Have you ever shopped online for a mattress? Then you know the drill. For weeks after you made a decision, and perhaps even after you took delivery, you still see ads following you around the internet, promoting this mattress manufacturer or that. You think, "if this is a sample of artificial intelligence, then where's the intelligence?" AI and efforts to make digital services more personalized remain "a fairly blunt instrument," says Alan McIntyre, senior managing director, Accenture Global Banking, in an interview with Banking Exchange.

Four research teams at the University of Michigan will explore the intersection of music and data science thanks to the support of the Michigan Institute for Data Science's (MIDAS) Data Science for Music Challenge Initiative. The challenge asked participants to propose research projects that applied data science tools such as data mining or machine learning to the study of areas such as music theory, the connection between music and words, performance and more. Possible areas of research suggested by the challenge's coordinators include algorithms and computer composition, big data-based instrument deign, music education method analysis, collaborative music making and music recommendation systems, among others. "MIDAS is excited to catalyze innovative, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of data science and music," said Alfred Hero, co-director of MIDAS and the John H. Holland Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in a prepared statement. "The four proposals selected will apply and demonstrate some of the most powerful state-of-the-art machine learning and data mining methods to empirical music theory, automated musical accompaniment of text and data-driven analysis of music performance."

Whether you're listening to the newest installment of a daily podcast you're subscribed to or binging the latest true crime series, being able to pause a podcast on one device and pick it back up on another is a useful feature. And according to Pacific Content, it's a feature that Google offers right now. If you start an episode on your Android phone, for example, you can finish it with your Google Home, and Zack Reneau-Wedeen, Google's podcasts product manager, says this "device interoperability" will eventually expand to everything on which you use Google. We asked Google about the feature and were told that it's "not new" but it's unclear how long the ability has been around. Though Apple launched its podcast app in 2012, Google still doesn't have a dedicated app for podcasts.

The EU has launched a formal investigation into Apple's proposed acquisition of UK music-recognition app Shazam. The European commission announced its in-depth investigation into the deal over concerns that it would harm consumer choice and give Apple an unfair advantage through access to user data, which could aid in poaching customers from rivals. Shazam has been downloaded 1bn times and is used 20m times a day. It is the world's leading music recognition system, able to listen to and identify tracks via a smartphone and then link those tracks to multiple music subscription services, which means it could therefore hold commercially sensitive data on Apple's competitors and their consumers. Noting that Apple Music has become the second-largest music streaming service in Europe, the EC said: "Access to such data could allow Apple to directly target its competitors' customers and encourage them to switch to Apple Music. As a result, competing music streaming services could be put at a competitive disadvantage."

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a phenomenon in daily life -- whether it's staying organized with virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, relying on Waze and Google Maps for the fastest commute time to work or tagging photos with Facebook's facial recognition technology. However, AI is driving equally powerful innovation in other ways that may not seem as familiar to average consumers and yet are dramatically improving the experience they have with their mobile devices. That's because one of the earliest and most ardent adopters of AI is the enterprise information technology (IT) operations that manage the networks you and I need to access. For them, AI is rapidly becoming a critical component to provide better visibility into the network environment, reduce costs, simplify operations and fix problems faster. Gartner predicts that by 2020, AI will be one of the five most important investment priorities for more than 30% of chief information officers (CIOs).

Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur and a technologist who started the music streaming service Spotify. Just three weeks after it went public, Spotify plans to host an event for the press in New York Tuesday morning, where we'll likely get the first clues to where the music streaming service goes from here. The Swedish company didn't reveal much in its press invitation, other to say that we'd hear what's next for the company's mobile app. That doesn't necessarily rule out a new hardware announcement from Spotify, though it is hard to predict what that product or products could be. One logical guess might be a smart, voice-driven speaker, a market currently dominated by Amazon's Echo speakers with Alexa, and that also includes various Google Homes and the Apple HomePod.

It's clear: Artificial intelligence has transformed the way we live. According to PwC, 55 percent of consumers would prefer to receive new media recommendations from AI -- a development that illuminates how much we've integrated the technology into our lives. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are just a few of the obvious innovators embracing bot-powered business functions, but others are also taking notice. Artificial intelligence's ability to synthesize and analyze data can easily improve business operations for many industries, including hospitality, restaurants, and travel. Such markets experience success when they revise their customer experience or marketing strategies with machine learning and chatbots.

Amazon is making a home robot, according to Bloomberg. Robots are already starting to invade our houses, vacuuming and setting alarms. Could you be talking to one soon? Amazon is reported to be ramping up efforts to build and test a domestic robot named "Vesta," named after the Roman goddess of domestic life. The supposedly top-secret, years-long project was detailed by Bloomberg Monday.

Despite being around for decades, AI is currently one of the most popular topics in business with Gartner predicting that by 2020 AI will be a top five investment priority for more than 20% of CIOs. Join Joey Moore, Director of Product Marketing and Greg Moore, Manager for Personalisation and Campaign Strategy of Episerver for a practical webinar on The 3 key ways to improve the customer journey. AI is currently closing the gap between detecting patterns from large data sets and predicting intent (a role traditionally reserved for human marketers and merchandizers). AI-powered technologies are replacing the manual work traditionally completed by merchandizers to make product recommendations and marketers to make ad spend decisions. For now, AI will not completely replace all human effort, but it will dramatically improve the effectiveness of ecommerce teams that use it while enhancing the experience of shoppers who purchase from AI-centered ecommerce businesses.

Since Amazon's Echo arrived in late 2014, voice assistants have become increasingly important in making sense of the disparate smart home devices like speakers, light bulbs, thermostats, security cameras and more. But in the last few months, Alexa and the Google Assistant started letting users do multiple things -- like turning down the thermostat, lowering the lights and telling you what's on the calendar -- with a single command. It's been a key addition that has made managing a variety of different smart home devices easier. We tried out Amazon's implementation of routines back in October alongside new Echo hardware, but Google didn't launch its version until last month. If Google's going to keep Amazon from dominating the voice assistant market, it needs to be as good at tying a smart home together.