Apple is expected to announce plans next week to make its Siri voice assistant work with a larger variety of apps, as the technology company looks to counter the runaway success of Amazon's competing Alexa service. But the Cupertino company is likely to stick to its tested method of focusing on a small amount of features and trying to perfect them, rather than casting as wide a net as possible, according to engineers and artificial intelligence industry insiders. Currently, Apple's Siri works with only six types of app: ride-hailing and sharing; messaging and calling; photo search; payments; fitness; and auto infotainment systems. Apple Inc is expected to announce plans next week to make its Siri voice assistant work with a larger variety of apps, as the technology company looks to counter the runaway success of Amazon.com The product is believed to be aimed at bringing Apple AI into the home, and will have a higher price tag that the Amazon range, which begins at $49 (£49) for the Echo Dot.

When it comes to misconceptions about artificial intelligence, the likely top one is that retailers tend to view AI too narrowly and don't realize how the technology can help solve every retail problem. Simply, AI isn't just about weaving chat bots into the retail customer experience or just streamlining operations. It's about teaching retailers about their customers via deep learning and genetic algorithms, providing insight on how users interact with products, how messages resonate with shoppers and how to better market products. "Every step of the customer journey will be transformed by retail, from the ads and content that bring in customers to their experience on the site to logistics and shipping and even product design. AI won't be replacing marketers or site architects, but it will be making them far more powerful," explained Andy Narayanan, vice president of intelligence commerce at Sentient, in an email interview with Retail Customer Experience.

Supermarket queues could be a thing of the past with a'pocket checkout' system that allows shoppers to scan items using their phone camera. Barclaycard's new system of in-store paying allows people to pay for goods while wandering around the store - meaning no need to go via checkout. The company is already testing the technology at the canteen at its Canary Wharf headquarters with another retailer to offer the technology later in the year. Barclaycard's new'Grab and Go' technology (pictured) allows shoppers to scan all their items using their phone before walking out the shop without having to queue at checkout Instead of going to the checkout, shoppers could scan their items using their phone and then walk straight out the shop. The technology could either operate through the Barclays app or be integrated into the retailer's app.

EU antitrust regulators aim to slap a hefty fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service before the summer break in August, two people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for two other cases involving the US company. The European Commission's decision will come after a seven-year investigation into the world's most popular internet search engine was triggered by scores of complaints from both US and European rivals. The EU competition authority accused Google in April 2015 of distorting internet search results to favour its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers. The Commission and Google declined to comment. The US company has in the past rejected the charges, saying that regulators ignored competition from online retailers Amazon and eBay.

Voice is starting to replace typing in online queries and it's becoming more accurate, according to Mary Meeker, partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in her 2017 Internet Trends report released Wednesday. Meeker's annual report is highly anticipated by techies, who scour the 355-slide deck that's chock-full of statistics, charts, trends and predictions. Voice is becoming more popular than typing in online search. Twenty percent of mobile searches were made using voice in 2016, according to the report. Meanwhile, voice recognition accuracy continues to improve and is now at about 95%.

And if you're planning to jump on it to break in – it will trap your leg as earlier tests have found. According to The Grocer magazine, Tesco was impressed by the trial and is considering a wider pilot later this year in London. A Tesco spokesman said: "We are always looking at new ways to improve the shopping experience for our customers. "We carried out a one-off trial as part of our Tesco Now initiative partnership with a technology company. "We learnt a great deal from this trial and we'll be reviewing feedback before deciding our next steps."

Although this may appear to be a cyborg story, these were not live, flesh and blood beings turned into mechanically improved cyborgs. These are Artificial Intelligences inserted into a framework created for them. This is a well-developed story with a new planet to populate (along with the natives). The trip back to the planet is fraught with danger, as Arian is definitely on a retrieval list after her unprecedented escape from the Zetans. I love a strong, take-charge-of-her-life heroine, and Arian certainly fits the bill!

First of all, let me state that I was provided an advance electronic copy to review. I have no link or affiliation whatsoever with the author, so please consider my review to be written as objectively as possible. Also, my perspective is that of the lead strategic planner for technology for a large government entity, plus I have a degree in Industrial Engineering and about 20 years of IT and manufacturing experience combined. Finally, as a hobby I study and collect books regarding what futurists of the past predicted, and I find it fascinating what they got wrong and got right. So I suppose I am pretty much the exact target demographic for the book!

In a saturated eCommerce market, Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba and its biggest competitor, Tencent Holdings Limited, have their eyes on diversification, and Alibaba is losing ground. Like their American counterpart Amazon, Alibaba and Tencent are fashioning themselves identities that have less and less to do with online shopping and more to do with an integrated life approach. Alipay, Alibaba's mobile payment platform, released a version in Hong Kong dollars this week. Previously, payments could only be made in yuan. Alibaba took an 18 percent stake in supermarket and convenience store operator Lianhua Supermarket Holdings, catapulting the company's stocks as much as 34 percent during Monday morning trading (May 29).

A significant number of retail store closings so far in 2017 point to the challenges brick-and-mortar merchants face as e-commerce continues to grow. At the time, there are also signs that innovate technology like AR, AI and shoppable social is helping some segments, like beauty, buck the broader downward trends. The unified commerce customer experience highlight by BRP points to one of the challenges facing traditional retailers, which is having to provide expected in-store experiences like being able to physically examine merchandise and interact with sales associates as well as unique and personalized e-commerce shopping engagements that are now expected by many consumers. While many retailers are already active in e-commerce to varying degrees, they will need to adopt newer technologies to stay current with consumers' expectations. BRP's Kramer framed next-gen technology as exponentially expanding the complexity of retail, suggesting a significant issue retailers could face going forward will be the learning curve that will coincide with the maturation of emerging tech like AI, the machine learning subset of AI and even the proliferation of IoT devices.