The rise of machines and AI in retail

Advances in artificial intelligence are destined to make our lives and shopping experiences even better – good news for the consumer, and good news for retailers – but will machines eventually out-do humans, asks Uwe Hennig, chief executive of retail tech specialist Detego? There have been a number of buzzwords and defining technology trends in retail over the last decade: from Big Data, to Omni-channel, and the ubiquitous, omni-present Cloud. And now the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) have seemingly become the latest crazes and talk of the town. Forrester expects investment in AI to triple this year. By 2020, 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed by AI according to research by Gartner.