Going to watch the football? As you go about your everyday life, it's now likely your face is being digitally stored by everyone from the police to retailers. So is facial recognition keeping you safe or turning us into Big Brother Britain? Facial-recognition technology – biometric software that maps facial features and stores the data as a'faceprint' for later comparison – is rapidly encroaching upon our lives, spreading throughout our streets, stations, shopping centres, supermarkets and stadia. What's more, it is being developed with our tacit approval.

Here's everything our readers were most obsessed with in 2019. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission. As we head into the new year, we think it's fun to look at all the wonderful products that we bought in 2019. This year brought some incredible releases like Disney, Apple AirPods Pro, and the all-new Kindle--and honestly, some of these things were apart of what really make the year great. So we decided to roundup 100 of the most popular products that people bought over and over again. Whether it was a massive sale (looking at you Black Friday) or one of the hottest product people couldn't stop talking about (*cough* weighted blankets *cough*), our readers found something that caught their eyes. From robot vacuums to wireless headphones to streaming services, these are the most popular products that people couldn't stop buying in 2019. Everyone become obsessed with Disney in 2019. Although it was just released in November, the new streaming service Disney became the most popular product of the year. With it came nostalgia for the Disney classics, new original shows and movies, and plenty of Baby Yoda content. Seriously, if you're a fan of Marvel, Disney Princesses, Star Wars, Pixar, and all things Disney, you might want to consider following suit and getting a subscription for yourself. We still love the tried-and-true Instant Pot Duo. It's no surprise here--our readers were all about that Instant Pot life this year. The Duo 6 Quart, a.k.a. the most popular model out there, was far and away the biggest seller this year, and in no small part because of the deals that ran on it during Prime Day and Black Friday, respectively. If you were one of the lucky ducks who nabbed it when it was just $50, good on you. But you can still get it for a pretty good price right now, too. Nobody really wants to vacuum, but they also don't want to spend a fortune on a robot vacuum to do their dirty work. That's why the Eufy 11S was so popular this year. It's the best affordable robot vacuum we've ever tested because it balances great cleaning powering and a reasonable price. Our readers loved scooping it up--especially when it was on sale as it is right now.

Amazon is set to'wave' goodbye to card payments at its cashierless grocery store. The firm received a patent for a'touchless scanning system' that identifies customers using hand recognition. Customers would scan their hand in order to enter the store and again when they are ready to purchase items at the register - the system identifies individuals through the wrinkles and veins in their palms. Although a patent is not a sure thing, the New York Post reported in September that Amazon was testing a similar system at Whole Foods that lets people checkout at a register by scanning their hand. The patent was filed on June 21, 2018 and published December 26 by the US Patent & Trademark Office, which was first reported on by Redcode.

Rajesh Kumar Arora is a senior engineer at the Indian Space Research Organization, where he has been working for more than two decades. He obtained his PhD in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research interests include mission design, simulation of launch vehicle systems, and trajectory optimization.

Technology giants are opening their checkbooks to keep pace in the hot field of artificial intelligence, where some of the best ideas and most sought-after talent reside in small startups and academia. Intel Corp.'s purchase of Israeli startup Habana Labs for $2 billion this month is the biggest AI deal in a year when those transactions have already hit a record. Other tech giants, including Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have made acquisitions in recent years to strengthen their ability to apply complex algorithms...

As long as human beings have exchanged goods and services, making predictions has been an essential part of the marketplace, and data has always been an essential part of the equation. Today, most retailers are drowning in data, but they aren't necessarily using it to the best of their advantage. Enter artificial intelligence (AI) to bridge the gap between the volume of data available and the correct interpretation of that data for strategic business decisions. With problems on the retail landscape ranging from store site selection to staffing, retailers who have responded to the AI revolution have seen an increase in profits and a decrease in the guesswork that can make running a business an exercise in trial and error. This ebook takes a deeper look at the challenges facing the marketplace and how AI can help retailers put strategic solutions into place that will help them grow and refine their businesses in a fast moving world.

Know Your Stuff is a new column that unlocks the hidden secrets about the everyday products you own. You've finished opening gifts and now you're the proud owner of a new…gadget. Maybe you asked for it specifically or maybe it was just a well-intended notion. Either way, now it's yours, it looks expensive, and you don't have a clue how to use it. This is the point at which many of us throw in the towel.

Amazon Inc, the world's largest online retailer, is being known these days as more of a technology company, and rightly so. Technology is at the core of whatever Amazon does -- from algorithms that forecast demand and place orders from brands, and robots that sort and pack items in warehouses to drones that will soon drop packages off at homes. At its new Go Stores, for instance, advances in computer vision have made it possible to identify the people walking in and what products they pick up, helping add them to their online shopping carts. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the world's richest man, is always pulling new rabbits out of his hat, like next-day or same-day shipping and cashier-less stores. Besides, there is Blue Origin, the aerospace company privately owned by Bezos, which is on a mission to make spaceflight possible for everyone.

Michael Osborne, Dyson Associate Professor in Machine Learning, University of Oxford "This book should be the first stop for deep learning beginners, as it contains lots of concrete, easy-to-follow examples with corresponding tutorial videos and code notebooks.

Online shoppers have come to expect a seamless experience. They assume they'll be able to shop whenever and wherever they want on whatever device they choose. And they expect a retailer's various channels to be connected. To discuss how advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization are giving retailers the opportunity to improve customer experience and to make their operations more efficient, Internet Retailer spoke with Lisa Kalscheur, chief marketing officer of Kibo, which recently acquired Monetate, a personalization and testing platform. IR: What have been the most significant ecommerce developments around personalizing the customer experience?