Microsoft buys AI startup, Apple boosts health focus

San Francisco

MICROSOFT on Monday announced that it bought a startup to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities, and rival Apple confirmed that it has boosted its health focus with an acquisition of its own.

Microsoft did not disclose the financial terms of its deal to buy Genee, which specialises in using machine smarts to handle the time-sucking task of scheduling meetings. "Genee uses natural language processing and optimised decision-making algorithms so that interacting with a virtual assistant is just like interacting with a human one," Outlook and Office 365 corporate vice-president Rajesh Jha said in a blog post.