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.

Amazon's operation has grown well beyond merely delivering items to people's homes. Jeff Bezos's massive corporation is now involved in everything from grocery shopping to fashion, but the recent revelation that Amazon technology assists law enforcement is a bridge too far for some employees. A group of Amazon employees (referred to as Amazonians) penned a letter to Bezos on Thursday asking the billionaire CEO to halt the sale of facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies, The Hill reported. The software, called Amazon Web Services Rekognition, has been linked to government agencies like the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The letter cited the United States government's history of injustice towards minorities in calling for Amazon to stop assisting ICE.

Amazon staff have called on founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos to stop sales of AWS Rekognition facial recognition tech to U.S. law enforcement. Amazon employees have written a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos in which they ask the company to stop selling its facial recognition tool to American law enforcement. The tech giant's sales to U.S. cops was revealed by an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) investigation earlier this month, as it emerged Amazon Web Services' Rekognition tool was shipped to police in Florida and Oregon. The cost of the tool was also revealed to be remarkably low, as evidenced by a Forbes test of the product, in which a facial recognition project was set up for free across the publication's Jersey City and London offices. In a letter posted to an internal forum, first revealed by The Hill and published in full by Gizmodo, some employees expressed the same concerns as the ACLU about the power of Amazon's Rekognition being abused by American officers.

Previously, we looked at how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed the supplier side of the retail eco-system, especially on two fronts – Price and Product Offering. In this post, we shall analyze how it has affected the buyer's journey at almost every step of the way. As most of you will know, a buyer's journey starts from the awareness stage, where he comes to learn of a product or a brand, and then goes on to the following stages: research, consideration, purchase and retention; the latter is where a company tries to hold on to its customers. After all, history shows that people who have bought from your company before are most likely to be repeat customers if they are happy with the overall journey. AI retains the power to analyze vast tracts of data, and that includes human behavior.