Amazon had a great holiday season selling Alexa-powered devices, but it's not done pushing the gadgets to consumers. The company is set to advertise the Alexa gadgets during the Super Bowl on Sunday -- and those ads probably won't accidently trigger users' Alexa devices. Amazon released its Super Bowl commercial this week on YouTube, which garnered millions of views. The one and a half minute clip features Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, renowned chef Gordon Ramsay, Rebel Wilson, Anthony Hopkins and Cardi B. The commercial is about Alexa losing her voice while users ask her questions. Instead, Alexa is replaced by voices of celebrities.

At its simplest, machine learning (ML) refers to the capacity for a program to automatically improve, or "learn," as it ingests data to accomplish a specific task or set of tasks. While ML is a subset of artificial intelligence, it's often used interchangeably with AI and conflated with predictive analytics or algorithms. The many uses and applications of machine learning create a lot of confusion about what the term really means, especially at a time when complex algorithms have been able to generate seemingly "intelligent" outcomes for quite some time. Machine learning goes a step beyond algorithms or predictive analytics, and its applications are growing exponentially in tandem with the number of new and existing companies investing in its development. Despite machine learning's advanced nature, it may come as a surprise to smaller and midmarket retailers that ML is by no means out of reach.

Chatbots, dialogue-based searches, digital mirror; the wave of advances in AI has reinvented the way we shop online. Even though there are so many ways to leverage AI; it's spoken of far more than it's practiced. And if you too have been guilty of not implementing AI to give your e-commerce business a competitive edge this is the right time to start. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, you can deliver personalized and faster service to your shoppers to take their shopping experience to whole new level. Quickly responding to customer queries is the key to convert them.

Ikea, everyone's favorite Swedish furniture powerhouse, keeps on evolving, despite its comfortable status as the world's foremost furniture and home goods retailer. Today, Ikea announced "Ikea Place," an augmented reality app that lets consumers design rooms in their homes by virtually test driving furniture and home goods. Ikea Place will be available on iOS 11 at the end of September. The timing of Ikea's announcement is no accident: Today, Apple showed off a number of updates to its hardware (hello, iPhone X) and software, including a demonstration of its updated ARKit augmented reality platform, on which Ikea Place runs. Samsung collabs with designers to expand Frame TV customization options Ikea smart lighting compatibility with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit coming this fall Apple's iPhone event marks debut of Steve Jobs Theater on new campus "The app automatically scales products--based on room dimensions--with 98 percent accuracy. The AR technology is so precise that you will be able to see the texture of the fabric, as well as how light and shadows are rendered on your furnishings."

Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, has added another $20 billion (£14 billion) to his wealth after his firm Amazon reported its largest ever surge in profits. Amazon sales increased by 38 per cent in the last three months of 2017, to more than $60.5 billion (£42.4 billion), according to its latest quarterly financial results. For comparison, it took Amazon more than 14 years to make, cumulatively, as much profit as it did in the latest quarter alone. The profits were driven by sales of its voice-activated Echo devices and an increase in the number of Prime members. They were also helped by an increase in holiday shopping online and by Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services.

How AI helped Walmart go from 700,000 to 60 million items online. Target shoppers can now use the AI-driven Pinterest Lens visual search tool to find products with ease, using Target's e-commerce site and mobile app.2O'Shea, Online homeware store Wayfair has also adopted AI and machine learning for image-based search.3Terrelong, What the future of retail will look like, according to Google. The power of voice: Voice-assisted ordering for browsing and buying will be big this year, led by tech titans Amazon, Google and Apple. Amazon Echo accounts for approximately 75% of the smart speaker market, and more than 25% of searches now take place using voice-enabled devices, making connected homes a priority for retail tech leaders Amazon, Google, and Apple.6Duggan,

In today's digital and "always-on" world, customers expect retailers to anticipated and meet their needs in real time. However, this type of customer engagement is more than what retailers are used to providing.

Deciding when to take steps into tech investments is always a matter of timing, but a study from Accenture finds companies across industries are significantly shortchanging their workforces when it comes to empowerment through artificial intelligence (AI). As part of the report, "Reworking the Revolution: Are you ready to compete as intelligent technology meets human ingenuity to create the future workforce?," In retail, Accenture estimates that if stores invest in AI and human-machine collaboration at the same rate as top performing companies, revenues would climb 41 percent by 2022 and employment levels by 10 percent. A barrier is perhaps evident in the finding that only 26 percent of execs feel their workforce is ready for AI adoption. Yet a survey of 14,000 workers as part of the report found 69 percent agreeing that it is important to develop skills to work with intelligent machines and 62 percent believe AI will have a positive impact on their work.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting a lot of attention from investors these days and with good reason. It's a technology with the potential to transform everything from transportation to cloud computing. Many companies are betting that AI will influence not just their products and services, but nearly every aspect of their business. Read on to discover nine things you may not have to know about this burgeoning technology. Artificial intelligence is often used as a catch-all to describe computer systems that can learn.

Walmart may be grabbing headlines for its embrace of cutting-edge technologies, but at the heart of those changes are companies like Bossa Nova. The San Francisco-based robotics firm created the robots now roaming the aisles in 50 Walmart locations around the US. Bossa Nova's robots are able to perform tasks such as identifying when items are out of stock, locating incorrect prices, and detecting wrong or missing labels. We spoke to Martin Hitch, chief business officer at Bossa Nova, about the technology behind the machines and how they are being received by shoppers and employees. This article is part of a weekly series paired with our newsletter Clocking In, which covers the impact of technology on the future of work.