Kroger, one of America's largest grocery chains, has decided to embrace technology to help it survive and thrive in the 4th industrial revolution. With 2,782 grocery stores under nearly two dozen names in 35 states, Kroger plans to leverage its data, shopper insights and scale to help it remain a leader in the marketplace of the future. According to a study by the Food Marketing Institute, online grocery is expected to account for 20% of all grocery retail by 2022 and reach $100 billion in consumer sales, so Kroger and its competitors are smart to figure out ways to use technology to their advantage. In the fall of 2017, Kroger unveiled an audacious three-year $9 billion plan called Restock Kroger with the goal to build out its e-commerce, digital and omnichannel businesses and redefine the customer experience. The grocer already delivers 3 billion personalized recommendations each year, but they will enhance the personalization efforts to "create different experiences for customers."

Trigo Vision, an AI startup founded by former members of the Israeli army's special forces and intelligence community, just came out of stealth mode with a target in its sights: Amazon's Go store. When Amazon opened its cashier-less store in Seattle earlier this year, it was hailed as the future of brick-and-mortar shops. And even if the company follows through on plans to open half a dozen more, the locations will be little more than a novelty. There are more than 150,000 convenience stores and 40,000 grocery markets in the US alone. Amazon may have enough money to build sophisticated storefronts full of expensive hardware from the ground up with no regard for profits – the marketing alone is worth it for the juggernaut worth $900 billion – but most other retail chains don't.

Mist, the pioneer in self-learning networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), announced that it has partnered with Shopper Media Group, Australia's fastest-growing retail out-of-home (OOH) media business. Using Mist, Shopper Media Group will offer superior Wi-Fi, analytics and location-based services across the company's portfolio of Australian shopping centers. Mist currently provides market-leading Wi-Fi and location services using virtual Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to businesses across all industries worldwide, including over 30 of the Fortune 500 enterprises and the biggest retail players. Shopper Media Group is one of the first companies in Australia to deploy Mist technology, delivering on its mission to provide the best-in-class Wi-Fi solution and AI powered infrastructure to its national network of shopping centers. CEO of Shopper Media Group, Ben Walker said that they are incredibly excited to be working with the leaders in Wi-Fi and location-aware analytics, Mist, as they share the same drive to create, innovate and provide service leadership using ground-breaking AI-driven technology.

Walmart and Microsoft have struck a new partnership and they're very clear about why: to take on Amazon. The two companies announced a five-year deal today, one that revolves around Microsoft's artificial intelligence technologies and the ways they can help Walmart retail stores. This follows a recent report claiming that Walmart was considering Microsoft technology that will allow it to launch its own checkout-free grocery stores similar to Amazon Go. The companies announced the new deal today, with Walmart saying that it has selected Microsoft to be its "preferred and strategic cloud provider," specifically mentioning plans to use its various "cloud solutions." There's mention of both artificial intelligence and machine learning, marking an expansion of Microsoft services used by Walmart.

The machine-learned smarts that enable products such as google translator, Tesla's self driving feature, and Amazon robotics -- Kiva, to accomplish tasks such as translating conversations or images, compiling knowledge and understanding the variable necessary to complete a successful instance are increasingly finding their way into third-party applications that people use every day. Cognitive science, the fundamental replicate value within artificial intelligence (AI), is based on representational structures in the mind that computational procedures can learn, operate and improve on. After several years of "pie-in-the-sky" keynote speeches and computational disappointments, AI is finally driving real-world benefits to early-adopters. Logistics companies, online retailers and fulfillment centers on the digital frontier already rely on AI-powered robots to run their operations. In some cases, organizations have integrated their systems to auto-order inventory when product is low.

The machine-learned smarts that enable products such as google translator, Tesla's self driving feature, and Amazon robotics -- Kiva, to accomplish tasks such as translating conversations or images, compiling knowledge and understanding the variable necessary to complete a successful instance are increasingly finding their way into third-party applications that people use every day. Cognitive science, the fundamental replicate value within artificial intelligence (AI), is based on representational structures in the mind that computational procedures can learn, operate and improve on. After several years of "pie-in-the-sky" keynote speeches and computational disappointments, AI is finally driving real-world benefits to early-adopters. Logistics companies, online retailers and fulfillment centers on the digital frontier already rely on AI-powered robots to run their operations. In some cases, organizations have integrated their systems to auto-order inventory when product is low.

According to industry analyst Gartner, almost two thirds of supply chain professionals believe technology holds the key to securing a competitive advantage. That can be easier said than done, as organisations must figure out potential use cases and how the technology will work in practice. As such, many within the industry are currently experimenting with a number of technologies and seeing how they can enhance their supply chain operations. People are growing increasingly accustomed to IoT and connected devices, such as fitness trackers and digital locks, which play a part in their everyday lives. However, the supply chain industry has not seen much IoT/connected device penetration beyond expo hall demos to date.

Fingerprint scanners, voice recognition, targeted ads, home voice assistants. These technologies are all part of everyday modern life and are revolutionising the way retailers sell their products to consumers across the world. But have we actually taken the time to stop and consider what customers think of our ever increasing arsenal of tech tricks to entice and persuade? Every year we survey consumers in the UK, France and Germany to gain an understanding into what technologies they think are'creepy' or'cool'. The results from this year's survey are just in – giving us a top 5 'creepy' and top 5 'cool' list of tech that shoppers love or loathe.

Jeff Smith builds large-scale machine learning systems using Scala and Spark. For the past decade, he has been working on data science applications at various startups in New York, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. He blogs and speaks about various aspects of building real world machine learning systems.

Are you ready to develop and show off your machine learning skills in a way that has a positive impact on the world? If so, get your hands on an AWS DeepLens video camera and join the AWS DeepLens Challenge! About the Challenge Working together with our friends at Intel, we are launching the first in a series of eight themed challenges today, all centered around improving the world in some way. Each challenge will run for two weeks and is designed to help you to get some hands-on experience with machine learning. We will announce a fresh challenge every two weeks on the AWS Machine Learning Blog. Each challenge will have a real-world theme, a technical focus, a sample project, and a subject matter expert.