The Internet of Things is still relatively new but we're already at the stage of a second annual event to further dissect it. At the MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum being held this Thursday in New York, brands, agencies and marketers will tackle some the major challenges along with opportunities around marketing and advertising within the Internet of Things. At the forum last year, questions revolved around issues such as creating less intrusive advertising, how brands will deal with consumers in connected homes and the then-growing world of wearables.

Artificial intelligence through digital voice assistants may be on the road to mass deployment, but most of those AI interactions still occur via smartphone. Part of the challenge in adoption is actually having it reach consumers. Almost half (48%) of consumers have not interacted with a form of AI and another 23% are not sure if they have, based on a study out today.

While Facebook may have scaled back its virtual reality activities, it doesn't mean the general public isn't getting a full dose of how the technology may look in the world of entertainment. The Oculus Story Studio of Facebook was recently closed, as the social media giant shifts its focus away from internal content creation to back more external production. Now one of the largest movie theater chains in the U.S. is creating a large base where consumers can easily try virtual reality for themselves.

Some consumers may be geting a Mother's Day surprise, as gifted flowers arrive inside a robot. The nearly two-foot high robots travel around four miles an hour and already have delivered food and pizza in Germany, cupcakes in California and have roamed the streets of London. Now, 1-800-Flowers.com is using the robots from Starship Technologies to deliver flowers, just in time for Mother's Day.

Although Amazon is currently dominating the market for digital home assistants, one of its two new devices doesn't look like it's a big draw for consumers. The Echo Look was announced last month. Even though the device is a bit of a step up from the mainstay Echo, the majority of consumers have little interest in it.

Mobile technology already got most consumers connected and now the Internet of Things is doing the same for their homes. A profile of connected home users is emerging, including who they are and why they connect various things. The majority (62%) of connected home users are male and 38% are female, with the highest users being between 25 and 34 years old, according to a new Nielsen study on how consumers use technology to secure their homes.

The growth of voice-activated personal assistants continues, now with owners wanting to exercise more control through voice. Consumers want to use voice to control both entertainment and smart home devices, based on a new study. The majority (56%) of U.S. broadband households find it appealing to use voice assistance to control smart home devices and most (55%) want to use voice to control entertainment devices.

Though most people don't yet have one, voice-enabled speaker ownership has grown dramatically, thanks mostly to millennials. This year, 36 million Americans will use a voice-enabled speaker at least once a month, according to a new study by eMarketer. That's a jump of 129% from just a year ago.

The smart mirror is getting smarter. Voice recognition is being added to intelligent augmented reality to create a new version of the magic mirror. The voice capability is being added to the smart mirrors already in place at companies like Sephora, L'Oreal and Coty as well as in their mobile apps.

Security is an ongoing issue around the Internet of Things. Connected home devices, such as smart thermostats, security cameras and smart TVs, typically offer the ability to secure the devices by creating a password. However, more than half (54%) of consumers own between one and four devices that are not protected by either a password or some form of biometric authentication, like a fingerprint, based on a new study.