LG Electronics' vice president David VanderWaal and Amazon Echo vice president Mike George present the LG Smart InstaView Door-in-Door Refrigerator to CES 2017 attendees at the LG Electronics press conference on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. Amazon wants you to take wardrobe advice from a connected gadget. It brought personal digital assistants into our kitchens with Echo, a connected speaker. Now it can see, so Amazon wants to come into our bedrooms to help us choose more flattering outfits. The new Echo Look appliance features a depth-sensing camera, built-in lighting and Style Check software that uses the latest advances in machine learning.

Well, that took longer than it probably should have: Amazon Prime Video will finally be available on Apple TV sometime "later this year." So yep, that means if you'd rather watch Man in the High Castle via an Apple device instead of the myriad other options that were available prior to this announcement you'll totally be able to do that. Now we're wondering if there will be no-Gary-Busey-required voice search via SIri.

Smart Applications: Every application can be a smart application due to the fast generation of new data and the ease of use of machine learning platforms. Smart applications can produce real-time predictions and get better through time. Online retailers, for example, are developing smart applications using machine learning to improve services and personalize the customer shopping experience. Several companies are already using--and many others plan to use--machine learning to provide an improved customer experience. Forecasting: Machine learning is a good tool for developing forecasting because it has the capability to learn from data and can provide a solution for demand forecasting.

From Amazon Echo's AI assistant, Alexa, to Sephora's Kik chatbot, businesses are utilizing AI to enhance the user experience in a growing number of ways. In the past year, chatbots have surged in popularity, helping retailers better connect with their customers. Beyond chatbots, AI has shown immense potential for improving and streamlining the customer experience. Retailers can use the power of AI and predictive analytics to anticipate shoppers' needs. For example, by looking at a shopper's order history and frequency to determine repeat ordering patterns.

John Wanamaker, who opened his department store in a Quaker district of the city, introduced price tags for his goods, along with the high-minded slogan: "If everyone was equal before God, then everyone would be equal before price." Up until then high-street retailers had generally operated a market-stall system of haggling on most products. Their best prices might be reserved for their best customers. Or they would weigh up each shopper and make a guess at what they could afford to pay and eventually come to an agreement. Wanamaker's idea was not all about transparency, however.

Doom-and-gloom headlines about the shrinking number of stores in malls, closing department stores, and thinning foot traffic have been everywhere lately, and not without good reason. If one were to venture a guess based on brick-and-mortar store performance, it would appear the U.S. consumer has stopped spending. But in fact, consumer spending has been rising steadily every year since 2009. It's just that an ever-greater number of people are choosing to do their shopping online. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's monthly retail report, retail sales were up 4.5% year over year in April, but online sales grew 12%.

Like Hansel in the movie Zoolander, robots and automation are "so hot right now." Books, articles, and television segments on automation, robotics, and the future of work are coming to dominate the Zeitgeist. People are becoming increasingly aware that automation and robots are going to be important -- and unavoidable -- parts of their working and non-working lives. One of the core reasons that robots have become so hot is that their use is being fueled by in-hand retail. U.S. e-commerce as a percent of all retail sales has been rising -- and it is going to rise further. In order to meet the demand of an accelerated pace of e-commerce, we need to go beyond what humans can do. Historically, the U.S. distribution supply chain involved shipping goods from warehouses to retail stores by pallets or batches.

Retailers must use AI to automate and deliver better decisions and make it possible for associates to be customer experience differentiators. Multichannel retailers are facing an existential crisis. Consumers' buying behaviors and lifestyle choices are changing. Competitive pressures from disruptive pure-play e-commerce players are causing radical changes to antiquated business models, driving down prices and driving up costs. Ultimately, the impact of AI on retail will be manifold more than that of Excel's reign.

Two separate research studies, funded by our friends Apptus and carried out by IMRG and Hive, have found that fashion retailers are planning significant investment in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next two years, as they seek to deliver the'real time relevant' customer experiences that are vital to improving sales performance. The study carried out by Hive found that, though retailers plan to invest in AI in a number of areas – online merchandising and personalisation are clear priorities. Asked to identify the areas of their businesses that will benefit the most from automation in the coming 3-5 years, scoring each out of 10, they awarded personalisation a score of 7.9 and online merchandising: 7.8. By contrast customer service scored five out of ten. Swedish fashion brand, Stayhard, has already embraced AI, and seen significant return on its investment.

Google is finally bringing its Home speaker to Canada. It took a while, but at least the tech titan didn't wait two years like it did with Android Pay, which just recently made its way to the country. If you're in Canada, you can now pre-order the smart speaker from the big G's online store or Best Buy for $179 CAD. Best Buy will throw in a free Chromecast, too, and is slashing $50 off the price of a Philips Hue starter kit if you order it at the same time. The Home comes loaded with Google's voice-activated Assistant, which will arrive in the region knowing both English and French.