Samsung's Bixby is the new kid on the block of personal digital assistants and is likely to face a rough reception in a neighborhood dominated by tech sector rivals.

Bixby -- introduced at Samsung's unveiling of Galaxy S8 smartphones -- aims to help the South Korean giant break into a surging market for voice-activated virtual assistants, which includes Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana.

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled its new Galaxy S8 smartphones, incorporating its virtual assistant Bixby, as the market leader seeks to rebound from a chaotic handset recall and a corruption scandal.

The South Korean giant's mobile chief DJ Koh told a New York event the Galaxy S8 and S8+ handsets marked "a new era of smartphone design."

People in the Chinese megacity Chongqing could be fined for using VPNs to jump over the country's "Great Firewall" that blocks access to forbidden websites from Google to Facebook. 

Although technology has long affected the labor force, recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics are heightening concerns about automation replacing a growing number of occupations, including highly skilled or "knowledge-based" jobs.

Uber has grounded its fleet of self-driving cars pending an investigation into the crash of an Uber autonomous vehicle in Arizona, a spokesperson for the car-hailing service said Sunday.

A Beijing court has overturned a ruling that Apple's iPhone 6 violated a Chinese manufacturer's patent which saw the US tech giant ordered to cease selling the smartphone in China.

In May last year the Beijing intellectual property bureau had ruled that Apple violated design patents of Chinese maker Shenzhen Baili with its iPhone6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and would be barred from selling those models.

Chicago police said Wednesday they were looking for up to six suspects who allegedly raped a teenage girl and broadcast the assault on Facebook Live.

Google, which has seen a slew of companies withdraw ads after they appeared alongside extemist content, said Tuesday it was introducing new tools to give firms greater control.

Two Russian intelligence agents and a duo of hackers were indicted Wednesday over a data breach that compromised 500 million Yahoo accounts in one of the largest cyberattacks in history.

The indictment announced by the U.S. Justice Department links Russia's top spy agency, the FSB, to the massive hacking operation which began in 2014 with the twin goals of espionage and financial gain.

A woman whose headphones caught fire on a plane suffered burns to her face and hands, Australian officials said Wednesday as they warned about the dangers of battery-operated devices in-flight.