want, and also the popularity of a lot of content that they already have, which has already been established before we even start to think about the programme. so you are going to see the same kind of stuff over and over, but what if you want to watch something other than bbc click? serendipity of discovery is already under siege by recommendation engine code. do we really want to get caught up in a filter bubble of just one result? the platform owners really, they know they need to work on discoverability. if you have either a google home hub which has screens on,

you will see that they are trying to suggest things you need to have on all the time, and you can also look at the skills that you have enabled. useful. anyone who has a smart speaker will know how hard it is to remember all those skills and actions, and exactly what you have to say to use them. it can feel more like speaking to a truculent 2—year—old than an intelligent machine. but there are opportunities too. we are experimenting as a research company with using speakers to ask you questions, so in the morning alexa might say to you "hello, would you like to answer some questions about breakfast cereals today? i will give you a £20 amazon voucher.", and that might be much easier than me sending an e—mail and you clicking on it and answering some questions on your phone. some of you will be horrified by the prospect of a world full of talking technology.

we all saw what happened with hal, right? sorry, i don‘t know that one. a likely story. but for most of us, voice assistants may prove a way to improve our relationship with technology — eventually. and that is it from seattle, at least for now. don‘t forget you can follow us on social media, facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter. we‘re @bbcclick. thanks for watching and we will see you soon. hello. a chilly day across—the—board with veryllttle sunshine really. it with very little sunshinsirealiyiilt , i i is with very little sunshineireaiiyiilt , i i is quite with very little sunshineireallyiilt , i i is quite limited. i have this

is quite limited. we have this weather system bringing - and weather system bringing snow and showers. not a dry picture but heavy showers. not a dry picture but hopefully the afternoon will bring drier weather for many. the hopefully the afternoon will bring drier weatherfor many. the best hopefully the afternoon will bring drier weather for many. the best of the sunshine in northern scotland, east anglia. the showers will peter out across the south—west and northern ireland but the ones will still be heavy. the cloud will prevent a hard frost but the approach of this frost developing ahead of it there are worries for ice. colder than that nightjust gone. sunday is drierfor ice. colder than that nightjust gone. sunday is drier for england and wales, the promise of more sunshine in eastern areas and scotla nd sunshine in eastern areas and scotland and northern ireland following on from our rainham hill fog here. —— from our rain and hill fog here. —— from our rain and hill fog here. good afternoon.

the former prime minister sirjohn major says the house of commons should be given a vote on all brexit options. sirjohn told the bbc allowing mps to indicate their preferred alternative to theresa may‘s deal, which mps rejected this week, might help break the deadlock. the shadow brexit secretary sir keir starmer has called on mrs may to negotiate a deal with the eu that keeps the uk close to it. he also warned that labour had to be ready to campaign for a fresh referendum. our political correspondent nick eardley reports. things