The effort is one of many signals that artificial intelligence is a huge theme at this year's show–mainly in the form of digital assistants like the Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri. Google wants those ads to create the vibe that its Assistant is the go-to choice for consumer electronics companies looking to build a brain into their device. But the current reality is different than the marketing message. This year, 45.4 million Americans will talk to an AI assistant inside smart speakers, says research firm eMarketer. But only about a quarter of them will be talking to Google's Assistant, while almost 68% will be talking to Amazon's Alexa. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who only occasionally shares specific numbers relating to hardware sales, said his company sold "tens of millions" of Alexa-powered devices over the holidays.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is noticeably making a difference in how we live and work. Search engines predict words and translate text, social media connects people, smart appliances respond to ambient conditions, and public transportation is becoming autonomous. Similarly, the retail industry is set to unleash fascinating possibilities by embracing AI. Imagine the retail value chain when machine learning is fully operational, with the power of natural language processing, image identification and voice recognition software working together to produce better experiences for consumers. The cumulative effect can be transformative for retailers, across and beyond their enterprises.

Ocado plans to wheel out Star Wars-style C-3PO humanoid robots at its warehouses as early as 2025. The'SecondHands' robots will pass spanners and move ladders to workers using artificial intelligence and speech recognition. Ocado has already built a prototype, marking the latest move from the online grocery specialist to cut its reliance on human workers. Ocado plans to wheel out Star Wars-style C-3PO humanoid robots at its warehouses as early as 2025. The'SecondHands' androids will pass spanners and move ladders to workers using artificial intelligence and speech recognition.

If armies of Terminators start wiping out humanity, their ancestors might be traced to an upmarket grocery home delivery service that sells fancy toilet roll. Ocado Technology, the innovation arm of the grocery retailer, today unveiled the first prototype of its SecondHands project, a humanoid robot called ARMAR-6 that will one day shadow and collaborate with maintenance workers in Ocado's three warehouses in the UK. The grocery company wants ARMAR-6 to learn to understand what people are working on, anticipate any help they might need, and step in with manual assistance at the appropriate time. For example, if a technician asks for a spanner, the robot should identify the tool among others in a toolkit, use its natural language skills to ask the technician "Do you mean this spanner or that one?", and then hand it

Several use cases showcasing different solutions are covered in this video. Introduction to Amazon SageMaker (10 minutes) This course provides an overview of Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that enables data scientists and developers to quickly and easily build, train, and deploy machine learning models. Introduction to AWS Greengrass (10 minutes) This course is an introduction to AWS Greengrass, which lets you run local compute, messaging, data caching, and sync capabilities for connected devices in a secure way. You can build machine learning models in the cloud and execute their inference at the edge. Introduction to Amazon Comprehend (10 minutes) This course introduces you to Amazon Comprehend, a new AWS service that helps with natural language processing. In this course, we discuss how Amazon Comprehend solves challenges like the exponential growth of unstructured text, explore the service's five main capabilities, and review some popular use cases.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow, evolving technologies will naturally emerge. In the realm of ecommerce, businesses can barely keep up with the pace of AI as it is, but they must in order to capitalise on opportunity and maintain a competitive edge. There's too much useful, revenue-driving technology to embrace. If you're interested in gaining a competitive advantage in the retail ecommerce space, then it's essential to learn the AI trends sure to impact business systems and development in 2018. Here's what you can expect: Online shopping on Amazon, for example, can often be a price hunt and peck.

At first blush, the bathroom is the most boring possible spot smart-home technology could be applied, except maybe a closet. But consider a mirror that turns on motion-activated lights when you get up in the middle of the night, or tells you the weather in the morning. Consider setting the shower on to the perfect temperature just by asking, before you climb in. There are even "intelligent" toilets in the works though how intelligent they'll be remains to be seen. At an opening press event for CES Sunday, Kohler debuted a voice-enabled lighted mirror with dual-microphones and Amazon.com

The CEO and founder of Amazon.com is listed as the world's richest person with a net worth of $105billion. Thanks to a surge in Amazon's share price, the 53-year-old added $34.2 billion to his wealth in 2017 to round out a standout year for the tech and retail giant. The Seattle-based company has grown from its online retail roots to cloud computing, streaming video, artificial intelligence and more. Amazon's shares have recently been boosted by its acquisition of grocery chain Whole Foods. The firm has also expanded its line-up of devices tapping into its digital assistant Alexa.

Cue machine learning, allowing fashion retailers to immediately get a handle on the colors and styles that are selling when demand is peaking, and before it's too late to bring it into stores. During our onsite video conversation, Hannah Vogt, Knowledge Management for SAP Leonardo Machine Learning Foundation at SAP, showed me an example at the recent SAP TechEd Barcelona event. "Advanced machine learning capabilities allow the computer to interpret what a store manager is looking for, and instantaneously pulls together all the information from a company's ERP systems in a way that humans couldn't accomplish all alone," said Vogt. "The manager doesn't have to use transaction codes or any kind of computer-speak to obtain the data needed." Using machine learning, managers could in seconds find out what colors are trending in Paris, and likely to cross the ocean to the United States, staying one step ahead of increasingly fickle and demanding fashion consumers. "Managers can react faster to match trends, triggering production to adjust inventory in stores that's more in synch with up-to-the-minute fashions," said Vogt. "There's no time to lose in the current market, and you have to move faster than the competition in order to survive."

Machine learning is quietly spreading into every aspect of our lives. Perhaps it is not quite yet completely common, but it is definitely becoming more noticeable. From recommendations by online retailers to better, less congested routes to familiar destinations, it is starting to make our lives easier. At the same time, of course, we are starting to rely on it more and more to help us organise our complicated lives, and live smarter. One really big change has been from products to services.