In 2017, the predictive ability of artificial intelligence (AI) powered many new tools and platforms. So what does 2018 have in store for AI? I asked some marketers to find out. Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, a call tracking and analytics service, says that 2018 will be "the year the voice trend becomes undeniable." "As people increasingly trade typing for talking, we'll see more companies invest in developing for voice interfaces," Johnson said.

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)

The market for worldwide artificial intelligence software will boom nearly 30-fold to $89.8 billion by 2015, up from $3.2 billion in 2016, says research firm Tractica. Tech giants Apple, Google-parent Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft have forged ahead in applying AI software to speech recognition, internet search, and classifying images. "Artificial intelligence is already key to how consumer internet companies operate today, allowing them to roll out hyper-personalized services by following an'AI first' strategy," Tractica's research director, Aditya Kaul, said in a news release. "The rest of the market in the enterprise and government sectors is still catching up on adopting AI and has yet to fully understand its value." IBD'S TAKE: Read IBD's The Big Picture column each day to stay on top of the market direction, a key indicator that lets you know when you can be aggressive and when...

What comes to your mind if you think of Artificial Intelligence? In the public perception, Artificial Intelligence is a future where machines have outstripped humans. Artificial intelligence is no longer an idea of the future. But what should you know if you want to invest in artificial intelligence? Investment in AI is booming. Forrester predicts that investment in AI will grow by 300% in 2017.

How well can machines interpret beautiful landscapes? After all, some sceneries are beautiful because they tug at human emotions, something that machines lack. Other landscapes, desert dunes in particular, look like nudes to robot eyes. To help, on Monday Google introduced a neural image assessment to figure out the most aesthetically pleasing images. The assessment uses a deep neural network trained with data labelled by humans.

The Assistant SDK is the key to enabling Google's AI helper in third-party devices. Google has expanded the developer toolkit's support to several new countries, including Australia, Canada (both English and French), Germany, Japan and the UK. While Assistant-enabled devices have certainly been available in other countries, this makes it easier for hardware companies in those countries to get the ball rolling and cater to local audiences. On top of this, the SDK itself is becoming more powerful. If a device is using the kit, you can now customize its location (either through its latitude and longitude or a street address) to get area-specific results.

The Echo was the first but there are a bunch of Alexa enabled Amazon products to choose from these days. So which one is the best for you? A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. The Echo was the first but there are a bunch of Alexa enabled Amazon products to choose from these days. So which one is the best for you?

For long, insurance firms have been relying on traditional virtual assistants. But with the advent of improved analytics, insurance technology startups (better known as Insurtech)are paving way for smarter and more innovative platforms. With strong data analytics, Insurtech startups seem to have no lack of funding. According to a report by KPMG, since 2015 the interest in Insurtech has increased dramatically. The report shows that Insurtech startups attracted more than $1.7 billion worldwide in 2016.

It's better late than never for Facebook, who is now in the process of developing its own smart speaker. Mark Zuckerberg's social networking company is believed to be taking cues from Amazon's Echo Show for its upcoming hardware. On Thursday, industry sources disclosed to DigiTimes that Facebook's new hardware team, called Building 8, is the one in charge of the development of the company's smart speaker. The device that is currently in the works reportedly features a touchscreen. While the inclusion of a display fuels speculations that it could be an Amazon Echo Show copy, fans can rest assured that Facebook's hardware would be very different.

The release of the most recent Blade Runner film has further fueled the long-standing debate as to whether artificial intelligence (AI) should be subject to regulation. One domain that has been quick to adopt AI technology is marketing. There's little debate that AI will fundamentally alter the marketing landscape. Already, the use of chatbots--the likes of Apple's Siri, GoogleAssistant, Amazon's Echo, Microsoft's Cortana, etc.--has empowered marketers to increase and optimize engagement with consumers. As well, AI has enabled marketers to more effectively target consumers and develop more relevant personalized content.