As it has in many other Industries, artificial intelligence has become a core component of e-commerce. Going forward, it's believed that AI and natural language understanding technologies in particular will find many new applications in the industry. E-commerce is a fast-growing industry. In 2017, global retail e-commerce sales reached US$2.3 trillion, and e-retail revenue is expected to grow to US$4.88 trillion in 2021. The world's continuous digitalization and informationization gives e-commerce a lot of room for development.

Each person interprets an image in countless subjective ways, based on individual biases. However, when searching for a product on the Internet, most people prefer accuracy over multiple interpretations of a single object. Putting the appropriate tags on images ensures better searchability for users. Doing this manually, though, can be inefficient and prone to errors. With visual AI, you not only can tag your images automatically, but also save on costs.

Visual AI combines artificial intelligence with computer vision software.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global retail analytics market will likely more than double in size during 2015-2020, totaling about $5.1 billion at the end of the forecast period. The adoption of analytics solutions is increasing as more enterprises worldwide are realizing significant returns from using BI and analytics platforms and services. Of late, many retailers seem to be jumping on the AI bandwagon to improve their marketing efforts. Sailthru, a marketing technology company, published a study that included a survey with more than 200 retail marketers. Over the course of 2017, these retailers plan to leverage AI to expand their mobile and social media marketing strategies aside from improving customer journeys.