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This holiday season, AI is helping Santa

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This holiday season, AI is helping Santa

This is the first Christmas season for many Americans, and if the topic of “artificial intelligence” comes up at the table, the majority of the family may be familiar with it.

However, don’t expect AI to take on Santa’s heavy lifting just yet.

This holiday season, more retailers and consumers are experimenting with technology thanks to the rise of generative AI and ChatGPT. However, for the time being, most of technology’s impact will be invisible to consumers.

Salesforce estimates that artificial intelligence will have a $194 billion impact on global online holiday spending. According to the software company that monitors consumer trends, artificial intelligence (AI) had a $51 billion impact on online sales during Cyber Week, which runs from Tuesday, November 21, through Monday, November 27, also known as Cyber Monday.

However, a large portion of that AI influence is derived from features that customers are already familiar with, like product recommendations based on previous purchases and searches made by customers just like them.

Future holiday seasons will have to wait for more revolutionary applications of AI, according to Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of Salesforce’s retail and consumer goods. However, he claimed that AI will eventually alter the clientele’s experience.

Retail employees could have more free time and patience for customers as they are able to automate more tasks in their offices, call centers, and retail stores, according to Garf. Furthermore, he stated that retailers will be able to customize websites and apps to create digital assistants that can make suggestions, respond to queries, and more as AI gets better at understanding natural language.

“We are still in early days,” he said. “Retailers are testing and learning, and it’s only a leading indicator of what to come.”

As more companies use AI, its limitations and risks have become more apparent, despite the fact that investors and companies alike are placing significant bets on the technology’s future.

These three prominent instances of AI during the busiest shopping season could serve as a look ahead:

An efficient and time-saving tool

Artificial intelligence might be to blame if you were taken aback to discover a well-liked toy in stock at your neighborhood store.

This season, AI is significantly assisting retailers in the background. Consider those routine but important chores like placing the proper inventory order, creating more targeted marketing emails, or creating thorough product descriptions for websites.

Artificial intelligence has helped Walmart make decisions regarding holiday inventory by forecasting demand for different products at various locations. Says Srini Venkatesan, executive vice president of U.S. omni platforms and technology at Walmart, “the tech can help the company identify a best-selling toy or sweater in a particular region and make sure more are shipped to nearby stores.”

Target is also utilizing AI to anticipate demand across multiple locations and identify items that are out of stock, allowing staff to restock shelves prior to them becoming empty.

In order to better understand what customers are looking for on its website and to determine the most effective routes to deliver online orders to customers’ doors on time, Nordstrom started utilizing AI. For example, it aims to improve language interpretation so that a customer searching for “romantic flowy dresses” finds the products that most closely resemble that style.

Retailers are also focusing on how to use AI to increase productivity, which may allow them to hire fewer employees or free up more time for staff to handle other duties that involve interacting with customers. Concerns about workforce reductions brought on by the advancements have also been addressed by CEOs like Doug McMillon of Walmart and Shantanu Narayen of Adobe.

In late August, Walmart introduced My Assistant, an internal ChatGPT version that more than 50,000 corporate staff members can use for a variety of tasks, including creating slide decks and email pitches. Walmart is training teams on the generative AI tool and suggesting use cases for it, according to a company spokesperson who declined to disclose the number of employees who have used it thus far.

Additionally, Amazon unveiled new time-saving tools for advertisers and sellers this fall. Third-party sellers don’t have to spend hours writing lengthy product descriptions; instead, they can write a few phrases and let generative AI handle the rest. In order to create aesthetically pleasing images to go along with a product, advertisers can also rely on a new tool.

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Apple’s own 5G modem-equipped iPhone SE 4 is “confirmed” to launch in March

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Tom O’Malley, an analyst at Barclays, recently visited Asia with his colleagues to speak with suppliers and makers of electronics. The analysts said they had “confirmed” that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is scheduled to launch near the end of the first quarter next year in a research note they released this week that outlines the main conclusions from the trip. That timeline implies that the next iPhone SE will be unveiled in March, similar to when the present model was unveiled in 2022, in keeping with earlier rumors.

The rumored features of the fourth-generation iPhone SE include a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, a newer A-series chip, a USB-C port, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 8GB of RAM to enable Apple Intelligence support, and the previously mentioned Apple-designed 5G modem. The SE is anticipated to have a similar design to the base iPhone 14.

Since 2018, Apple is said to have been developing its own 5G modem for iPhones, a move that will let it lessen and eventually do away with its reliance on Qualcomm. With Qualcomm’s 5G modem supply arrangement for iPhone launches extended through 2026 earlier this year, Apple still has plenty of time to finish switching to its own modem. In addition to the fourth-generation iPhone SE, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier stated that the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” would come with a 5G modem that was created by Apple.

Whether Apple’s initial 5G modem would offer any advantages to consumers over Qualcomm’s modems, such quicker speeds, is uncertain.

Qualcomm was sued by Apple in 2017 for anticompetitive behavior and $1 billion in unpaid royalties. In 2019, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business after the two firms reached a settlement in the dispute. Apple was able to support its development by acquiring a portfolio of patents relating to cellular technology. It appears that we will eventually be able to enjoy the results of our effort in four more months.

On March 8, 2022, Apple made the announcement of the third-generation iPhone SE online. With antiquated features like a Touch ID button, a Lightning port, and large bezels surrounding the screen, the handset resembles the iPhone 8. The iPhone SE presently retails for $429 in the United States, but the new model may see a price increase of at least a little.

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Google is said to be discontinuing the Pixel Tablet 2 and may be leaving the market once more

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Google terminated the development of the Pixel Tablet 3 yesterday, according to Android Headlines, even before a second-generation model was announced. The second-generation Pixel Tablet has actually been canceled, according to the report. This means that the gadget that was released last year will likely be a one-off, and Google is abandoning the tablet market for the second time in just over five years.

If accurate, the report indicates that Google has determined that it is not worth investing more money in a follow-up because of the dismal sales of the Pixel Tablet. Rumors of a keyboard accessory and more functionality for the now-defunct project surfaced as recently as last week.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google’s Nest subsidiary may abandon its plans for large-screen products in favor of developing technologies like the Nest Hub and Hub Max rather than standalone tablets.

Google has always had difficulty making a significant impact in the tablet market and creating a competitor that can match Apple’s iPad in terms of sales and general performance, not helped in the least by its inconsistent approach. Even though the hardware was good, it never really fought back after getting off to a promising start with the Nexus 7 eons ago. Another problem that has hampered Google’s efforts is that Android significantly trails iPadOS in terms of the quantity of third-party apps that are tablet-optimized.

After the Pixel Slate received tremendously unfavorable reviews, the firm first declared that it was finished producing tablets in 2019. Two tablets that were still in development at the time were discarded.

By 2022, however, Google had altered its mind and declared that a tablet was being developed by its Pixel hardware team. The $499 Pixel Tablet was the final version of the gadget, which came with a speaker dock that the tablet could magnetically connect to. (Google would subsequently charge $399 for the tablet alone.)

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Windows 11 PCs with Arm Processors now have an Official ISO for Clean Installations

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Power users occasionally prefer to start over when they acquire a new computer, so they follow the pro-gamers’ advice and reinstall Windows using a brand-new ISO image that comes straight from Microsoft and is free of bloatware and needlessly complex “driver management programs.” Up until recently, the new Snapdragon laptops’ more specialized version of Windows 11 didn’t support that.

The Windows 11 build on these new laptops is unusual because of the Arm64-based hardware, which differs from the typical x86 and x64 innards found in most laptops and desktops. Microsoft has finally released a disk image (or ISO file) for these devices after several months of waiting. To perform a direct reinstallation or make a bootable flash drive for a different device, you may now download it straight from Microsoft’s website. It is identical to the installation media utility that is currently available.

Be aware that there may be some glitches if you use this method for a fresh install. Compared to previous designs, the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip has a lot fewer hardware variables, but because it’s so new, Windows Update might not include all the necessary components. You may need to use an Ethernet connection or the old-fashioned sneakernet to manually load drivers from another computer. You may also need to do some Googling to locate all the files you require for that.

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