So what does it takes to make your Online Store intelligent? Using eComchain, retailers can now use powerful and practical ways, assisting interactions with the end consumer, resulting in increased online revenue and profit. With the help of Omni-channel personalization and personalized chatbots, the online retailer can now easily increase the conversion rate of an online shopper. "Every merchant using eComchain can avail of these cool AI features within their next fiscal quarter to increase their sales revenue. AI is already present in every device that we use on a daily basis, including Netflix or LG refrigerators. AI in eCommerce is maturing, and will quickly dominate many areas of online shopping," says Rob Hayes, Business Development Director of eComchain, who spent 30 years in the retail industry having worked for Marshall Fields, Lands' End and JC Penney before joining eComchain early this year.

Speculation of the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the retail industry is rife, with some suggesting that machines could be exclusively responsible for the functioning of stores over the course of the next decade. Given that digital trends like social media, mobile applications and automation are already reshaping the way retailers engage with customers beyond all measure, retailers' priorities now need to be on adopting an equitable blend of both human assistance, and tailored technology, thus ensuring that customers across generations and genders are suitably catered for. Emerging technologies cannot merely be introduced comprehensively across retail operations however without due care, attention and consideration being given to the wider implications. It is critical that retailers duly account for the needs and preferences of the combined elements of the consumer market. Innovation for innovation's sake is not the way to progress this technology, nor help it to realise its true potential.

Fresh from last week's NASDAQ debut, blushing ingenue Roku is celebrating by refreshing its entire product line and rebooting the software that runs across all its devices. The new Roku boxes look promising, with updated specs and more affordable pricing. And those software enhancements are plentiful. If you use a Roku box for your HBOing, Plexing, and Netflixing, ice up the champagne and join the party. The biggest news is that the company's entire line of players will see a refresh, from Roku's basic streaming stick to its beefy 4K-capable home entertainment hub.

LG U announced on September 28 that, Pepper, the world's first social humanoid robot that can understand and react to human emotions, is going to be equipped with its artificial intelligence (AI) platform and meet customers at six different locations starting from October 11. Specifically, the locations are the flagship store of LG U, Woori Bank, Kyobo Bookstore, Gachon University Gil Hospital, Lotte Department Store, and e-mart. Pepper is scheduled to provide weather information and search the Web for customers, say hello to them and recommend products and so on based on the AI platform developed by LG U . Earlier, the other two major South Korean mobile carriers, that is, SK Telecom and KT, entered the AI service market by launching AI speakers. LG U adopted the robot to compete with them. "We decided to approach AI from a different direction in view of profit expectations and users' actual needs and our AI platform is expected to be utilized in an increasing number of fields with the companies representing six different fields of industry participating in the utilization of it," said Song Dae-won, who is leading AI device development at LG U as a managing director.

Upon visiting Berlin's IFA2107 -- Germany's answer to CES -- recently, there was one word I kept hearing: Alexa. In the consumer hardware space, it's a great time to be Amazon, if the sheer number of hardware companies jumping on the Alexa bandwagon are anything to go by. Only today it was revealed that Amazon is working on a pair of smart glasses integrating Alexa, intended to look similar to regular glasses with bone conduction technology to allow the user to engage with Alexa without having to wear headphones. Amazon is also working on an Echo connected camera system that cannot only keep a look out for intruders but also Amazon-delivered packages. During the IFA conference, a number of companies made their own Alexa announcements.

Applications of AI are almost limitless when it comes to retail. Product pricing optimisation, sales and customer service forecasting, precise ad targeting, website content customisation, prospect segmentation -- these are the most obvious examples of how AI can boost your sales and save your marketing budget.As usual, numbers speak best for the returns by AI in retail. Almost 55% of Amazon's sales come from personal recommendations made by AI and ML algorithms. Target Corporation achieved 15 to 30% growth in revenue with the help of AI and machine learning predictive models. This speaks of AI capable of improving retail sales and marketing performance.

When is milk not milk? This is no trick question -- it's a distinction that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to have to learn to make in order for eMerchants to fully leverage the potential of machine learning. To one customer, "buy milk" means buy a gallon of whole milk; to another, a 1.4-liter jug of unsweetened vanilla almond milk. Digital shopping lists, apps and virtual assistants must understand this and not force the customer to spell it out each time before these platforms can successfully become the new normal. "We think about things in shorthand, not in terms of specifics," Dave Barrowman, Skava VP of Innovation, told PYMNTS' Karen Webster in a recent webinar.

Deep learning has emerged in the last few years as a premier technology for building intelligent systems that learn from data. Deep neural networks, originally roughly inspired by how the human brain learns, are trained with large amounts of data to solve complex tasks with unprecedented accuracy. With open source frameworks making this technology widely available, it is becoming a must-know for anybody involved with big data and machine learning. TensorFlow is currently the leading open source software for deep learning, used by a rapidly growing number of practitioners working on computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and general predictive analytics. This book is an end-to-end guide to TensorFlow designed for data scientists, engineers, students, and researchers.

Thursday morning starts with more Amazon products than you could ever possibly want. Remember how the retailer found success with its Echo speaker? Everything gets a voice assistant. Amazon might not have YouTube on Echo anymore, but the devices are coming in several new shapes and sizes. Our three-minute wrap-up video from the big event shows everything you need to know, or you can dive in to check out our impressions of the new Echo speakers (now in regular or tall size), its small-screened Echo Spot or the latest Fire TV device, which puts 4K video streaming in a dongle.

Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday it is cutting the price of its Echo smart speaker from $180 to $100, improving the sound quality and upgrading its appearance with six new "shells." The announcement was the first of several Amazon is making at an event for journalists in Seattle. The next-generation speaker, which is powered by Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, will have a dedicated woofer and a tweeter for the first time, as well as Dolby sound. "We want to make sure we are building a product that everyone can use," said David Limp, Amazon's senior vice president of devices and services. The online retailer also announced a premium $150 version of the device called the Echo Plus, which has improved sound and can act as the hub of a smart home.