Customers with questions about their online orders this holiday shopping season may think they're asking a seasonal worker for help, but artificial intelligence (AI) is likely giving them the information they need. Technology of all kinds is being used on the back end of retail, to organize inventory and manage other operational functions. Whether it's chatting with a bot or with Alexa, AI is also increasingly becoming a part of the consumer-facing shopping process in ways that, at least for now, are about improving customer service. According to the latest Accenture data, a majority of consumers are already using or would like to use a number of technologies that are powered by AI when shopping, including chatbots ("automated intelligent customer assistance," 65%), virtually trying on clothing (65%), and voice commerce systems like Google Home GOOG, 0.19% (68%) and Amazon Alexa (71%). Personalization, ease and convenience are key to better customer service in retail, whether that's through supply chain management and making sure items are in stock and can be sent to customers in a timely fashion, or through services designed to cater to the preferences of the individual shopper.

Amazon's Alexa is already helpful for broadcasting sports scores upon request. For the upcoming NBA season though, the virtual assistant will serve up more detailed information on every team in the league. All 30 teams will have their own Alexa Skills, which means you can ask for things like the date of the next home game, who your teams plays on a specific date, if they're winning, stats leaders, standings and the latest team news. "Alexa, ask the Charlotte Hornets..." is the phrasing you'll need to speak to initiate the request. And of course, saying "Alexa, enable (insert team name here)" will activate the skill for that particular team on your compatible device.

The Amazon Echo Show is on sale for the first time ever (Photo: Reviewed.com) If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. The entire Amazon Echo lineup is fantastic, but the Echo Show offers the most diverse array of features--and right now it's $30 off. This is the first time ever that Amazon has discounted the price of this device.

Enterprises are constantly evaluating ways to improve the speed and quality of their customer support services. These have traditionally been delivered over the phone, through a conversation with a human agent, but customer support has been changing in recent years as businesses have begun adopting AI-based alternatives. These approaches have indeed introduced new efficiencies, but they have also been largely unpopular with customers, who view them as too impersonal. Customers expect to have their needs addressed quickly, but they also want empathy and to have their requests easily understood. Most importantly, they want to be quickly passed to a human agent if their concerns are too complex for the technology to process. Do you have an AI strategy -- or hoping to get one?

Late September, the 4th Intelligent Assistants Conference took place in San Francisco. Over the years, this conference has become a flagship event for the space, combining experience sharing from users and panel discussions with vendors. Presentations have just been posted. We took the opportunity of the conference to update our market landscape. We continued to wrestle with weeding out scripted bots and preserve our focus on conversational assistants.

Google is making its minimal homepage that little bit busier. Keep your eyes peeled the next time you land on Google.com and you should spot two new links in the upper left hand corner. "About" and "Store" are the debutants. One gives you the lowdown on the company's history, software, team, and search Trends. The other is aimed at your wallet.

If you're listening to music when you press the button, the music will pause and then automatically resume after you've told Alexa what you need (it will also resume within a few seconds if you don't say anything). As with many higher-end Bluetooth headphones, the OV support the aptX codec to deliver better-than-average audio quality over Bluetooth. You can use the button on the right-hand ear bud to summon Google Assistant or Siri, depending on the type of phone you're using. Its primary role is to handle phone calls and to provide you with access to your digital assistant of choice.

On Wednesday, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company is announcing its first smart speaker, the $199 Sonos One, powered by Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. By next year, the company will integrate Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL 0.86% Google voice assistant, and down the road hopes to make its smart speaker compatible with Apple Inc.'s AAPL -0.06% Siri and others. The partnerships would mean consumers wouldn't need to choose one tech giant's services over another--Sonos could serve them all. The company built a loyal fan base by letting customers play music in every room of a home through a network of wireless speakers that supported streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Speakers, though, are no longer just for listening to music.

Google, the core unit of Alphabet Inc., is betting the upgraded devices will help it crack the competitive market for consumer-tech devices and catch up to juggernauts Apple Inc., AAPL -0.06% Samsung Electronics Co. and Amazon.com Google's new home speakers range in price from $50 to $400, challenging Apple at the top of the market and Amazon at the bottom. Throughout the event, Google touted the devices' smarts as a main selling point, versus their hardware upgrades. "To be honest, it's going to be tougher and tougher for people to develop new exciting products each year because that is no longer the timetable for big leaps forward in hardware alone. And that is why we're taking a very different approach," Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh said at the event.

New interfaces will dramatically change the way consumers and employees access computing resources, Andrews said. Specifically, the new wave of interfaces relies on natural language processing and generation, visual analytics and gesture interpretation -- technologies powered by AI. In a client example Andrews titled the "Warehouse of Babel," artificial intelligence is bridging a language barrier for a European-based warehouse. The warehouse is now using a natural language interpretation system so that employees, who come from all corners of Eastern Europe, don't have to speak the same language to communicate or access applications "in a comparatively unified way," Andrews said.