It's not all robot delivery dogs, self-driving cars that let you snooze, or digital assistants that can tell you need to talk about your day. Although these real examples of artificial intelligence developments are simultaneously terrifying and exciting, they are more indicative of what is to come in three or four years – Volvo's 360c "bed on wheels" is just a concept for now while Huawei is still working on their emotional AI software. Fresh from a CES demo, Continental's robo-dogs are just about hot to trot, so to speak. But the best way to predict what people will be talking about in AI in 2019 is to take a look at what happened in 2018 and pay close attention to those end of year reports issued by industry, academia and special interest groups for their expert insights into the year ahead. While some areas continue to steadily grow – machine learning and deep learning – others will creep up on us, suddenly feeling as ubiquitous as the smartphone while steadily becoming capable of increasingly complex behaviours: the AI voice assistant.

Today, Apple is holding its Worldwide Developers Conference. So far, they have announced a host of updates. For example, during the presentation, the company noted that their watchOS 4 is going to include advanced AI and be far more personalized. Moving forward, Siri intelligence will automatically display information that is relevant to you on the face of the watch using advanced machine learning technologies that improve and "learn" over time. Ultimately, this means that the more you interact with the watch, the smarter it gets.

Instagram machine learning has grown a lot since we announced Feed ranking back in 2016. Our recommender system serves over 1 billion users on a regular basis. We also now use machine learning for more than just ranking Feed and Stories: we source and recommend posts from Hashtags you follow, blend in different types of content together, and power intelligent app prefetching. All of the different ways Instagram uses machine learning deserves its own post, but we want to discuss a few lessons we've learned along the way of building our ML pipeline. We made a few decisions for how we do modeling that have been beneficial to us either by improving our models' predictive power and providing top line improvements or by maintaining the accuracy and lowering our memory consumption.

Artificial intelligence has already made a huge difference in how brands interact with consumers and how marketing strategies are managed. In such a rapidly changing environment, it's difficult to predict what the future holds, but there are certainly some clues to what we might expect in the coming year. As we near the end of the year and look forward into 2019, here are some of the biggest AI-related digital marketing trends to look out for. We've already seen how chatbots can have all sorts of applications from dealing with basic customer service inquiries, to driving sales. Consumers have already become used to chatbots and feel comfortable talking to them, thanks to the growing popularity of virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. LAS VEGAS--When we wrapped up the 2018 CES show last January, we said this: "The one story that overshadowed everything else was the rivalry between Amazon and Google to get their connected speaker technology into as many products as possible, from speakers, stoves, refrigerators and even a shower to respond to your wishes." So how did the show go this year? Funny, it was déjà vu. The LG Signature OLED TV is the first rollup television.

We may have lost the company payroll on the casino floor but that doesn't mean we don't still have a day of great events coming live from the CNET stage. You'll find us outside of the Tech West area at the Sands Expo Center. Can't join us here in Las Vegas? No problem: We're bringing our final day of live programming to you right here. Be sure to catch up on the highlights from the show floor while you're here and head over to our dedicated CES homepage to find out about everything that happened here in Sin City.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is science that deals with building intelligent machines that can think and respond like a human. It holds exceptional future opportunities in digital marketing. The impact of AI and machine learning goes far beyond the mundane. More and more, organizations are leaning on AI for cutting-edge applications with at least one of three overarching benefits. As a business owner or marketer, it is time to identify the problems that your business is facing and how accurate insights can solve these issues. Gathering all the data spread across numerous applications into one place will help you get accurate insight.

Although conversational AI has been in the headlines for years now, B2C applications of this technology are still in their infancy. I believe that's going to change this year, and we're going to see conversational interfaces replace more websites, mobile apps and contact centers than ever before -- even as the burgeoning industry faces new challenges. I work with large enterprises looking to add conversational AI to their customer experience, so I've seen the signs that a boom is on the way. One strong indicator is the amount of funding pouring into the space. We've seen a growing number of VCs investing in conversational AI startups, with some luminaries -- like the founder of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son -- focusing almost entirely on AI.

As marketers, we need to battle now like never before to catch our customer's attention. The average person in the US goes through more than 6 hours each day interacting with some kind of digital media. With ever growing interplay over the variety of digital platforms comes a diminishing customer attention span. Doubtlessly, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a testing job to fill. A year ago, we witnessed a portion of the world's greatest marketers cut digital advertising spending by over $100 million, which saw no impact on sales development.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. LAS VEGAS – The Google team is seemingly everywhere at CES 2019, both in signage at the main convention center, ("Hey Google"), a large booth presence and hundreds of people dressed in white "Hey Google" jumpsuits, topped off with matching "Hey Google" beanies. Arch-rival Amazon, on the other hand, has a small, understated ballroom at the lower trafficked Sands Convention Expo, showcasing a potpourri of products, from Amazon and other vendors, that use the Alexa voice commands. Staffers are adorned in blue Alexa sports shirts. On the eve of the show, the companies threw down the gauntlet: Amazon Echo speakers and third-party vendors using the system have sold over 100 million units, Amazon said.