After being selected from almost 800 applicants, the 27-year-old novice sailor quit her retail assistant job, packed up her house and moved to Britain for an intensive sailing course.

CNN: November 8, 2012 -- Updated 1414 GMT (2214 HKT)

In New York's famous Macy's store, if you want a shoe in a particular size the retail assistant will look it up in a virtual stock room on a mobile device within seconds.

BBC: How 'point of sale' became much more than a fancy calculator

Developers will be able to leverage the reference designs to rapidly develop their own virtual assistant capabilities for travel, insurance, retail, government and more.

ENGADGET: Voice assistant 'Nina' lets any app obey commands, makes speech your password

Staples, the office supplies retail giant, made a similar error in classifying its assistant store managers.

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