NEW YORK, NY - 20 Jul 2016: Today, Macy's announced the pilot of "Macy's On Call," a mobile web tool that allows customers to interact with an AI-powered platform, via their mobile devices. "Macy's On Call" taps IBM (NYSE: IBM) Watson, via Satisfi, an intelligent engagement platform, to deliver a first-of-its-kind solution that will enhance the customer in-store shopping experience at 10 test locations nationwide. A Macy's team member tests out Macy's On Call, a new mobile web tool powered by IBM Watson and Satisfi. Macy's On Call allows customers to input questions in natural language about each participating store's unique product assortment, services and facilities and then receive a customized response to the inquiry. Macy's is currently piloting the new tool in 10 store locations across the country.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Macy's (NYSE:M) announced the pilot of "Macy's On Call," a mobile web tool that allows customers to interact with an AI-powered platform via their mobile devices. "Macy's On Call" taps IBM Watson, via Satisfi, an intelligent engagement platform, to deliver a first-of-its-kind solution that will enhance the customer in-store shopping experience at 10 test locations nationwide. The mobile companion, accessed via a mobile browser, allows customers to input natural language questions regarding each participating store's unique product assortment, services and facilities and receive a customized response to the inquiry. There are a number of ways that customers may request information. For example, a customer could type, "Where are the women's shoes?" or type a combination of brand and product inquiry such as "I.N.C dress," and they will receive the relevant response and location of that product in the store.

Curious to know what an Australian soldier fighting in WWI had for brekkie? Now you can ask him yourself, along with anything else that comes to mind. The Wizeline bots team has partnered News Corp Australia to launch the AnzacLive chatbot, an innovative way to share history with a modern audience. The chatbot was created to commemorate Anzac Day, which recognizes the anniversary of the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. in WWI -- namely the historic battles of Fromelles and Pozieres in July 1916. How did our bots team create a cross-century AMA? Journals from one of the soldiers, Archie Barwick, have been powered by technology.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

As artificial intelligence (AI) makes deeper inroads to improve our daily life, a group of Land Rover engineers have helped the British Land Rover BAR team by building a faster boat so that they could win the sailing competition America's Cup. Using AI, the engineers worked for more than a year to find patterns in the boat's performance data which could be used to make it go faster, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Land Rover BAR is second in America's Cup World Series rankings, following a podium finish in Chicago in the US recently. The next leg is in the island city of Portsmouth from July 21-24 when the team will try to close the 10-point gap to series leader Emirates Team New Zealand. "Land Rover's AI could prove the difference in its bid to win the America's Cup for the first time for Britain," said Sir Ben Ainslie, Land Rover BAR Team's principal and skipper.

Going on a date with someone you have met online can be a daunting experience. While taking a friend with you might seem strange, this is exactly the aim of Tinder's latest feature. Some have pointed out these activities may not be as innocent as they seem, describing it as a'group sex' feature. But Tinder Social says the tool is not designed for this, and simply enables users to create groups, meet new people and plan activities together. After downloading the latest update, Tinder users can now choose to'unlock' Tinder Social to gain access to the feature.

Tinder Social came about after a test in Australia that proved a glut of the app's users have been looking for a feature to aid in planning out their night, their hangouts, and ways to meet new people for concerts and other friendly excursions aside from romantic encounters. When using the feature, Tinder users can "unlock" Tinder Social to create a group of 1-3 friends with a sole focus, like attending a movie or hitting up a bar. The group access can be turned on or off at any time. When users swipe right on a group they like, the groups will combine and offer up a group chat for planning the event. The feature is available in the US, UK and select other areas around the world.

A Land Rover team of engineers is helping the Land Rover BAR team make its America's Cup entry faster. America's Cup is the pinnacle of sailing competitiveness. Teams spend upwards of 100 million just to sniff success and rumor has it Oracle Team USA owner Larry Ellison blew past that by nearly double when his team won it in 2013. However, in an attempt to bring the Cup to Great Britain for the first time ever, one team is looking not to outspend its opponents, but to outthink them. The Land Rover BAR team is using the brains from one of its sponsors – Land Rover – to build a faster boat … faster because it's smarter.

Consumers can look forward to a future increasingly defined by a global voice, and dominated by robots, the Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual and augmented reality (the last of which has become considerably more plausible since the release of Pokemon Go), according to a new trends report by Toronto-based non-profit innovation hub MaRS. Arguably more fascinating than the report's conclusion, however, is its methods: To determine the trends that will define tech's future, authors Farah Momen and Sue McGill calculated the startups that were receiving the most funding, then divided them into sectors. "By analyzing the capital raised over the past year, we can understand: a) which consumer and commerce verticals are seeing the most activity here in Canada (such as wearables and foodtech); and b) which specific, innovative consumer and enterprise business-to-business companies are gaining traction in the market," Momen and McGill wrote in a July 7 press release announcing the report. While ecommerce might be delivering a wider variety of products to consumers than ever before, the final purchase decision is still frequently influenced by their shopping experience, Momen and McGill write – and advancements in VR and AR have created new opportunities for companies to provide an immersive, unforgettable experience, with manufacturers such as Lexus and Volvo implementing virtual test-driving simulations, and Ikea adding an AR feature to its mobile app that lets viewers virtually place and view nearly 300 of the Swedish furniture giant's products in their homes. Sure, we all know about Alexa and Cortana, but more interesting to Momen and McGill is the role that digital shopping assistants could play in retail's future, with companies like Stitch Fix already delivering monthly boxes of curated items chosen by a combination of machine and human stylists.

According to a new release, "Zendesk, Inc. today announced the launch of Automatic Answers, a feature powered by machine learning within Zendesk that helps customers solve their inquiries faster and enables businesses to have more efficient support teams. Zendesk is one of the first customer service platforms implementing machine learning to natively auto-respond to customer tickets with relevant knowledge base articles, helping solve and deflect customer inquiries before they ever reach an agent. Automatic Answers was developed in Australia by Zendesk's Melbourne-based development team, who previously brought Satisfaction Prediction to market and was awarded the 2016 Victorian iAward for Big Data Innovation of the Year."