At its re:MARS AI conference earlier this month, Amazon previewed Alexa Conversations, a module within the Alexa Skills Kit that melds Alexa voice apps to allow users to perform complicated tasks requiring multiple skills — all with fewer lines of code. That’s because a recurrent neural network will be able to “generate dialogue flow” automatically, thus limiting the number of steps a user needs to order food or reserve a ticket. Amazon vice president David Limp dubbed Conversations “the Holy Grail of voice science.” Read more

Walmart launched Delivery Unlimited, which offers consumers a subscription grocery delivery service for $98 per year or $12.95 per month, with a 15-day trial period. Per-order fees run $9.95 or less. The new subscription service is priced competitively, with Shipt and Instacart charging $99 per year. Prime Now costs $119 per year, but touts all of the benefits of Amazon Prime, including fast shipping and streaming media content. Target, which bought Shipt, now offers shoppers same-day delivery and a first-time $9.99 per order fee.

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Some companies are changing their model for picking out the best new ideas to develop. In most industries, the typical path of a new product begins in the R&D department and is led by senior staff. But that’s beginning to change, said USC Marshall School of Business chaired professor Ann Majchrzak, who noted that companies are starting to realize that the R&D department “might not be the best predictor of what is a good idea.” Instead, some companies are experimenting with internal crowdsourcing, which lets any employee pitch an idea. Read more

Marketing platform Mailchimp just launched its own entertainment division, Mailchimp Presents, to produce short-form original series, movies and podcasts with a focus on the common experiences and struggles of entrepreneurs and small business owners. “These folks are often isolated, thinking about work all the time,” said Sarita Alami, production lead of Mailchimp Presents, and the company’s senior manager of brand marketing. “We have this great opportunity to create content that resonates with them in a way that hopefully reminds them that they’re not alone.” Read more

Mastercard, PayPal Holdings, Uber Technologies and Visa are among the more than a dozen companies that have agreed to back Facebook’s new cryptocurrency, codenamed Project Libra. Each company will invest $10 million and be part of the Libra Association, a consortium to control the virtual currency, said sources. The invested money will fund the currency, which will be linked to a collection of government-issued currencies to make it more stable. Facebook has been developing the project in secrecy for over a year. Read more