Last year saw new artificial intelligence products released at the most rapid pace yet, though predictions of an AI boom on the scale of last decade's tech explosion have yet to come to fruition. "I think 2023 was the year that AI astonished people and 2024 will be the year of retrenchment as people learn the limitations of AI and where various AI systems have the greatest utility," Christopher Alexander, chief analytics officer for Pioneer Development Group, told Fox News Digital. "I think that the race for AI utility has just begun and AI will become a permanent fixture in people's lives. I think that the grand predictions for AI in this past year confused the current state of AI and the future state, which has led to some confusion in the market." Alexander's comments come after what was in many ways a landmark year for AI technology in 2023, with new platforms and developments making headlines throughout the year.

Consumers often don't understand AI's power and impact. "AI is just everywhere in our lives today and the average consumer has no clue how it works or what undermines the technology," Roetzer told me. We need help understanding what responsible AI looks like. Tech companies don't have all the answers. The burden of building and using AI responsibly falls on technology companies, which don't always have incentives to build systems that prioritize people over profit.

With the drafting of the "Artificial Intelligence Act" (April 2021), the European Commission has made its first attempt at comprehensively regulating the expansive world of AI. Whilst the draft legislation extensively addresses the regulation and classification of AI technology, it does not mention another area of concern regarding Artificial Intelligence, namely intellectual property rights. Identifying IP rights as a major issue, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution on IP rights for the development of AI technologies in October 2020. In it, the Parliament called upon the Commission to ensure a high level protection of intellectual property rights when regulating AI. Despite the report being forwarded to the Commission well before it finalized its proposal for the "Artificial Intelligence Act", the protection of intellectual property rights is not mentioned in the draft legislation. Merely an Annex published alongside it briefly mentions the challenges of protecting intellectual property rights in connection with AI-assisted outputs.

We are all familiar with Amazon and the regular suggestions which pop up in our Amazon accounts for new products which we might like to purchase. These suggestions are compiled by AI which collects data based on our browsing/purchasing history. Consumers are now interacting with bots on a regular basis. This form of AI is now prevalent in online trading and customer service, be it chatbots, informational bots or transactional bots. Another form of AI which is impacting the purchasing process is the voice technology application. The rapid rise of AI voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assist mean consumers are becoming more used to performing tasks with their voice which could have an impact with respect to trade mark law. Indeed use of voice recognition as a means for consumers to interact with brands and purchase products and services raises even more fundamental questions from a trade mark perspective.

New technologies have enabled tremendous evolution in the finance industry, especially over the past decade. Thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), investors and consumers are getting access to more innovative tools, new types of financial products and a new potential for growth. So, what kind of impact is AI having on banking and Wall Street, and how might the resulting impact on entrepreneurs evolve in 2019? Some of the best AI developments have been reserved for private banks, professional investors, venture capital firms and other major organizations. But 2019 and beyond will likely bring the trend of more accessibility for consumers, too.

Since the 1960s, robots have assumed major roles in industrial manufacturing and assembly, the remote detonation of explosives, search and rescue, and academic research. But the devices have remained out of reach, in affordability and practicality, to most consumers. That, according to Professor Andrew Ng, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University in California, is about to change. One big reason, Mr. Ng said, is the mass production of smartphones and game consoles, which has driven down the size and price of robotic building blocks like accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors. On the edges of consumer consciousness, the first generation of devices with rudimentary artificial intelligence are beginning to appear: entertainment and educational robots like the Hexy, and a line of tireless household drones that can mow lawns, sweep floors, clean swimming pools and even enhance golf games.