Google's smart speakers and displays have steadily improved over the years, and luckily for us, a few of them are on sale for Black Friday. The biggest discount by far is the Google Home Max, which is now selling for $149.99, a whopping 50 percent off its regular price of $299.99) Sure, it's a few years old now -- we gave it a review score of 88 in 2017 -- but it's still a very good device, with stellar audio that outclasses most other Google-powered smart speakers, especially in terms of volume and bass. Our main complaint about the Home Max at the time was its high price tag, but since it's half off now, the Home Max is looking like quite a bargain. The Google-powered Nest Hub Max is on sale for $179.99 this week as well, which is $50 less than its usual price of $229.99.

The next round of Amazon Black Friday deals has begun, with most of the company's Echo speakers receiving heavy discounts. And considering these are the latest Echos with the new spherical design that only became available about one month ago, the deals are the best we've seen so far. These discounts join the slew of deals that started on Friday, which slashed the prices of most of Amazon's Fire TV devices. Check out the list below for the best Amazon Echo Black Friday deals we could find. Amazon updated the Echo Dot this fall and now we're seeing its first major discount.

The good news: You won't have to camp out in front of Best Buy for that big screen TV "doorbuster" deal. The bad: So many will, indeed, be gathered at the same time, but you'll all be online for the Black Friday super sales. Who has the quickest trigger finger? Black Friday sales start earlier this year, as soon as Sunday, if you're not counting the Black Friday-adjacent sales that have already been out there. The "doorbusters" of years past are now online specials, starting at staggered times.

AI in e-commerce won't be the same after this year's events. While the coronavirus pandemic froze the whole planet, offline stores found they couldn't compete with even the smallest online stores when their homes or neighborhoods limited people's lifestyles. But those who just started online sales this year will quickly find out what to do to sell efficiently on the internet. It is why the overall competition will rise. How can you gain a foothold now?

Not wanting to be outdone on top savings on big names, Amazon is hosting a whole Black Friday Week. It kicks off today and runs up until November 30, with thousands of deals available across the site. As always, some of the best discounts can be found on Amazon own devices. The mega-site is kicking off the shopping extravaganza with a host of incredible deals, including top savings on the new Echo Dot 4th Gen, Echo Show 5 and Fire 7 Tablet. You can even save £40 on the Kindle Kids Edition.

In the past year, lockdowns and other COVID-19 safety measures have made online shopping more popular than ever, but the skyrocketing demand is leaving many retailers struggling to fulfill orders while ensuring the safety of their warehouse employees. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created new artificial intelligence software that gives robots the speed and skill to grasp and smoothly move objects, making it feasible for them to soon assist humans in warehouse environments. The technology is described in a paper published online today (Wednesday, Nov. 18) in the journal Science Robotics. Automating warehouse tasks can be challenging because many actions that come naturally to humans -- like deciding where and how to pick up different types of objects and then coordinating the shoulder, arm and wrist movements needed to move each object from one location to another -- are actually quite difficult for robots. Robotic motion also tends to be jerky, which can increase the risk of damaging both the products and the robots.

At Topos, we are fascinated by exactly this type of variation and believe it provides a powerful view into the culture of a location. While data sources like the United States Census are useful for understanding broad demographic trends over decades, they give little insight into what defines the moment-to-moment culture of a city, a neighborhood, a street corner. Inspired by thinkers like Walter Benjamin, who, in his unfinished Arcades Project examined subjects as varied as fashion, construction materials, poetry, lighting, and mirrors in order to understand Paris in the 19th century, we are fascinated by the way seemingly simple, ubiquitous subjects like the coffee we drink or the concerts we go to define a place. However, unlike Benjamin, we are interested in constructing this understanding in a way that can dynamically scale across the globe, allowing us to understand how different locations relate to one another, and how locations evolve in real time. To achieve this, we use data from dozens of different sources and techniques from a wide range of technologies and disciplines including computer vision, natural language processing, statistics, machine learning, network science, topology, architecture and urbanism.

With the continuing shift to digital, especially in the retail industry, ensuring a highly personalized shopping experience for online customers is crucial for establishing customer loyalty. In particular, product recommendations are an effective way to personalize the customer experience as they help customers discover products that match their tastes and preferences. Google has spent years delivering high-quality recommendations across our flagship products like YouTube and Google Search. Recommendations AI draws on that rich experience to give organizations a way to deliver highly personalized product recommendations to their customers at scale. Today, we are pleased to announce that Recommendations AI is now publicly available to all customers in beta.

BEGIN ARTICLE PREVIEW: Grocery retailer Ocado is not well known outside of the United Kingdom. Even in the U.K., Ocado commands a mere 1.8% market share. But in the 20 years since it launched as one of the country’s first online-only supermarkets, the brand has become synonymous with technology. This is thanks to investments in machine learning, robotics, automated warehouses, and R&D projects to develop robotic arms capable of picking and packing delicate items such as fruit. The company has gradually transformed into a platform that equips retailers like Kroger with the tech needed to challenge the likes of Amazon, whose expansion into groceries continues. And just as Amazon offers all kinds of goods on its platform, Ocado’s ambitions now stretch far beyond groceries. Last week, Hatfield, England-based Ocado made its first acquisitions when it snapped up not one but two U.S. robotics companies for a combined total of $287 million. One is Kindred Systems, a

Shoplifting has been on the rise according to Gartner research in retail stores in the USA and UK where despite security cameras installed, theft cases continue to rise. Retail stores continue to suffer from theft losses characterized by shoplifting¹ and artificial intelligence is offering timely assistance. By working with facial recognition technology, artificial intelligence² is using algorithms to determine the behavioral patterns of shoppers in a bid to reduce theft cases. Vaak⁹ from Japan is a start-up leading the way where the company recently developed systems run by AI to monitor suspicious attributes among shoppers and alert retail store managers through their smartphones. While AI is usually envisioned as a smart personal assistant, the technology is accurate at spotting weird behavior.