With the explosion of technology in the digital space, customer expectations and website capabilities are constantly changing. As we approach the middle part of 2017, now is a good time to closely examine trends that will have the greatest impact on the industry this year. There are now more than a billion websites available, and the amount of data online has exploded from 130 exabytes in 2005 to an anticipated 40,000 in 2020. In response to the incredible amount of information available online, brands now compete with each other to provide customers relevant content. This has driven industry advancements and led to greater customer expectations from brands and their associated websites.

When using Siri, users can give commands the digital assistant to do many tasks. However, the mechanism by which Google Assistant's rival responds to voice commands is proven to be flawed. For one thing, Siri is designed to respond to commands given by anyone, so people aside from the owner of the device can ask the AI assistant to do stuff, including accessing personal data. Fortunately, Apple appears to be working on a solution already. A new patent application by the Cupertino giant contains details on how Samsung's biggest rival is planning to make Siri more secure.

Google Home has just launched in the UK, and it's immediately offered a glimpse into an extremely bright future. It's a direct rival to the much-lauded Amazon Echo, and is designed to provide users with help around the house. Inside the box, you'll find a power cable, instructions and the Google Home device itself. For such an alien-looking thing, it's actually really easy to set up. All you need to do is plug it into your mains and hook it up to your home Wi-Fi network and Google account via the free Google Home app on your phone.

AI assistants aren't going away any time soon, but their implementation is constantly shifting and evolving. Alexa is invading every gadget in our homes, Siri might soon do the same, and Google Assistant will probably be uploaded to our brains before too long. Now there's another one to consider, called Duo -- no, not Google's video chat app, a totally different Duo. It's an AI-powered, 27 inch smart mirror with multitouch, built-in apps with its own app store, connectivity to smart devices, facial recognition, multi-user support, and natural language recognition. You can buy one right now, though you won't actually get it until the estimated shipping date of October.

There is no way to spell "retail" without AI. The power of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the consumer journey dominated the conversation at Shoptalk this week. In its second year, Shoptalk brought together 5,000-plus players across the full ecosystem to better understand the continuous evolution of how consumers discover, browse and buy in the digital era. AI, which refers to technologies capable of performing tasks normally requiring human intelligence, goes back centuries. The idea of cognitive computing gained steam in the 1940s when Alan Turing suggested that a machine could simulate any conceivable act of mathematical deduction.

A recent comic strip called GIL depicted an 8-year-old boy calling out commands to what he thought was the Amazon Echo. After two simple directives and no response, he shouted, "Alexa! What is wrong with you?!" Gil's mother saw this and asked her son why he was yelling at her new coffee grinder. The fact that there's a front-page comic strip in the Sunday newspaper dedicated to an artificial intelligence system tells me the technology is officially mainstream. Analysts predict voice will be the next big user interface, and though I'm skeptical of predictions for reasons we laid out in our February issue of Business Information, this is one forecast I believe.

Robo advisors are steadily growing in popularity, and these online investment advisors are threatening to take massive amounts of business away from traditional financial advisors. Automated financial advisor apps and services will manage approximately 10% of all global assets under management (AUM) by 2020, according to projections from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. But how do robo advisors work? Is automated portfolio management truly better than a human being who manages your funds? Read on to learn the basics of robo advisors and what the future holds for this segment of the finance world.

Voice is a fast-growing channel, which aligns with consumer expectations for more instant task delivery and more integrated connectivity with devices, apps and channels. The opportunity for marketers is exciting and the scope for brand engagement with customers is huge. Crucially, AI assistants have the potential become new sources of data capture and rich hubs for behavior-based customer insights.

If you're Google and you want the next Home speaker to clearly one-up the Amazon Echo, what do you do? A source speaking to the Information claims that an upcoming Home model will include a built-in WiFi router with mesh networking. You wouldn't need to buy a separate router (like, say, Google WiFi) just to connect devices around your household. And even if you already have a router, this would improve Home's performance by giving it a stronger connection in weak coverage areas. The tipster also maintains that the original version of Google WiFi had a microphone and speaker for Home-style interactions, but that Google axed it to avoid confusion.

Becoming a cloud-centric technology company is a given nowadays for companies that consider themselves future-ready. The question is hence, not whether a company is operating in the cloud, but what level of sophistication they have reached in their cloud endeavors. This is because the cloud is being enriched by incorporating other emerging technologies, especially machine learning. There is no doubt that contemporary cloud networks will be more intelligent than ever. And companies must harness the power of the intelligent cloud to realize value.