AI Articles and Analysis about E-commerce

The global fashion industry is valued worldwide at an estimated $3 trillion and representing 2 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product. The World Bank categorizes apparel in the broader category of manufacturing which represented 15 percent of the global GDP in 2016. eCommerce has shifted the industry from strictly brick-and-mortar (and catalog) to a more mobile and social media-friendly space, which has opened up in applications of AI in fashion that may help to mold the future of the customer experience.

An increasing number of online companies are utilizing recommendation systems to increase user interaction and enrich shopping potential. Use cases of recommendation systems have been expanding rapidly across many aspects of eCommerce and online media over the last 4-5 years, and we expect this trend to continue.

Episode summary: In this episode we talk to Lior Tasman who is the CEO of PredictiveBid, an Israeli-based predictive advertising optimization start-up. The team focuses on applying AI to some of the bigger issues in programmatic advertising to help draw out more ROI from ads. We discuss some of the challenges of programmatic advertising and what the future of programmatic advertising may look like from an advertiser’s perspective.

Episode summary: In this episode we talk to Adam Spector, the Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at LiftIgniter, a company which provide a service which modulates website experience per users, for an array of different businesses. Adam and I discuss what the tech giants are doing to customize their business experiences, what data they’re using to continually alter user experience and what industries and sectors might be impacted by this aggregate trend as it moves forward.

Episode Summary1: Fraud attacks have become much more sophisticated. Account takeovers are happening more often. Many security attacks involve multiple methods and unexpected attacks can devastate businesses in just a few days, as we saw with Neiman Marcus and Target. False promotion and abuse is seen not only on social media sites but is also targeted at business. To combat these risks, fraud solutions need to be smarter to keep pace with fraudsters to prevent attacks and react quickly when they do happen. This requires a fast-learning solution with the ability to continually evolve - which calls for the application machine learning for fraud detection. In this episode we talk to Kevin Lee from Sift Science and examine the shifts in the info security landscape over the past ten or fifteen year. Lee also highlights what new kinds of fraud are now possible and what machine learning solutions are available.

Artificial intelligence in retail is being applied in new ways across the entire product and service cycle—from assembly to post-sale customer service interactions, but retail players need answers to important questions:

With all the excitement and hype about AI that’s “just around the corner”—self-driving cars, instant machine translation, etc.—it can be difficult to see how AI is affecting the lives of regular people from moment to moment. What are examples of artificial intelligence that you're already using—right now?

Episode Summary: We've interviewed a number of guests on Emerj, but very few who have had a serious part of their career in selling automobiles. But Michael Perry did just that for 5 years before founding Kit, his third startup - an AI-powered Virtual Employee that works in marketing for small businesses and was acquired by Shopify in April 2016. In this episode, Perry speaks about how Kit and Shopify leverage AI on a daily basis, and how a “non-tech” person with no formal background in AI or data science can build a team for an AI project.