Access from devices to cloud AI APIs is the game changer providing highly powerful and scalable real-time capabilities for processing data. The concept of'machines thinking like humans', has moved beyond theory thanks to the increase in – and increase in access to – massive amounts of unstructured multimedia combined with the low cost of high-power, specifically cloud-based, computing. Essentially, if it weren't for big data there would be no artificial intelligence. "There's a been a huge influx of data with everyone feeding sound, text and imagery over social media which has accelerated our ability to try to find ways to process and understand it," says Ian Hughes, analyst at 451 Research. "Traditional processing and analytics are too slow since it doesn't scale, so research has been pushed into AI as a way of dealing with data."

Heading into the New Year, many digital marketers and analysts predicted that we would see some of the biggest changes in digital marketing yet. So, how have things shaken out so far? I turned to Brian Solis of Altimeter Group, Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute, and Adam Berke of AdRoll to find out. As of now, the most common use of artificial intelligence in marketing has been in the form of machine learning. Programmatic buying arose as one of the most prevalent uses of machine learning a few years ago, and other uses of AI include predictive customer service, recommendations, and content curation.