While it might be tempting to dismiss Microsoft's AI technology hype as slick marketing to drum up sales revenue, a number of the company's customers said artificial intelligence is moving deeper into the real world. Several Microsoft blue-chip customers displayed their experiences with the company's customer experience AI technology here at the Microsoft Ignite 2018 conference. BMW uses AI and Azure's bot framework to enhance on-road driver support in cars. Swedish clothing retailer H&M launched Afound, an off-price outlet that includes physical stores in Sweden and globally via a digital marketplace infused with customer experience AI to drive sales. Two other retail giants, Nordstrom and Walmart, are remaking their online shopping experiences to match their online-only competitors.

If you've ever shopped online (*cough* Amazon *cough*), you've probably experienced the "vacuum cleaner effect". You carefully buy one expensive item (e.g. a vacuum cleaner) and then you receive dozens of recommendations for other vacuum cleaners to buy: by email, everywhere on the retailer's website, or sometimes in the ads you see on other websites. In other terms, Amazon is a 1 trillion dollar company that employs hundreds of data scientists and is incapable of understanding that if you bought an expensive appliance, buying another one of the same category in the next weeks is what you're *least* likely to do! But let's think about the problem for a second. Suggesting item that are similar to what you just bought is actually the core feature of recommendation algorithms!

Machine learning operations typically rely on quality data to train algorithms. If you are an online retailer, you may look at a customer's past purchases and browsing history and demographics to predict what the "next best offer" should be. The historical data you have collected about customers fuels the algorithm and insights on what your customer is most likely to purchase next. But while this approach is predictive, it can't let you look at events that haven't happened yet. Just because your customer bought that item every three months doesn't mean they won't find something different to buy in the future or they won't behave differently if the price goes up or down.

Retailers are increasingly applying artificial intelligence (AI) to better personalize customer service initiatives, and momentum is increasing. Fifty five percent of retailers plan to leverage AI technology within three years, and applications will vary, according to the "2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey," from Boston Retail Partners (BRP). AI's ability to learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention makes it a credible option to improve customer service. Some retailers use it to offer purchasing suggestions based on customer responses to a series of questions. Others use it to pinpoint the most convenient time of day to reach out to consumers with product suggestions, which are also based on past clicks and website visit data.

Jefferson Graham visits an Amazon Go store in Seattle, where an app gains you entrance to the store, and there are no lines or cashiers to check you out./ Murphy Brown returned this week and she got herself a lesson on how to tweet. Yup, that's how out of it she's been. In case you missed it, the hit show that originally debuted in 1988 returned to CBS Thursday in a revival. Thirty years later, for Talking Tech readers, this seemed like a great opportunity for us to look back at three decades of how our lives have changed with technology.

The convenience of e-commerce is great, but the environmental effects could be devastating. People walk along the sidewalk outside an Amazon Go location. While the devices we rely on today may seem commonplace, it would have been considered science fiction just a few years ago – be it taking calls on a smartwatch, asking a speaker in your home to play one of millions of songs, or having robotic lawnmowers that quietly cut our grass. So, when you hear about how we'll be performing one of our most common tasks in the near future – shopping – don't write it off as fantasy, because it'll be here before you know it. If you thought it was high-tech to tap your phone or smartwatch to buy something, wait until you get a load of the following half-dozen scenarios to roll out over the next few years.

XRC Labs, an accelerator program focused on e-commerce and retail startups, held a demo day for its latest class Thursday, featuring innovations in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other technologies. The group of 10 startups is the sixth class for New York-based XRC, which was founded three years ago to promote innovation in the disruptive age of Amazon. The 14-month program is based at the Parsons School of Design and helps its startups connect with retailers and brands that could use their tech tools. "Consumers are changing faster than the retailers," and that is resulting in shoppers bypassing traditional stores in droves, says Pano Anthos, XRC's managing director. The middle market is especially suffering, he adds.

Consumers are increasingly comfortable with AI technologies. Forty-four percent of them currently use some type of virtual assistant.i Even those who don't have access to a Siri, Alexa or Cortana enjoy AI experiences everyday--often without realizing it. Leading websites and social platforms routinely use AI, along with machine learning and analytics, to provide a steady stream of personalized experiences. Consumers are ready for traditional retailers to deliver the same level of AI-based personalization they enjoy in other aspects of their lives.

The 25 most popular things our readers bought this year (so far) (Photo: Reviewed.com) If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. It's been a heck of a shopping year thus far, and it's only going to ramp up during the holiday season. So we thought it'd be fun to see all of the wonderful things our readers have bought so far in 2018. With the incredible sales we've seen on popular products and the crazy prices of Amazon Prime Day, we have quite the hodgepodge of items on this list.

Two-and-a-half quintillion bytes of data are created daily. This could potentially rise even more thanks to better internet access. Today, we can collect big data from every imaginable field we're able to monitor digitally. Big data refers to large sets of info that are analyzed for trends and patterns that offer useful insights. Special emphasis is placed on analyzing people's behavior and interactions online.