Artificial Intelligence In Retail Is Already Here PYMNTS.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more prevalent in almost every facet of people's day-to-day lives, from its ability to defeat world-class chess players to its implementation into self-driving cars. AI is hot, flashy, buzzworthy and is the future of many industries and applications, but many consumers don't realize the subtle way it is already influencing and shaping the world of retail. Thanks to an abundance of consumer data at their fingertips, retailers have slowly and subtly begun rolling out applications for many sectors of the retail industry, everything from using AI to offer better product recommendations, to chatbots that can carry on an (almost) lifelike conversation with consumers and help push them toward checkout, to being utilized in image recognition systems. "The pertinent question isn't necessarily when but where you'll see AI deployed. And the truth of the matter is that AI can benefit essentially every step and process of eCommerce, from site layout to personalization to -- and this part is extremely important -- customer happiness," Andy Narayanan, vice president of visual intelligence at Sentient, an artificial intelligence software provider, wrote for Total Retail in a piece back in July.