To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. For Deloitte, one of the big four accounting firms, the name of its intellectual property protection tool – which counts Jimmy Choo among the global fashion brands using the service – is intentionally bold to match its ambitions. Dupe Killer is a new piece of technology that searches for design infringements using artificial intelligence by learning the shape or configuration of a product and seeking out copies. This is different from detecting counterfeit goods, where the name is stolen and traded upon. Instead, Dupe Killer operates in a world where the only clues are visual.

Forward-thinking financial institutions already understand that properly deployed AI can yield worthy benefits – not just when it comes to making the sector more efficient, but in providing a more intuitive, engaging user experience. According to a Business Insider report, 80% of banks understand that AI technology is fast becoming standard-operating-procedure. A similar number are already investing in research and acquisition programs designed to adapt to the obvious future. The centrality of AI technologies to the financial sector today is also forcing developers and business managers alike to re-think the way they refer to new developments in the industry. A decade ago, any consumer-facing application that dealt with finance was referred to as part of the "fintech landscape."

In a nutshell, any managers' value can be correlated to their team's efficiency and productivity. It can be argued that besides using sophisticated strategies, many managers also rely on their gut feeling to assess employees and treat them accordingly. With the pandemic forcing remote work upon the majority of businesses, this approach has become largely irrelevant. It has become increasingly hard for managers to monitor employee productivity without direct communication, which dramatically increased the demand for remote surveillance solutions. However, the notion of advanced employee monitoring has been around for ages.

A new recycling app will use artificial intelligence to help Australians work out if their rubbish can be recycled. Recycle Mate is designed to end widespread confusion about what goes into which coloured bin. "A lot that you think is recyclable is not and a lot that you think can't be recycled can be," new Australian Council of Recycling CEO Suzanne Toumbourou told AAP. "The app will help every Australian answer the question, 'What bin do I put this in?'" Keen recyclers can use their phones to take a photo of a waste item, such as a plastic container, and Recycle Mate will use artificial intelligence to identify it and determine whether the local council can recycle it. "The technological sophistication that underpins this is probably unprecedented," Ms Toumbourou said.

"Over 40 per cent of businesses believe that the model they're using today will cease to exist in five years," says Clare Barclay, chief operating officer of Microsoft UK. "All sorts of technology, AI included, is changing the shape of the business landscape." Data from Microsoft's Maximising the AI Opportunity report shows that early adopters of enterprise AI have already seen a five per cent improvement in productivity, performance and business outcomes compared to those that have yet to explore this exciting new field. The AI tools they're working with include chatbots for first-line customer support and sales, forecasting and data simulation algorithms, and automation functions such as process simulation for science and manufacturing, allowing production lines to be made more efficient. The report combines survey data from 4,000 employees and 1,000 business leaders at enterprises with expert guidance, all to help shed light on the rise of artificial intelligence and help businesses approach AI in an informed, ethical and cost-effective manner. How can technology play a role in helping businesses solve problems?

Last week Barclays' credit card business struck a deal with Amazon to offer seamless customised shopping and payment services in Germany. The announcement drew little attention amid the US election, pandemic pain -- and the cancellation of Ant Financial's putative $37bn initial public offering. But investors and regulators should pay attention. That is not because of what the deal shows about German shopping habits, Amazon's voracious expansion or Barclays strategy, per se. Instead, the German tie-up's real significance is as a tiny, but unusually visible, sign of a feverish race under way at banks and tech companies to find ways to use big data and artificial intelligence in finance. Essentially, Barclays and Amazon are linking data with AI analysis to approve credit (or not) and predict what customised services clients will want next.

Bottom Line: Barclays' and Kount's co-developed new product, Barclays Transact reflects the future of how companies will innovate together to apply AI-based fraud prevention to the many payment challenges merchants face today. Merchant payment providers have seen the severity, scope, and speed of fraud attacks increase exponentially this year. Account takeovers, card-not-present fraud, SMS spoofing, and phishing are just a few of the many techniques cybercriminals are using to defraud merchants out of millions of dollars. But it doesn't have to be a choice between security and a frictionless transaction. Frustrated by the limitations of existing fraud prevention systems, many payment providers are working as fast as they can to pilot AI- and machine-learning-based applications and platforms.

Your use of AI is probably succeeding in countless ways; however, AI has the potential to fail you, and in a big way: by sealing down the fate of your business and career. In fact, you might not even be able to prove that AI is driving you or your stakeholders to profit at all. Failures in the world of AI today can be small or enormous. Take for example IBM's "Watson for Oncology." The initiative had to be cancelled after $62 million in spending lead to unsafe treatment recommendations.

The fact that fraud is on the rise is not new, nor is it surprising that banks are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to fight back. Banks are, however, revamping their approaches to these technologies on how they may be applied outside of their typical use cases, fending off cybercriminals who have a growing number of opportunities to access online banking platforms and customer data. In the latest Digital Banking Tracker, PYMNTS looks at how banks are currently approaching their use of AI and machine learning in fraud protection and technology innovation. Competing in today's digital banking space is not as simple as opening a fully digital bank, as U.K. institution Barclays found. The bank has shuttered plans to open such a service in the U.S., stating that the project was proving too costly. Barclays will instead keep up its co-branded card efforts in the country at this time, but may revisit the project in the future.

Businesses in the UK need to move beyond tinkering with artificial intelligence (AI) and get on with seriously harnessing the technology at scale to compete on the global stage, a report by Microsoft has said. The tech giant has found that organisations already using AI at scale are performing better than those which are not, by making them more productive, showing higher profitability and producing better business outcomes. But it warned that there is a clear and widening gap between companies using it fully and those still in the early testing phase or simply not implementing it at all. It fears firms being cautious because of the current political uncertainty could miss out, with the retail sector among the weakest adopter surveyed, while financial services have ramped up their approach to AI. Some 43% of the finance-related companies who participated in the study said they used AI for more automation this year, compared with 28% the year before.