And while we most often hear about the splashy successes of artificial intelligence - whether it's DeepMind besting a Go world champion or the continued refinement of self-driving cars - AI really is everywhere. And one area that's particularly exciting doesn't involve robots or the other trappings of science fiction. That area? Online retail.

When you get right down to it, the shopping experience online hasn't much changed. We still use the search bar and inexact language to look for the product we want. We're still presented with page after page of search results. We're still browsing those results or trying to search again or clicking facet boxes on the side to refine our query.

Which is to say: Shopping online still feels like interacting with a database.

But advances in artificial intelligence are poised to change that. For shoppers, it means finding better products in fewer steps and with less hassle. For retailers, it means more intuitive sites with higher conversion rates. There are even implications for design and trend spotting.

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