Endorsed with a portfolio of digitally-empowered consumers, artificial intelligence in the retail market is acclaimed as one of the fastest growing verticals presently . In 2017, this business space registered a global share of USD 650 million and is forecast to record a CAGR of 40% over 2018 - 2024. With the retail space becoming affluent with more number of e-commerce platforms as well as startups with large technology appetite, the adoption of AI in the retail market is bound to increase. Additionally, the technology is witnessing a slew of opportunities in sync with the hi-tech trends including the likes of blockchain, AR, and the Internet of Things establishing their footprints in the retail domain. Amidst all these tech interventions, the focal point of this consumer-driven industry is to deliver an unrivaled shopping experience to customers as well as ensuring optimal management of resources and stocks.

What does digital transformation really mean in retail? It is simply transferring an old, obsolete product-centered model that has been followed for so many years to a customer-centered model. This is somewhat easy to say, but again, what does it specifically mean for the retail industry? Instead of focusing on a supply chain view – cheaper purchase, higher sales, and optimizing everything in all of these – retailers should focus more on the digital value chain view. They must be able to collect data regarding their customers, products and locations, turn those information into useful insights, and then turn those insights into planning and action.

This week saw a lot of machines taking over for humans in both the pharmacy and warehousing industries and augmented reality finally go mainstream in retail. China continues to commit to innovating faster than any other country and This Week In China Tech is our way to keep you on top of the most important stories coming from the mainland. Here are this week's headlines. JD.com, one of China's largest e-commerce companies, announced the new Augmented Reality (AR) Innovation Alliance (article in Chinese) and brought three new AR products to market. The alliance brings together hundreds of corporations, including Intel, Wal-Mart, Vipshop, Lenovo, and Carslan.

Bots are dominating online communication, and most consumers don't even realize the number of times they have interacted with a bot while browsing their favorite website or completing an online purchase. Bot technology is far from a new concept, though, as its origins date all the way back to 1966 with the invention of Eliza, a bot that managed to mimic a natural conversation through programmed responses. With no sign of slowing down, here are five innovative ways bot technology is advancing. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a push toward being able to accomplish things that require human intelligence without needing humans. In the world of bots, the implementation of AI is geared toward creating environments where the bot you are speaking to is indistinguishable from a human being.

Well if sci-fi is about speculating what might be, then it could very well be right about AI (except hopefully for any terrible consequences). Because machines are getting super smart and that means big things for us all. Artificial intelligence or machine intelligence essentially refers to machines that can mimic thinking that we associate with humans. This includes the ability to learn from its experiences, to process large amounts of data to solve problems, make decisions or even predictions, and to understand and respond to natural language. It's already happening and Google's recent I/O 18 conference showed just how amazing some of the advances have been.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 0.44% said that one of its Echo home speakers mistakenly recorded a private conversation and sent it to a person in the owners' contact list, an incident that raises questions about the security of such voice-operated devices. Confirming a report by a local television station in Seattle, Amazon on Thursday said that the Echo device misunderstood pieces of a conversation as commands, causing it to think it was being instructed to send the message. "As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely," a spokeswoman added in a statement. The incident was first reported by KIRO 7, which aired an interview with a Portland, Ore., user identified only as Danielle. The user said that one of her husband's employees had received a recording sent from inside her house.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) got an early start in smart speakers with its Echo devices, but Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google is catching up quickly. Last year, Amazon took the lion's share of the market with Google a distant second in terms of sales. But during the first quarter this year, the sales between the two companies are much closer, with at least one research group indicating Google may have sold more devices than Amazon. This article originally appeared in The Motley Fool. Google sold 3.2 million Home devices in the first quarter, according to Canalys, more than the 2.5 million it estimates for Amazon.

Hi Steemians, today I just want to share to you about "EKKBAZ", what is EKKBAZ? It is like being "Henry Sy" of your own. Base on their website it says "Powered by blockchain, artificial intelligence, social and collaborative technologies to significantly simplify direct to store interactions, reduce middlemen and empower root-level store owners in any corner of the earth. In short through ekkbaz we can now take advantage the B2B set up of business, overcoming some constraint in doing the traditional way of business. The goal of EKKBAZ will be developing BAZ Protocol, a decentralized and intelligent network with purpose-built components for FMCG businesses.

The online fashion retail space continues to boom, as modern consumers increasingly lean towards a more convenient remote buying experience. However, to stay ahead of the competition, leading retail brands need to offer an ever evolving catalogue of seasons, styles and sizes on their platforms. This poses a challenge for inventory management, when constantly updating and removing available items daily. For warehouse staff, and catalogue managers, one of the biggest challenges is developing an efficient system to log new items while on the move, and quickly determine whether the item is already in stock. When dealing with such large catalogues, the traditional method of manually checking each garment from millions of items, would slow processes to a snail's pace.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Retail Market size is set to exceed USD 8 billion by 2024; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. The AI in retail market is driven by the increasing investments in it across the globe. The growing investment in the technology is attributed to the wide applications of the AI technology along with advanced analytics, machine learning. AI is set to unleash the next phase of the digital disruption and the market participants are preparing themselves for it. The investment in the technology is growing rapidly, dominated by the tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, AWS, and Baidu.