Whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something you've just come across or it's something you've been monitoring for a while, there's no denying that it's starting to influence many industries. And one place that it's really starting to change things is e-commerce. Our friends over at RedStag Fulfillment put together the compelling infographic below where you'll find some interesting stats and facts about how AI is growing in e-commerce and how it's changing the way things are done. From personalizing the shopping experience for customers to creating personal buying assistants, AI is something retailers can't ignore. It also takes a look at some examples of how leading online stores have used AI to enrich the customer buying experience.

British consumers are expected to spend £280 each on gifts over the weeks leading up to Christmas. More than half of these purchases will take place online. Almost a third of people will rely on online reviews to make their buying decisions, although recommendations from friends and family are still the main source of persuasion. Online shopping is estimated to rise by 24% by the end of this year. However, as consumers are looking for more sensory and immersive shopping experiences, the pressure is on for online retailers to find new ways to excite customers and keep them satisfied – and artificial intelligence (AI) is the new technology they will use. It is allowing businesses to analyse customer behaviour, predict consumer wants and offer tailored customer experiences.

Tomorrow's retail stores want to take a page from their online rivals by embracing advanced technology -- everything from helpful robots to interactive mirrors to shelves embedded with sensors. The goal: Use these real-world store features to lure shoppers back from the internet, and maybe even nudge them to spend more in the process. Amazon's new experimental grocery store in Seattle, opening in early 2017, will let shoppers buy goods without needing to stop at a checkout line. Sensors track items as shoppers put them into baskets or return them to the shelf. The shopper's Amazon account gets automatically charged.

Web retailers have plenty of data on their customers. Some of these online technologies can even track shoppers from site to site to lure them back with what's known as retargeting ads -- promos targeted to what that shopper has looked at before, but didn't actually buy. Smart shelves with sensors promise the same kind of in-depth consumer behaviour analytics at retail stores. At a Kroger store in Cold Spring, Ohio, shelves currently show digitized price tags and information about the products. The next step is to tie that to individual shoppers.

We're beginning to see a trend here at CES. A ton of companies are either injecting their tech with a dose of Alexa or building their own Amazon Echo competitors from scratch. SmartBeings falls into the later category, but its WooHoo device packs a lot more punch than the online retailer's smart speaker. WooHoo can do some of the things Echo handles, but it's also equipped with both facial and voice recognition, Android-powered software and a 7-inch touchscreen. If you can imagine a version of Echo with a rotating camera that helps complete tasks when a specific person walks in a room, you'll get the idea here.

Tomorrow's retail stores want to take a page from their online rivals by embracing advanced technology -- everything from helpful robots to interactive mirrors to shelves embedded with sensors. The goal: Use these real-world store features to lure shoppers back from the internet, and maybe even nudge them to spend more in the process. Amazon's new experimental grocery store in Seattle, opening in early 2017, will let shoppers buy goods without needing to stop at a checkout line. Sensors track items as shoppers put them into baskets or return them to the shelf. The shopper's Amazon account gets automatically charged.

The "willing suspension of disbelief" is the idea that the audience (readers, viewers, content consumers) is willing to suspend judgment about the implausibility of the narrative for the quality of the audience's own enjoyment. We do it all the time. Two-dimensional video on our screens is smaller than life and flat and not in real time, but we ignore those facts and immerse ourselves in the stories as if they were real. We have also learned the "conventions" of each medium. While we watch a movie or a video, we don't yell to the characters on the screen "Duck!" or "Look out!" when something is about to happen to them.

Tomorrow's retail stores want to take a page from their online rivals by embracing advanced technology -- everything from helpful robots to interactive mirrors to shelves embedded with sensors. The goal: Use these real-world store features to lure shoppers back from the internet, and maybe even nudge them to spend more in the process. Amazon's new experimental grocery store in Seattle, opening in early 2017, will let shoppers buy goods without needing to stop at a checkout line. This photo provided by SoftBank Robotics America demonstrates a shopping experience with SoftBank Robotics' humanoid robot called Pepper, waving at right. The robot can greet shoppers and has the potential to send messages geared to people¿s age and gender through facial recognition.

With machine-learning technology, retailers can address the common--and costly--problem of having too much or too little fresh food in stock. Fresh food, already a fiercely competitive arena in grocery retail, is becoming an even more crowded battleground. Discounters, convenience-store chains, and online players are recognizing the power of fresh-food categories to drive store visits, basket size, and customer loyalty. With fresh products accounting for up to 40 percent of grocers' revenue and one-third of cost of goods sold, getting fresh-food retailing right is more important than ever.1 1.Raphael Buck and Arnaud Minvielle, "A fresh take on food retailing," Perspectives on retail and consumer goods, Winter 2013/14. Fresh food is perishable, demand is highly variable, and lead times are often uncertain.

The online retail experience is the first area--but hardly the last--to be addressed by the Sentient Aware family of artificial intelligence products. But if you're an online retailer, you'll be glad we started here. Because with Sentient Aware for e-Commerce, you can now add an AI sales associate to transform your e-commerce website, helping your customers find exactly what they're looking for in real-time. Why start with the online retail experience? Because at Sentient, we appreciate how much time and effort you pour into optimizing your online store and curating your product assortment.