How can AI revolutionize consumer markets through automated search?

Although artificial intelligence and machine learning will change many industries, one of the largest impacts will be felt in consumer markets and retail businesses.

One of the biggest indicators of the giant impact of artificial intelligence on consumer markets is the size of this sector – a Datamation report late last year showed consumer artificial intelligence generating nearly $2 billion in sales, with a prediction that it will generate $42 billion by 2025.

The report cites “internet giants” like Google as offering different types of artificial intelligence use cases.

One of the biggest ways that artificial intelligence will change consumer markets is through the use of automated search.

To fully understand how this will develop, it's helpful to look at what we have right now, and why it is not very effective and often does not work well.

One of the biggest breakout digital consumer research tools is the suite of natural language processing technologies that have emerged as consumer helpers, namely Siri, Cortana and Alexa.

While these devices offer some instances of hands-free communication, they don't do it particularly well. Users will get a list of business names, but not a lot of other context that would help them make decisions.

As the capability of hands-free verbal customer research improves incrementally, the results will be dramatic. By offering customers a much more vibrant experience through verbal communication, artificial intelligence technologies will change from simple wireless speech processing technologies to fully fledged digital assistants that will really help get more done in all sorts of consumer markets.

An example on Drinkpreneur talks about machine-driven customer communication, and how Microsoft is creating a platform where users can “employ all their senses” to communicate with the brand, in this case, as part of selling drinks.

Another trend is machine-driven content, where machines may be also communicating with humans in written form. Both branches of artificial intelligence communication will drive more information to consumers’ fingertips, help consumers with key questions and problems, and drive greater convenience and automation that's really going to change how we see the marketing of goods and services within the global economy.