How AI/ML is helping e-commerce services?
Have you ever used e-commerce services? You must have ordered something you wanted for a long time, or you might have when you ran out of something when stepping out was a risky task. For ordering stuff, you would have visited their website or application. During the visit to their site, you must have noticed suggestions of the products you might like or based on your previous orders, or according to your interests. Who do you think does that? Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are used for providing suggestions to site visitors.
For knowing how AI/ML is helping in e-commerce services, we must have a piece of sufficient knowledge about each term separately. We would look at what AI is, what ML is, what e-commerce services are, and how these things perform when combined. Just hold your seat and patiently take a ride of knowledge with us.
What is AI?
AI is an abbreviated form of Artificial Intelligence. AI is in a sense when a machine demonstrates a sense of intelligence in tasks that require human intelligence. It is a state when an artificial application learns on its own and solves the problem by itself. AI (Artificial Intelligence) aims for reasoning, planning learning, perception, knowledge representation, natural language processing, movement of objects, and manipulation of objects.
How AI does all that? Mathematical optimization, statistics, probability, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and economics are responsible for the achievement AI has got till now. AI is utilized mainly in computer science but psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and many other fields are included as well.
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What is ML?
ML is an abbreviated form of Machine Learning. Machine learning is a study that deals with a computer algorithm. A computer algorithm that upgrades itself with the help of its experience and data collected.
Shall we look at some applications?
Self-driving cars (Tesla) — Have you heard a piece of recent news? Elon Musk is now one of the richest people on the planet. There were various factors responsible for his success, one of them being Tesla. Tesla is an automotive company that develops electric and self-driving vehicles based on AI and ML. A driver is not necessary for driving a car anymore, thanks to Tesla and its innovation. AI and ML helped Tesla to reach its goal.
GPS, Cameras, Bluetooth, some Machine learning applications, and other AI-based technologies are used to make a vehicle drive on its own, that is a self-driving car. Many companies are working on this feature as well. This technique is used in drone making as well.
FASTag — In India stopping your vehicle and paying the toll tax fair in toll plazas was a traditional way. To overcome this time-consuming and offline method an AI-based technique is developed, known as FASTag. FASTag is a device that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for making toll payments directly from the prepaid account of the user linked to it. It is affixed on the windscreen of your vehicle and enables you to drive through toll plazas, without stopping your vehicle for cash transition.
Map/Street viewer — When we search for the shortest route to our destination, we use a map/street viewer like Google Maps, Google Street viewer, Bing Maps, and Here WeGo. These apps don’t only help to find the shortest route but the fastest with less traffic. Applications of Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence are used alongside Real-time location.
Robots (Sophia) — It was a time when countries use to offer citizenship to certain individuals. Even though, the thing was that all of them were humans, but anymore as Saudi Arabia has offered its citizenship to a robot named Sophia. She accepted the offer and now she is a citizen of the country. Sophia is an AI-based humanoid developed by David Hanson in the year 2016.
She can see and observe using the camera in her eye. She can set up conversations with individuals with the help of a natural language subsystem.
Games (Chess) — We all have played Chess on our PCs at one point or another. How does it work? How the difficulty level can be managed? You do not play with a computer you play with an AI. AI goes through all the possible outcomes of a move and makes its decision based on it and ML goes through the algorithm. Chess was just an example several games use AI and Machine Learning techniques to provide a better experience.
Social media — Social media is a platform for sharing thoughts and your life. To prevent the spreading of fake news, violent content, abusive content, harmful content, and any other reportable content AI technology is used. AI prevents the spread of these uncomfortable activities. Twitter warns before visiting an uncommon account. Instagram shows a warning while watching sensitive content. There are many more examples of how AI and Machine Learning helps social media platforms to maintain decency.
Search Engines — When you search for a query in any search engine, they suggest what you might be searching for. The suggestions for your unfinished search are quite accurate. This feature is gained by several search engines through the use of AI and ML. Even the search results are based upon your interests and previous searches. This provides you precise and accurate results. Just like anything else this feature is also an AI/ML application. Google search engine is the best example of that.
Virtual Assistant — There was a time when used to hold phones with a screen and a keypad. After a while, that keypad was no longer needed as we got the feature of a touch screen. And now we don’t have to touch our phones anymore to set up tasks. Assistants present in our smartphones can set up nearly every task. Some of the virtual assistants are Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Alexa. You just need to call the name and they will assist you with everything.
These assistants got updated to home assistants and got enhanced. They can control the household whenever you ask for it.
Speech recognition — We have already learned about home assistants and how they can do whatever you ask for. Now have you thought about how you would ask it? Through speech, you can say OK Google for Google Assistant, Hey Siri for Siri, and Alexa for Alexa. They would know you are the one commanding by recognizing your voice. That is the same case for virtual assistants, only the person who has matched their voice in assistant can access them. Speech to text feature of our smartphones gives us the privilege to text without typing by just speaking in the microphone. Machine learning is responsible for these Speech recognition features.
Image recognition — What makes Google Photos able enough to recognize every single face in every photo? Machine learning helps not just Google photos but many other applications to recognize faces. While posting on Facebook you might have observed that it can detect faces automatically while tagging. It even provides suggestions of people who might be present in the picture.
Malware Filtering — Emails are classified automatically as spam. These emails are then automatically moved to the spam box. Machine learning algorithms like multi-Layer perceptron, Decision tree, and Naïve Bayes classifier are used for malware filtering. For example, consider Gmail an email service provided by Google.
Language translation — AI and ML have made it easier for us to explore the whole without being bothered by the difference of languages. Translating software based upon AI and ML is helpful in this scenario. We can translate using text, speech, and scanning of the language you want to translate. Google Translator is used widely in this field. It uses the Google Neural Machine Translation technique to provide a better translation experience.
Recommendation (Netflix) — AI and ML are used by various streaming companies like Netflix to recommend stuff to the viewers. Machine Learning finds your interest through its algorithm, so as much time you spend on Netflix the better recommendations you get. The recommendations are based upon the viewer’s previous watched stuff and the genre you like. The Netflix recommendations are so strong that 75% of viewers watch what Netflix recommends to them. Netflix is not the only one in this race Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+ HotStar, HBO Max, and many other streaming platforms are using AI and ML or are working on it.
These were some of the applications and advantages of AI, as there are quite many of them. We cannot dive any deeper into this topic as we are here for something else. Now the last application we are going to discuss is — “AI/ML in e-commerce”, which would be discussed after a bit.
About E-commerce
E-commerce stands for electronic commerce. It is an activity of setting your business or shopping through the internet. You can purchase or sell any item you want with the help of online services. Websites used for this purpose are known as e-commerce websites. The main focus of e-commerce is transactions, they could be B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Customer).
The sellers don’t have to maintain a physical shop. They can enhance their business through e-commerce services. The buyers do not have to step out to get what they want. And they can purchase the item anytime in minutes without wasting hours in traditional shopping style. Even the shop is available 24*7, on the other hand, the physical shops are closed after a while. It went quite helpful in this COVID-19 crisis, we didn’t have to step out to shop, we got what we wanted on our doorsteps.
How does it work?
We can place the order of our required product in few steps –
1. Visit the website or application of the e-commerce service you want to use.
2. Search for the product by typing in the search bar or by speaking in the microphone after clicking the microphone icon.
3. Click on the product you want to order.
4. Click order now.
5. Fill up the required details.
6. Choose payment options.
7. Click place order.
Some of the popular e-commerce services are –
Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
Flipkart https://www.flipkart.com/
Quikr https://www.quikr.com/
AI/ML in e-commerce
We didn’t mention one application of AI and ML, that was how AI and ML have been useful for e-commerce. Now as we know about all the topics like what is AI, what is ML, what is e-commerce, and now it’s time to combine them up and know about the role of AI and ML in e-commerce.
Recommendations — AI and ML are used to recommend products that might interest them according to their past purchases and search history. For example, look at how much Netflix earns just because of recommendations. Just like that Amazon earns 35% of its revenue through recommendations. Because of the success brought by AI and ML, many other e-commerce services are using them for building smart recommendations.
StyleSnap — Are you tired of searching for a product you saw somewhere and cannot explain it to your e-commerce service provider through words or speeches. You do not have to worry anymore because Amazon has built a system named StyleSnap. To use this feature, you just have to upload a picture of the product you want and Amazon will show the suggestions based upon it.
Virtual Assistant — Yes you heard it right, Visual Assistant. These assistants are used to help customers in every way possible. You can ask for help in whatever field you want like transections, products, queries, and help in understanding something. One of the e-commerce services North Face is using a visual assistant for helping customers find the perfect match to their requirements.
Predictions — AI and ML predict the possibilities if the user would purchase the item in the future, lifetime values of products, changes in discounts, and what changes would dominate certain items.
Censoring fake reviews — Fake reviews are a headache for the brands as they tear the reputation of the brand. But sometimes the brands themselves post a fake review. Whatever the case but both of the cases are not good for the customer. To overcome this problem many brands and e-commerce platforms use AI and ML to detect fake reviews and delete them as soon as possible. As 88% of the users believe reviews and place their order accordingly.
Miscellaneous problem solving (Flipkart) — AI and ML have solved many problems and are continuously solving others. One of the problems faced by Flipkart in India was that it had to deliver the products at a precise address because in many parts of India pin code is not standardized. Sometimes a single place has various names so delivering the product might be confusing. Flipkart with the help of AI and ML has overcome it and now it is rear to face a problem like this.
Frequently Asked Questions
How AI and ML are related to each other?
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are two sets that intersect each other and form an intersection. Some topics belong to AI, some belong to ML while some belong to both of them. Let us understand this with the help of the picture shown below.
What is the difference between AI and ML?
AI is the ability of artificial applications to apply knowledge in tasks that require human knowledge while ML is about gaining the required knowledge. AI is used by businesses to increase success rates while ML is used for gaining accuracy. AI pretends to work like humans while ML learns on its own. AI solves problems through natural intelligence while ML solves problems through learning about the related data and it goes through all the paths to select a perfect one. AI finds optimal solutions to the problem while ML just finds the solution.
What is an Algorithm?
An Algorithm is a set of finite and well-defined sequences. It is a set of rules and instructions which are required to follow during problem-solving and computer operations.
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