In this new age of ecommerce, marketing means providing a seamless experience across channels, delighting customers with same-day deliveries, providing excellent customer service and recommendations, and sending real-time personalized messages your customers will thank you for. But personalized commerce isn't just about big data -- it's about the innovative ways to use that data. Retailers who are proactively working to give their customers the best experience possible are approaching marketing in a totally different manner. Here are three ways to use artificial intelligence to make your marketing more customer-centric. Visual search has been around for a long time, but with the advancements in artificial intelligence and the rise of mobile commerce, it's now gaining acceptance with the retailers.

Amazon's newest Echo device doubles as a machine learning-powered fashion assistant. The Seattle tech giant today unveiled the Echo Look, a new $200 "hands-free camera and style assistant" powered by Alexa, Amazon's AI voice platform. The new device, now available by invitation only, lets people use their voice to take full-length pictures and videos of themselves with a depth-sensing camera and computer-generated background blur. Amazon then stores those snapshots via a companion app and can provide fashion recommendations with a "Style Check" service that uses machine learning algorithms and advice from fashion specialists. "Just pick two outfits and Style Check will give you a recommendation based on current trends and what flatters you," Amazon says in the video.

Luxury may be synonymous with exclusivity and rarity. However, as many of today's high-end brands fall behind in an era of global e-commerce, the question is how can they not only catch up, but also get ahead to deliver those special experiences on the scale they need to survive? Organisations in other markets are deploying chatbots, computer programs that allow customers to converse with an automated system, responding with set messages based on pre-defined rules, such as keywords in their text. Some are taking things a step further and offering a live chat function on their website. But luxe products – with price tags to match – must be sold online with the same tailored approach a shopper would expect in store.

I liked this book very much. It is easy to read and not so difficult to comprehend. However some parts of it I had to read two and three times and I am still not sure that I understood everything. But that depends on my shortcoming and has nothing to do with the style of Kevin Warwick. In my opinion this is a first class intro to AI and I would recommend it to young people who have to decide what to study at college.

If you put an AI in charge of your house -- letting it control the lights, the alarms, the temperature, and so on -- how would you want it to act? Should it be "autonomous and challenging" or "obedient and assisting"? Would you prefer if it sounded male, female, or if it was gender neutral? These are just some of the questions Ikea is asking its customers in a new survey titled "Do you speak human?" The questionnaire was launched late last month by SPACE10, Ikea's "future-living lab," which is tasked with exploring how our houses will look and feel in the decades to come.

Amazon wants you to have long, real conversations with Alexa, its popular personal digital assistant. The e-tail giant recently released new tools to app developers that allow Alexa to whisper, show emotion and pause naturally, like we humans do. And that's just the start, says Rohit Prasad, Amazon's head scientist for Alexa, who is playing a key role in the retailer's efforts in artificial intelligence for Alexa--using computers to converse with us. "I truly believe that for AI to be useful in our daily lives, it has to be something you can connect with," Prasad said in an interview here. "Conversation is the next step, to be more human-like."

Amazon wants you to have long, real conversations with Alexa, its popular personal digital assistant. The e-tail giant recently released new tools to app developers that allow Alexa to whisper, show emotion and pause naturally, like we humans do. And that's just the start, says Rohit Prasad, Amazon's head scientist for Alexa, who is playing a key role in the retailer's efforts in artificial intelligence for Alexa--using computers to converse with us. "I truly believe that for AI to be useful in our daily lives, it has to be something you can connect with," Prasad said in an interview here. "Conversation is the next step, to be more human-like."

PSFK's Food Debrief examines retailers that are removing barriers to a frictionless shopping experience, setting a new standard for all consumer industries The following is a preview to the insights presented in the Food Debrief. With the permeation of assistive technologies in consumers' lives, from AI to IoT, their expectations of convenience continue to evolve. When it comes to grocery shopping, it is no longer enough to be able to get in and out of a store quickly. Instead, shoppers expect brands and retailers to facilitate a streamlined and efficient experience throughout the entire, continuous shopping cycle, from product discovery to replenishment and education. This chart shows the full-cycle convenience that is supported by an infrastructure of technology within the food retail industry.

Ikea, what in the name of eftersökt are you planning?! The design store -- where roughly a bajillion millennials have purchased a build-it-yourself cabinet and whatever a "frakta" is -- recently released an online survey that asks respondents what they want from an artificially intelligent assistant. SEE ALSO: The Ikea shopping bag madness continues. "Do we, for instance, prefer talking to a machine, or do we rather want it to be more human-like?" asks a woman's voice in a short animated introduction to the survey. "Should it have a human personality, so it can be friendly, funny or impatient? Do we want our technology to grow up with us?"

It's known for flat-pack wood, but Ikea's made no secret of its digital future. The Swedish business was quick to embed wireless charging into its furniture, and has already launched its own affordable line of smart lights you can control from your phone. Now, the company's Copenhagen-based innovation lab is testing out new digital waters: it's collecting research on public perception on artificial intelligence (AI). Launched this weekend by Space10 (the same lab responsible for Ikea's glorious indoor Growroom), Do You Speak Human? is a global survey to inform Ikea's future. It poses questions that refer to how AI might find purpose in your home like "should your AI fulfil your needs before you ask?" and "should your AI prevent you from making mistakes?"