No one would doubt it's been a tough decade for retailers, and many have failed in the face of digital disruption and transformation. But for Salesforce senior VP of retail and consumer goods, Shelley Bransten, the rise of relationship-based engagement is offering up reasons to be increasingly optimistic about the retail market moving forward. "We're getting beyond the world of transactions and back to the heart of retail, which is creating relationships with shoppers," she told attendees at the recent Salesforce Connections event in Chicago. "The shopper is in control and expectations are higher than ever." Yet with less than 1 per cent of customer data being looked at in the retail sphere, let alone being realised in engagement and interactions, there is plenty of room for improvement, Bransten said.

The U.S. cotton market has remained stable since its spike in 2011, when China executed its cotton reserving and fiber hoarding plan. It is believed that U.S. cotton demand and price were artificially kept low because there are always worries that China would unexpectedly unleash its cotton stockpile, about half of the global storage. However, U.S. cotton price finally showed a revival in recent days. The ICE July cotton futures closed at 95.21 cents a pound on Tuesday, June 12, the highest level for a front-month future contract in the last 6 years. The revival could be attributed to multiple factors, with an emphasis on the worries about insufficient rain in the cotton-growing areas and the newly issued import quotas from China.

A little over a week after the fervor surrounding Google's involvement in the Department of Defense's Project Maven, an autonomous drone program, showed signs of abating, another machine learning controversy returned to the headlines: local law enforcement deploying Amazon's Rekognition, a computer vision service with facial recognition capabilities. In a letter addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, 19 groups of shareholders expressed concerns that Rekognition's facial recognition capabilities will be misused in ways that "violate [the] civil and human rights" of "people of color, immigrants, and civil society organizations." And they said that it set the stage for sales of the software to foreign governments and authoritarian regimes. Amazon, for its part, said in a statement that it will "suspend … customer's right to use … services [like Rekognition]" if it determines those services are being "abused." It has so far declined, however, to define the bright-line rules that would trigger a suspension.

Now, if a clerk asks to help you, it probably means you've been acting shady. Artificial intelligence continues to seep into our daily lives, touching up photos, developing snacks, and imitating school girls online. Now, AI has been tasked with tackling a crime as old as retail itself: shoplifting. A recent study by telecom giant NTT found that Japanese businesses lose around 400 billion yen (US$3.7B) annually through five-fingered discounts. No store is immune to this larceny, except perhaps anvil shops, and technology has yet to come up with a strong enough solution to effectively combat it, until now.

The online uses and benefits of AI have been well documented and utilised, but now in-store retail is starting to unlock the possibilities of AI. The maturity of smartphone technology is helping to drive this, with real time data being harnessed to make targeted suggestions based on an individual's location, personal preferences, and past behaviour. However, the use of AI enabled self-service checkouts is one area where AI is really starting to impact a consumer's daily life. Self-checkouts have been transforming the shopping experience for over two decades, reducing queue times, and helping retailers use floor space more effectively due to the smaller space required for their operation. However, self-checkout manufacturers are now working to take advantage of the latest technology innovations to improve the experience for all customers and retailers. Using AI enabled visual recognition technology, self-checkouts can now be equipped with smart recognition technology that enables the checkout to "see" the item, recognise it, and promptly provide the customer with the item for selection on the screen.

Google is probably one of the most active tech giants when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. In their most recent I/O, they probably demonstrated how to nail down a turing test. For those who missed it, here's a sneak peek: If such disruptive and moot evolution in Artificial Intelligence are not an effort towards enhancing mobile experiences then I don't know what is. With the change in consumer lifestyles and an escalating preference towards mobile devices, virtually all web applications are following the mobile first approach. Consumer behavior has evolved to an extent that more time is spent on mobile phones as compared to televisions or desktops.

This post originally appeared on the PullString blog. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last twelve months, you've heard about voice assistants. They go by the name of Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri and can give you information about your commute or the weather, turn lights on and off, book flights, and order groceries. A line of questioning we hear a lot from CMOs in North America and Europe is: should they even care about this latest technology trend, does voice deserve its own strategy, does it warrant attention at their level of the organization? We believe there are four strategic reasons why every CMO should start thinking about what voice assistant customer engagement means for their digital transformation strategy.

With the rise in online shopping, it seems more people are moving away from traditional shopping on the high street. Being able to access an online store from anywehere at anytime becomes very convinient for us. Is the excitement still there for in-store customers? Microsoft and Marks and Spencer look to be taking the first steps to giving their customers a better experience, as their revenue undergoes a period of contraction. A team of engineers from Microsoft will work with M&S retail labs in a bid to bring forth this digital transformation.

Well, before answering that, we must take a look at what they are. Chatbots are automated programs that take on mundane and repetitive work such as answering customer queries. Their surge is the result of an ongoing evolution of AI and machine learning (ML) that never seizes to amaze us with new capabilities. Chatbots facilitate online transactions and open up new growth opportunities. They handle interactions with customers and simulate the experience that they have in a retail store.

Workers at Amazon have demanded that their employer stop the sale of facial recognition software and other services to the US government. In a letter addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and posted on the company's internal wiki, employees said that they "refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights," citing the mistreatment of refugees and immigrants by ICE and the targeting of black activists by law enforcement. The letter follows similar protests at Google and Microsoft. "As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used," says the letter, first reported by The Hill. The employees (it's not clear how many signed the letter) refer to the sale of computer services by IBM to the Nazis as a worrying parallel.