As people increasingly use their mobile phones and other devices to shop, it has become imperative for vendors to improve the shopping experience, making it as simple as possible, given the small footprint. One way to do that is using artificial intelligence. Today, Salesforce announced some AI-enhanced APIs designed to keep us engaged as shoppers. For starters, the company wants to keep you shopping. That means providing an intelligent recommendation engine.

In an article published by Customer Think (http://bit.ly/2w3vhGy), Amrita Bhattacharyya writes: "Conversational Commerce refers to using natural language within a messenger application (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others) or using voice assistants (Siri, Amazon Alexa, and others) to interact with a business for an inquiry, purchase, or customer service." Conversational Commerce enables a person to, quite literally, message their refrigerator! For example, you would text your refrigerator "Do we have milk?" Using a combination of artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP), your refrigerator would text you back "Yes, but at your current rate of consumption, it will be gone tomorrow. Would you like me to place an order with Peapod?"

At CES this year both Amazon Echo and Google Assistant take center stage as voice assistants grow in popularity. Artificial intelligence is definitely the hot topic at CES this year. With significant investments from companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple, AI in 2019 is off to the races. Amazon recently confirmed it has sold 100 million Echos. In addition, Google Assistant comes preinstalled on the Pixel, and it's been estimated that Google Assistant will be on one billion devices devices by the end of January. But how smart is AI?

"AI IS LIKELY TO BE EITHER THE BEST OR THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO HUMANITY." The above quote beautifully sums up the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the human lives in the last few years or so. In fact, as per survey carried out by Statista, the global revenue from AI for the year 2018 was around $482 billion & it is expected that this figure will surpass $3061 billion by 2024. The above clearly tells you that AI is booming right now. Similar to AI, another field which is on the rise is E-Commerce. As per the research conducted by Statista, the worldwide retail E-Commerce sales for the year 2018 was around $2.8 trillion and it's expected that this figure will reach $4.88 trillion by 2021.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is in vogue. It's almost impossible to read an article in any media outlet that doesn't mention AI and the possibility it will reshape the world in which we live. In fact, according to research conducted by AT&T, AI has the potential to double GDP growth across geographies by 2035. Consumers are already interacting with a variety of low-level AI assistants, such as Siri, Cortana, and Alexa. With respect to the telecom sector, AI – supported by machine learning (ML) – is fundamental to controlling and operating communications networks of the future.

In an increasing digitalized world, consumers are expecting interactions via all communication levels and platforms such as personalized emails to in-app and web-based chat services. In addition to ease of communication, consumers are also expecting this service at a fast pace. Chris Messina, a previous developer at Uber, coined the term conversational commerce in 2015. The term lives strong today through players such as WhatsApp, Siri, Google Nest and Amazon Echo who are changing the way we shop. These "concierge" services make online shopping more convenient and personalized for all of us on-the-go.

At Las Vegas gadget show CES, Google is showcasing new features of its voice-enabled digital assistant including a language translator. We use this phrase every day. Once upon a time, the word "Google" just indicated a very long number. That extends to physical products as well. But the world's most powerful search engine can do more than find things.

Japan's infamous robot hotel, where gets are met by a dino-bot and room service bots roam the halls, has fired over half of its robot workforce, it has been claimed. The first Henn na Hotel opened in Nagasaki in 2015, and was certified the following year by Guinness World Records as the world's first hotel with robots on its staff. 'It's easier now that we're not being frequently called by guests to help with problems with the robots,' one staff member who has worked at the hotel for three years told the WSJ. Robots are no strangers to the Japanese, but the sight of a motion-sensing dinosaur (pictured) greeting you at the reception of a hotel is likely to startle even the most ardent automaton aficionado. It might be about the weirdest check-in experience possible, but that's exactly the point at the Henn na chain - whose name means'weird' The robot assistant in each room named'Churi' was one of the first to be fired, after guest discovered it was unable to answer basic questions.

The greatest buzzwords to come from 2018 were blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). Blockchain has had it's highs and lows, however AI is trending much more positively. Artificial Intelligence isn't brand new, we've seen the likes of Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google not only in our hands but now welcomed into our homes. All of these have gained huge momentum at a consistent pace for the last few years. Other well-known established tech companies, governments, and cutting-edge startups are all looking for a share of the expanding market, and Healthcare companies are right there with them.

Described as "the world's most powerful end-to-end encrypted communication device," Solaborate's HELLO 2 platform transforms any television set into a powerful communications device that responds intelligently to voice and touch. The device, which includes a 4K camera with night vision, wireless connectivity, sophisticated privacy controls, can turn a touch TV into a whiteboard and video conferencing platform. It can also integrate with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. And Solaborate is opening the device's platform to developers so that they can create extensions that will expand the device's functionalities. It is an AI-based device that translates a user's speech into another language and then back into the original. Powered by a quad-core processer, the Travis Touch works via 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and can also function off-line.