Amazon said alcohol is now among tens of thousands of items available for Prime Now free two-hour delivery via an Alexa voice order. In what could be the highest, best use of voice recognition technology to a generation of digital natives, Amazon's digital assistant has added beer runs to its skills. Beginning Tuesday, Amazon Prime customers who have an Alexa-powered device, like the Echo speaker, can order beer, wine and spirits in Seattle, and beer and wine in Columbus and Cincinnati. Amazon will deliver the alcohol within two hours. Parents needn't worry: customers must show valid ID to receive the order.

Across enterprises, ever-expanding stores of data remain unstructured and unanalyzed. Few organizations have been able to explore nontraditional data sources such as image, audio, and video files; the torrent of machine and sensor information generated by the Internet of Things; and the enormous troves of raw data found in the unexplored recesses of the "deep web." However, recent advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, and cognitive analytics are making it possible for companies to shine a light on these untapped sources and derive insights that lead to better experiences and decision making across the business. In this age of technology-driven enlightenment, data is our competitive currency. Buried within raw information generated in mind-boggling volumes by transactional systems, social media, search engines, and countless other technologies are critical strategic, customer, and operational insights that, once illuminated by analytics, can validate or clarify assumptions, inform decision making, and help chart new paths to the future. Until recently, taking a passive, backward-looking approach to data and analytics was standard practice. With the ultimate goal of "generating a report," organizations frequently applied analytics capabilities to limited samples of structured data siloed within a specific system or company function. Moreover, nagging quality issues with master data, lack of user sophistication, and the inability to bring together data from across enterprise systems often colluded to produce insights that were at best limited in scope and, at worst, misleading.

In what could be the highest, best use of voice recognition technology to a generation of digital natives, Amazon's digital assistant has added beer runs to its skills. Beginning Tuesday, Amazon Prime customers who have an Alexa-powered device, like the Echo speaker, can order beer, wine and spirits in Seattle, and beer and wine in Columbus and Cincinnati. Parents needn't worry: customers must show valid ID to receive the order. The rollout is actually an extension of Amazon Now, which as of Tuesday is part of Alexa's skill set. It's available in the more than 30 cities that have the two-hour delivery service for Prime members.

Wal-Mart is making strides in its pursuit to be a leader in ecommerce. Wal-Mart executives announced Monday they will be developing "Store No. 8" in Silicon Valley in hopes of making improvements to its online retail experience. Store No. 8 will experiment with autonomous vehicle and drone delivery, virtual reality and personalized shopping. Last summer, Wal-Mart purchased Jet.com, an online retailer, for $3.3 billion in an effort to compete with Amazon, the dominant force in online shopping. Marc Lore, founder of Jet.com joined Wal-Mart's ecommerce team following the purchase.

Aldi customers have been warned to stay away from hoax vouchers circulating on email and social media which trick shoppers into thinking that they can save money. The German retailer said the £65 vouchers, that circulated on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, are worthless and will not be accepted as legal tender at their stores. Aldi said it was investigating the scam and urged customers not to share their personal details, which could help scammers to commit identity fraud. "We advise customers to ignore these adverts and not to share any personal information," the supermarket said in a statement sent to the Independent. On Twitter, the supermarket said: "We are aware that there is a hoax £65 Aldi voucher being circulated. This voucher is fraudulent and cannot be redeemed in store."

Morrisons is using artificial intelligence to stock its stores in a bid to improve efficiency and customer service. The supermarket is rolling out a system from tech firm Blue Yonder that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict exactly what is needed in each of Morrisons' 491 stores. Morrisons has been trialling the technology in select stores for around 18 months, and is now introducing it across its store portfolio. To build its stocking algorithm, Morrisons gave Blue Yonder three years of sales data for every single store, and the exact weather around every store over the same period. This means the algorithm knows which stores sells more pies, and when, but it can also learn.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is creating a technology-startup incubator in Silicon Valley to identify changes that will reshape the retail experience, including virtual reality, autonomous vehicle and drone delivery and personalized shopping. The incubator will be called Store No. 8, a reference to a Wal-Mart location where the company experimented with new store layouts. Marc Lore, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart's e-commerce operations, announced the incubator Monday at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas. The world's biggest retailer has been overhauling its online team to better challenge Amazon.com Lore founded Jet.com, which Wal-Mart purchased in September for about $3.3 billion in pursuit of Amazon in the e-commerce race.

Tired of searching far-flung corners of a big box retail store for that item you want? Walmart may have a high-tech solution – the retail giant has filed a patent to use drones within its stores. The patent application describes "dispatching an airborne drone to an item located within a retail shopping facility, securing that item of inventory to the airborne drone, and then directing the airborne drone to carry the item of inventory to a delivery area located within the retail shopping area." As for the safety of customers when drones are buzzing around a busy store, the patent explains that the flying robots' flightpath will not include any open space. Sensors and 3D map technology will be used to ensure that drones keep to their designated space, according to the patent, which adds that the flightpath could be configured to largely avoid aisles between product display shelving.

Add this one to the growing pile of evidence that the world is slowly transitioning into a sci-fi dystopia: a billionaire entrepreneur with a side-line building space rockets has been showing off piloting a 13-foot-tall robot. Amazon CEO and fifth richest person in the world Jeff Bezos got behind the wheel (well, dual joysticks) of the bot at the retailing giant's annual robotics conference. He tweeted out the picture above earlier this morning, saying: "I just got to pilot an awesome (and huge) robot thanks to Hankook Mirae Technology." Other conference attendees videoed the event, and Bezos can be seen waving around the robot's arms and asking: "Why do I feel so much like Sigourney Weaver?" Reports that Bezos then told the crowd to "bow down before your new king and master, Metal Jeff" are unsubstantiated. Bezos was showing the robot off at MARS -- an annual invite-only conference run by Amazon and dedicated to machine learning, home automation, robotics and space exploration.

There are so many great commerce sessions at Amplify 2017 that I'm going to have to write a 10,000-word blog post. But it is true that we've got all the hottest topics in commerce today covered in our Amplify program – AI, omni-channel, personalization and so much more. How is #AI revolutionizing the way brands connect with customers? How can artificial intelligence help spur creative thinking? As a consumer, how can cognitive computing help deliver what you want before you even know you want it?