Toyota and Panasonic, two Japanese giants, will create a joint venture, named Prime Life Technologies Corporation, that will merge each companies' housing businesses in order to begin developing "connected" services related to urban development and housing. The company will be a 50-50 partnership between the two and will try to create value in cities and homes by harnessing the opportunities brought about by developments in connected vehicles, home applicants and other devices (also known as IoT - Internet of Things). 

Statements from both companies demonstrate their willingness to combine their respective competencies to create a new value proposition. Toyota is massive player in the mobility and connected vehicles field, while Panasonic's strengths lie in its connected home appliances and IoT business. 

The partnership is the latest venture between the two Japanese companies. Earlier this year, Toyota and Panasonic announced a joint venture that will pull manufacturing and R&D strengths of both companies to build EV (electric vehicle) batteries. 

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Microsoft is developing AI for its Word online software, called Ideas, that will use machine learning to help improve the clarity, concision, and inclusiveness of your writing. In addition to having features that help improve your writing, Ideas will also have features that assist in reading and styling documents. Test versions of Ideas will become available in June and the software is expected to roll out to everyday users in the fall of this year. 

Ideas will be able to not only suggest grammar changes but also provide recommendations for how to rewrite phrases. When it comes to reading assistance, Ideas will be able to use machine learning to estimate reading times  and explain acronyms and potentially even select the key points from a selected text. Microsoft has also revealed that Ideas will come with a designer feature that will assist users in styling parts of their documents (ex: tables). 

Google has also recently announced it's own AI-based writing assistance tool that will come its online Google Docs software. The tool, according to Google, will not only be able to identify grammar mistakes but will also detect "nuances" in language. 

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