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.

Even though the new Amazon Go store is dependent on surveillance and data collection for its cashier-free store, some say it doesn't necessarily push the boundaries of retailers' current data collection practices, The Washington Post reports. John Verdi, vice president of policy at the Future of Privacy Forum, said the process does not exceed data collection carried out now via loyalty programs and credit cards. While the store uses cameras, sensors and machine-learning algorithms to keep track of a person's order, the company states it does not employ facial-recognition software. But Alvaro Bedoya, executive director at Georgetown University's Center on Privacy & Technology, says the methods behind the store are different from other grocery stores since Amazon has the ability to analyze the shopping experience, " … Are they really only tracking you when you lift the item off a shelf? Or are they tracking where you move throughout the store, what you're looking at, what sections you're dwelling in?" (Registration may be required to access this story.)

SAN FRANCISCO – After missing the critical holiday shopping season, Apple Inc. has jumped into the voice speaker wars with the HomePod smart speaker, a device that will use its Siri voice assistant and compete against offerings from Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Apple said on Tuesday it will start taking online orders for its HomePod smart speaker on Friday in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, just over a month later than initially planned. The $349 voice-controlled speaker, introduced in June and originally scheduled for a December release, can make music suggestions and adjust home temperatures. The speaker also will be able to send messages and play news updates from National Public Radio and CNN, Apple said in a release. Analysts have debated the impact of the shipping delay on the HomePod's eventual success.

Amazon has launched its AI-powered checkout-free supermarket today after more than a year of testing, prompting confusion and humor in the Twitterverse. The'Amazon Go' supermarket has no checkouts and instead works by tracking what users buy with AI-powered cameras and weight sensors, but has lead to some users accidentally shoplifting. The grocery store on the bottom floor of the company's Seattle headquarters allows shoppers to scan their smartphone with the Amazon Go app at a turnstile, pick out the items they want and leave. The tech mega-company still has some kinks to work out. A CNBC tech reporter accidentally shoplifted a yogurt when the cameras failed to notice it, but the company responded'it's on us' with a winking emoji.