Google declares war against Alexa and Siri at CES 2018

It's an artificial intelligence showdown.

This year at CES, the world's largest electronics trade show (running Jan. 9-12), thousands of companies will travel to Las Vegas to show off their newest products and build new partnerships. But this time around, one exhibitor stands out from the rest: Google.

It's the first time in many years that Google will have its own, large, standalone booth in the middle of the convention center. But the search giant has gone far beyond buying space on the showroom floor. It's also commissioned several large advertisements around the city, including one you simply can't miss.

The words "Hey, Google" are currenctly plastered along the outside of the city's public transportation system (the Las Vegas Monorail) that will shuttle thousands of attendees into the conference center all week. It's a bold statement from the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, and makes one thing clear to all attendees at CES: Google wants you to get used to interacting with its digital assistant.

Although CES officially starts on Jan. 9, we're already getting a good sense of what we'll probably be seeing during the show. In short, artificial intelligence is going to built into many more everyday household items.

Even within my first six hours of being in Vegas, I saw AI assistants (like Google and Amazon Alexa) packed into what are normally dull household items like smoke alarms, bathroom mirrors, and shower heads. I also saw them built into newer, futuristic technology like home robots.

My takeaway from the obvious trend was this: Digital assistants (powered by artificial intelligence) are going to be built into everything and platform agnostic. They'll be the connective tissue that binds together your digital life across multiple rooms, appliances, and services.

For Google, CES 2018 is already turning into a watershed moment for its artificial intelligence. It's become abundantly clear that several big-name manufacturers will be building products around the Google Assistant. Of course, many of those companies will also integrate Amazon's Alexa assistant -- often into the exact same products. But, at this moment, it appears that Google may be able to claw its way back into this artificial intelligence arms race — even after losing the first few rounds of the battle.