A recent survey of more than 300 marketers by Resulticks found that almost half thought artificial intelligence was an overhyped industry buzzword and 40% felt skeptical when they saw or heard the term. The survey also found that 47% of marketers believed AI was more fantasy than reality. Artificial intelligence has certainly become the buzzword of 2018 as brands and retailers increasingly explore how it will impact their business this year and beyond. Speaking at an event recently hosted by StoryStream on the hype behind AI in marketing, it became apparent that whilst AI is in its infancy today, many brands and retailers are already actively using AI for the likes of content creation, content management, customer insights, personalization and customer acquisition. Brands including Aston Martin, Shiseido and Mars are already actively embracing AI experimentation in marketing and some have been at it for some time.

TensorFlow enables developers to quickly and easily get started with deep learning in the cloud. The framework has broad support in the industry and has become a popular choice for deep learning research and application development, particularly in areas such as computer vision, natural language understanding and speech translation. You can get started using TensorFlow on AWS by launching the AWS Deep Learning AMI which comes bundled with TensorFlow, as well as other popular deep learning frameworks such as Apache MXNet and Gluon, Caffe, Caffe2, Theano, Torch, Keras, and the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.

One-third of its global online sales are now picked up in the store, the company says, but that has created long lines in some cities and waits for attendants to retrieve packages, customers say. To speed up the process, Zara said earlier this year it would roll out a robot-run version of click and collect, automating the service. The collection points in brick-and-mortar stores will allow shoppers who have ordered items online to scan or enter a code, triggering a behind-the-scenes robot to search for the customer's package in a small warehouse, and then deliver it quickly to a drop box. The move comes as Zara faces heightened challenges to maintain its momentum and compete with online-only apparel retailers, such as Zalando and ASOS, that sell a variety of brands. Annual sales at both have grown more than 20% in the past couple of years compared with low double-digit percentage growth at Zara's Spanish parent company Inditex SA ITX 0.46% .

Spike Jonze essentially makes two types of commercials. There's the distraction model, in which a frenetic, unrelated-to-the-product conceit takes over the ad, like his KENZO World commercial from 2016 starring Margaret Qualley and the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion: In this category, we can put his ad for Levi's fly weight jeans (like the KENZO World ad, it's mostly about choreography) as well as that Nissan Frontier commercial that is mostly about a dog pushing a recliner through traffic. Then there are the Spike Jonze ads that would be anti-capitalist if they weren't ads. See, e.g., his IKEA ad, which made fun of viewers for becoming emotionally attached to products (while simultaneously encouraging them to buy more products): Or his Gap ad, which harnessed people's bottled up rage at monotonous chain retail stores (while simultaneously encouraging them to shop at the Gap): His newest ad for Apple HomePod combines the two forms: it's a strikingly beautiful short film, in which the Apple HomePod transforms FKA Twigs' depressing apartment into a rainbow-striped wonderland by choosing exactly the right song at exactly the right time. It also makes owning an Apple HomePod seem supremely depressing and possibly dangerous on an interdimensional level.

Confronting supply chain problems is increasingly necessary for retailers to maintain relevancy, but the retailers who straighten out their supply chains and use new tech to better gauge and meet consumer expectations will dominate the industry. That's where AI comes in. As demonstrated by the CB Insights report, AI can learn from consumer habits in an online store and better predict and target what the consumer wants, allowing the retailer to more effectively market and handle inventory. If meeting consumer expectations is a retailers' biggest problem, then understanding consumer behavior through AI is the way to solve it. That's why companies like Amazon and Walmart are so successful.

The conventional wisdom is that being in the right location is critical to success in retail. As one Japanese convenience store pursues an expansion, it may be getting some non-human help to decide where its stores should go. Convenience store chain Lawson is considering using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine where to place its new store locations, according to the Japan Times. The chain plans to use AI to collect marketing data, such as household distribution patterns and traffic volume, to determine a given store's chances of success in an area. Generally, the chain makes such decisions based on information gathering and analysis of an area carried out by staff.

Remark Holdings, Inc. (MARK), a global technology company focused on artificial intelligence, and CP ALL Public Company Limited (CPALL.BK) today announced that they are partnering to deploy Remark's KanKan data intelligence and AI technologies in approximately 11,000 7-Eleven stores that CP ALL operates throughout Thailand. Remark and CP ALL will hold a press conference (the details of which appear below) on March 6, 2018, in Bangkok to launch the partnership. The Remark/CP ALL partnership will utilize KanKan's AI-based facial recognition and behavior analysis technologies to provide enhanced customer support, business analysis, employee management and security in CP ALL's 7-Eleven stores in Thailand, which generate more than $14 billion in revenue. KanKan's technologies can monitor product levels on store shelves, suggest products and services to customers, provide real-time operations performance and competitor analysis, check in and check out employees, identify unauthorized personnel, and assess crowd size and crowd flow for safety, among myriad other services. Approximately 10 million people pass through 7-Eleven stores in Thailand each day.

How many stores that you grew up visiting aren't around anymore? Remember Sears, Zellers, American Apparel, Wet Seal, The Limited, etc. Many other prominent retailers like Aeropostale, Bebe, A&F, Guess, J.C Penney, Payless, Rue2, etc. are closing hundreds of stores nationwide to deal with dwindling sales. Forbes estimates that in last sector of 2017, 21 retailers are closing 3,591 stores. They can't compete with the e-commerce sector as more and more customers resort to shopping online as reduced prices from the comfort of their homes in lieu of physically going to retail stores. Retailers are forced to leverage data in order to upgrade their infrastructure and services to give their customers a better experience. Many job postings at Macy's, Coach, Kate Spade, Nordstrom, etc. show how serious and desperate the retail and fashion giants are in face of competition.

A recent survey of more than 300 marketers by Resulticks found that almost half thought artificial intelligence was an overhyped industry buzzword and 40% felt skeptical when they saw or heard the term. The survey also found that 47% of marketers believed AI was more fantasy than reality. Artificial intelligence has certainly become the buzzword of 2018 as brands and retailers increasingly explore how it will impact their business this year and beyond. Speaking at an event recently hosted by StoryStream on the hype behind AI in marketing, it became apparent that whilst AI is in its infancy today, many brands and retailers are already actively using AI for the likes of content creation, content management, customer insights, personalization and customer acquisition. Brands including Aston Martin, Shiseido and Mars are already actively embracing AI experimentation in marketing and some have been at it for some time.

We tested every streaming box you can buy, and our two favorite are both great devices--but which one is right for you? Amazon Prime Video offers streaming of movies such as "The Big Sick." While Prime Video may not be as widely known as that "other" major video streaming service, Amazon's on-demand platform is a force to be reckoned with. Between its growing catalog of movies and TV shows (including several award-winning exclusives) and all the other goodies you get for being a Prime member (free two-day shipping, Prime Music access, free Kindle e-books, and unlimited online photo storage), it's quite easy to justify the $99/year subscription cost. You're also aware you can access Prime Video on a handful of devices, including the web, mobile apps, Smart TVs, gaming consoles, and set-top boxes?