Retailers can put artificial intelligence to work in many different forms, from creating a more personalised shopping experience for the consumer, to helping adopt a data-driven approach to retail marketing. ASOS Chief Executive, Nick Beighton, predicted that by 2020, mobile sales will account for 90% of total revenue for the retailer. With this in mind, retailers have to remain vigilant to changes in trends and expectations from shoppers. As customer traffic to mobile sites increases, it's important that retailers offer a bespoke and personalised service to ensure shoppers can fluently find the products they require and thus convert to purchasing much quicker.

Indian artificial intelligence startups are disrupting the fashion industry by helping brands identify trends on how consumers buy clothes. Brands are crunching time to bring new designs to market using the underlying technology that help predict consumer trends, while increasing sales of their new selections. Typically, brands freeze new designs nine months to one year in advance of the respective seasons. "More than half of the branded clothes by big retailers are sold in discounts. Brands think they know their customers, yet they have not been able to clearly identify what their choice is," says Ganesh Subramanian, founder and chief executive officer of Stylumia, an artificial intelligence and computer vision startup.

Online retailer eBay is attempting to extend its machine language capabilities beyond automatic language translation to e-commerce uses designed to make product searches more relevant. As automation improves, the company said one goal eliminating the search box. Meanwhile, development cycles have been reduced as more machine learning libraries are released to the open source community. "As machines get better at decoding natural language, commerce should become increasingly conversational -- eventually rendering the search box redundant," eBay CEO Devin Wenig noted recently. Wenig added that the pace of machine intelligence development has quickened over the last year.

We have been tracking Amazon for years, but as a reference point consider that in November 2006 BusinessWeek ran a cover story with the title "Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet" where the concept of cloud computing as a business model disruptor was catapulted into the mainstream. Since then the risky bet has paid off for Amazon and has helped transform the business ecosystem in ways few could have predicted. Amazon considers cloud computing to be the on-demand delivery of IT resources and applications via the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Others may use different definitions but Amazon is the 500lb gorilla so for this post at least we will say we agree! The power of the AWS cloud is now driving continuous advancements in Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and IoT.

Apple Inc. acquired artificial intelligence startup Turi Inc. for about 200 million, according to people familiar with the situation, in the latest deal by the iPhone maker to accumulate advanced computing capabilities for its products and services. Turi helps developers create and manage software and services that use a form of AI called machine learning. It also has systems that let companies to build recommendation engines, detect fraud, analyze customer usage patterns and better target potential users, according to the Seattle-based startup's website. Apple could use this to more rapidly integrate the technology with future products. Apple's move Friday is part of a broader battle among Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com

If you follow retail trends, you know that department stores are in trouble. As shoppers have headed online and to discount stores, traditional mall department stores are struggling to define their niche and halt falling profits. Many are now focused on creating a better in-store experience in hopes of motivating customers to shop in person. One of the most interesting customer experience initiatives is coming from Macy's, which also announced last week that it is closing 100 of its stores. In 10 of its U.S. locations, Macy's shoppers can now use artificial intelligence through their mobile devices to help them navigate the shopping experience.

Amazon UK is to open a distribution centre at Tilbury which will be equipped with the retailer's most advanced robotics technology. When it opens in Spring 2017, the Essex-based site will be equipped with robots that slide under a tower of shelves where products are stowed, lifted and moved through the facility. The retail giant has said that the robots help speed order processing time and reduce walking time by moving the shelves to employees, as well as save space with '50 per cent more items to be stowed per square foot'. The technology was launched earlier this year at its Dunstable and Doncaster facilities. John Tagawa, Amazon's vice president of UK operations, said: "The Amazon teams are dedicated to innovating in our fulfilment centres to increase speed of delivery while enabling greater selection at lower costs for our customers. The introduction of Amazon Robotics is the newest example of our commitment to invention in logistics on behalf of our employees and our customers."

BOSTON – An executive from American Apparel at eTail East 2016 detailed how the brand is using an artificial intelligence and Internet of Things solution in which real-world displays interact with shoppers' phones to start a purchase-enabled thread with a chatbot. During the session, The Future Of Retail and the Convergence of Customer Centricity, IoT and Omnichannel, the executive also explained that American Apparel wanted to expand its mobile footprint but without having to immediately make an application, so it partnered with Postmates to introduce a delivery service that saw significant early adoption. The retailer's digital displays are leveraging beacon technology and chatbots to make it easier on customers to instantly purchase and find information about products featured in display ads in an attempt to expand its mobile reach. "I am a firm believe that native apps are being disrupted right now and they are being disruptive by chatbots," said Thoryn Stephens, chief digital officer at American Apparel. "We were actually already on that path before Zuckerberg and Facebook really made that push.

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Wishing to learn Python's machine-learning toolkit - I am an emigrant from R Country - I rounded up several relevant books, and set out to narrow the field to one or two suitable for further study. No point continuing: this is the Packt-standard low-quality fare, written without any expertise, care or spell-check; an obvious step-down from the two earlier books. The positive reviews on this page do not surprise me at all: Packt titles are often supported by praise from people who had not reviewed anything, or only reviewed - and loved - other Packt titles.