With the upcoming Dmexco and Ad Week New York trade shows on the horizon, the words'Artificial Intelligence', or'AI', are likely to be ringing in the ears of attendees. The Drum probes experts on how to tell who actually knows what they're talking about, and who is just using another buzzword. According to data from venture capital (VC) database PitchBook, the artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning vertical raised $2.42bn in VC in 275 deals in the first half of 2017. That's compared to $38.46bn in 4166 deals overall. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but both the number of deals and the amount raised is on the rise. What's more, Google launched its own AI-specific fund earlier this year, and, more recently, IBM and MIT inked a ten-year, $240m deal to create the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

Digital music service Spotify recently acquired machine learning startup Niland to improve its recommendation and personalization technologies. In other words, Spotify wants to better connect its users to music they will like. The heart of this concept is nothing new. Netflix and Amazon, too, use machine learning – a type of artificial intelligence (AI) in which machines learn when exposed to new data without being programmed – to suggest content and products their respective users might like. And while this ability to tap into AI – machines that perform smart, human-like tasks – to analyze internal data is increasingly common, it's a bit more complicated when it comes to using AI to capture consumer attention externally, like, say, in search.