Sweden's flatpack furniture giant is exploring how to make the best use of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality. Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Thursday, Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ikea, told CNBC: "(What) we haven't been able to do before is to find easier ways to connect with people so digital opens up massive opportunities for us." Brodin added a "major shift" in technology over recent years had prompted the furniture powerhouse to begin testing AI and virtual reality. Several retailers have been betting on AI as the tech becomes more sophisticated and as competition from the likes of Amazon grows even tougher.

Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, thinks that artificial intelligence will take over a lot of jobs and ultimately will be a good thing. In an interview with Fox Business, Gates said that robots taking over our jobs will make us more efficient, and lead to more free time. "Well, certainly we can look forward to the idea that vacations will be longer at some point," Gates told Fox Business. "If we can actually produce twice as much as we make today with less labor, the purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind a counter and sell things, you know?" Gates is arguing that AI, the technology that some fear is already stripping jobs from primarily low-wage workers, is just allowing us to better manage our time. If artificial intelligence allows us to get in our cars and reply to emails on our way to work, it would definitely save time.

Artificial Intelligence is real and it is here. But successfully putting AI into action isn't exactly a walk in the park -- it requires a fundamental rethinking of the business. The pressure is on -- 53 percent of executives responding to a recent survey said their industry has "already experienced disruption" due to AI. An example that applies to potential AI-driven disruption in the retail sector is Amazon's Go store in Seattle, which employs AI to operate with no checkout clerks or lines -- purchases are tracked as shoppers remove items from the shelves. Along with signaling disruption, a recent survey of 1,000 business and IT leaders commissioned by Infosys which finds AI -- as we know it today -- has moved beyond the experimentation stage, and is delivering real benefits.

Machine learning is essentially giving computers the power to learn from experience, very much like humans do (learn more about what machine learning is and who is already using it well). Most consumers today expect companies that market to them to "know them," to know what needs they have, what their goals are, and the problems they are trying to solve. In short, consumers want to feel they are special. This is where machine learning does the heavy lifting, capturing patterns quickly that are in turn used to create more personalized offers and experiences. The more you understand about your customers, the better you can serve them, and the more you will sell.

What will AI's role be during this busiest of all seasons? The festive season means many things to many people; to retailers and e-tailers, it means things are about to get busy. This is true no matter when the festive shopping season begins. In India, for example, it runs from mid-August to January; in the US, it traditionally stretches from Thanksgiving to just after the New Year. Retailers of all sorts are already adapting their approach by timing sales and tying them into holidays or other festive events (e.g.

When it comes to improving connectivity, IoT-enabled devices aren't just getting smarter – they are also getting better at helping people more easily connect with one another and their devices. And now, that same technology is also helping people connect with their pets. The January Intelligence of Things Tracker looks at how smart pet technology is changing the way pet owners interact and engage with their companions, which connected devices took center stage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and how new tools are keeping the food supply safe. In today's world of lengthy global supply chains, it takes more than just human eyes and willpower to check on freshness and food safety. To fill in those gaps, newly launched IoT solutions are coming to the rescue of consumers – and food suppliers are bringing them the lowdown.

But there's a smaller, yet still mighty, transformation rippling through the industry that brands are bending to accommodate, and that's the Stitch Fix effect. CEO Katrina Lake is spearheading the future of personalization in fashion, a point of obsession for brands and retailers that know they can no longer offer up a generic user experience and still win. And while every apparel brand desperately wants to get to know the person buying and wearing its clothes on a more intimate level, Stitch Fix was modeled on the premise. It established a new type of retailer that asked customers for insights and feedback alongside their size and color preference for items, even the ones customers didn't like or buy, in exchange for a clear value proposition. Stitch Fix, for its members, would eliminate the need to go out and shop for clothes. The machinations of the Stitch Fix model rely on a combination of data science -- machine learning, AI and natural language processing -- and human stylists; on top of complex customer profiles built by data, stylists can layer the nuances of buying and wearing clothes.

Software solutions company Adobe has launched a number of new retail tools which incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to help businesses monitor customer behaviour in-store. Announced at NRF 2018, 'Retail's BIG Show', the new suite includes a tool that monitors in-store customer behaviour, a Big Data integration with Hadoop, and VR & AR capabilities. One of the new tools is Adobe Analytics, which is designed to help retailers analyse live foot traffic in a store and send each shopper a personalised push-notification with data-driven product recommendations and offers. It means that in-store experiences can reach the same level of personalisation that data-driven online experiences can. The suite is also offering a smart imaging capability which helps retailers to automatically scale their marketing creative and e-commerce experiences to fit different screen sizes and bandwidth.

Artificial intelligence is one of the biggest buzzwords in society, and the business world is making widespread use of a practical application of the technology: chatbots. Bots are rapidly taking over customer service roles, with consumers unable to tell whether they're communicating with a human or a computer in some cases. Chatbots deliver results that human customer service representatives cannot. Bots don't need to eat, sleep or take bathroom breaks, which means they're available 24 hours a day. Chatbots can detect when customer interactions are going poorly and transfer the call to a human representative, but having a bot on the front lines dramatically decreases the number of calls that people must field.

Retailers know that it is harder and more expensive to acquire new customers than to sell new things to existing customers. That's why they spend a lot on loyalty programs and Customer 360/Customer Journey programs. One of the best tools a retailer has for selling products to customers is recommendations. Recommendations are simply that, suggestions by the retailer on other things the customer may be interested in. In order to do this, a retailer needs to know the customer.