hello this is bbc news with rebecca jones. the headlines: the prime minister theresa may is to brief ministers on cross—party talks as downing street warns mps not to try and block brexit two people are arrested following a car bomb attack in londonderry last night. police believe dissident republican group, the new ira, may have carried out the attack. a funeral is held in hertfordshire for six unknown auschwitz victims whose remains were handed to a british museum more than 20 years ago. defending champion roger federer is knocked out of the austrialian open in the fourth round. now on bbc news, it's time for click. this week, we talk talk. but can your voice reveal what's wrong with you? can this helmet hear you? and would you all please stop shouting? alexa, what are the amazon spheres?

they are an unusual place to work, i have to say. the domes house 40,000 plants. they also have waterfalls, meeting spaces and shops. they're slightly tropical, quite moist, and give you a real sense that you're working in the future. i mean, who'd have thought in the middle of seattle, there'd be a rainforest?

an amazon rainforest? say "amazon", think what? jungle? 0nline shopping? or do you think of alexa? this is, after all, the company that has brought voice control to the masses. there's no training required for using voice. the vision for voice is that anyone — young, old, in any country, in any context — can use natural language to interact with technology. alexa is only gonna be as successful as the partners are that support it. and that's why voice is the next battleground for the tech supergiants. the more voice apps there are and the 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. now, as a human being, you'll know that you can tell quite a lot from someone‘s voice — not just what they mean but also how they are feeling and possibly whether they're ill. now, that's obviously really hard for a computer to do, but nick kwek 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 i do need to say ahh, as well as make a bunch of other sounds. it's a early decay of the voice. today, dr levanon is going to give me my medical, purely by listening to the way i talk. ..see anything beyond verbal of what my state of health is.

he's a firm believer that it's not what you say, it's how you say it. je t'aime. wo ai ni in chinese. or in hebrew, ani ohev otah. it's — all of that are ways of expressing love. and if i lack that and i commanding you, it's the same in all the languages. he isn't a doctor of medicine, but of research he's been working on for more than 2a years, which has culminated in a new piece of software. it's a tuesday morning. we've got to catch a flight later back to london. by analysing my vocal intonation, dr levanon says his algorithm can infer my mood, attitude and personality. 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, "0h, you are very tired." i am very tired! but the reason i am here is for 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. he's comparing the audio wave patterns of someone‘s voice against an archive of recordings of people with known illnesses. how are you analysing the wave patterns? 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 are combine all the signs together, we can see how severe is problem and what is his health problem. ss: {$34 72=a,~:ze;—:—'é~—>5—:; . . 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. 0k, 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 performed 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. 0ne 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 around 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. however, it's still not enough to say "that's it!" it's still enough to say alert, be — take care of yourself, 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, 0range 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 now 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 going 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. 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 to what 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". alexa: 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 need to commit to just one. with this bluetooth headset from 0v loop, you can simply say "0v phone" to activate either siri or google, and "0v alexa" to activate its amazon rival. play gorillaz. but the 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 control 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, 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 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 you're watching or listening to, or turning off heating and lighting. while there are ideas aplenty about how the future of voice could play out, for this year's ces, google and amazon certainly seen} te be enieyine having the test were? ~ , ~

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 a screen, you can selectively absorb a lot of information and selectively pick out what's 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,

from 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 effects that come on, right? and it's a magical experience. and yet, we're 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. i'm alexa. jumble of computerised voices plays. but as we saw from ces floor earlier, the age of the voice assistant is well and truly upon us. around one in ten uk homes already have a smart speaker, and if you're one of them, you might want to mute its microphone

for the next four minutes. 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 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 those platforms are both really, really exciting and really, really challenging.

they're exciting because they are an infectious 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 an 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's not our list, it's the user's 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 have to make sure that we have the right recipe partners because that's 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 category and 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?

the 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 an echo show 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 two—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 promises 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. it has been a cloudy day across many

areas of the uk, but we have seen some brighter spells. some hill snow in scotland, this was a wintry scene up in scotland, this was a wintry scene up in scotland. on the satellite picture, you can see the cloud today, but some brighter weather in the north—west, and some clear and sunshine in the south east england. these are prime spots for seeing temperatures to plummet, so frost in place quickly. across england and wales, we have a band of cloud, some drizzle or motoring on that. it will turn misty and foggy as well. aside from that, it is a cold night,

temperatures well below freezing, some frost, and one of the coldest nights we have seen in northern scotla nd nights we have seen in northern scotland this winter. for most of us, monday is a cold, frosty but sunny start. there will be some cloud which will spoil the sunshine, but bright weather in much of england and eastern scotland. for western scotland and northern ireland, we will have a freshening wind, outbreaks of rain, and perhaps some snow in the high ground in scotland. quite a cold day, temperatures around 4—6 degrees. monday night, the rain and hill snow will move southwards and eastwards. the rain band will turn to snow on low levels, that may happen in europe, though. for the time being, it looks like it'll be cold rain as it looks like it'll be cold rain as it works across eastern england. 0n tuesday, it will be a chilly day, some sunshine after a frosty and icy start to the day. plenty of wintry showers, so some heavy snow showers across high grounds in wales, with some speculations of snow quite

likely. wednesday, and we will have north—westerly wind from iceland and greenland, so another cold day. these winds will favour showers across north—western part of the uk, apart from that, it is a frosty start to the day, but it should be largely dry and sunny. we might see some wintry showers across eastern and south—eastern england. there may be some low pressure in the north as well. 0ver be some low pressure in the north as well. over the next couple of days, it will stay cold with some wintry showers. some frost, but it should be less cold by friday. parliament has not got the right to hijack the brexit process because parliament said to the people of this country we make a contract with

you, you will make the decision and we will honour it. labour's brexit secretary says the prime minister needs to row back on her red lines to break the deadlock. all at this stage she really needs to do this to say i am not going to go on any more with this mantra that you back my deal or no deal. i will have an open discussion and i am absolutely not going to take us out without a deal. two people are arrested following a car bomb attack in londonderry last night.