A few months after adding background blurring to its Teams tool, Microsoft has brought the same option to Skype on the desktop.

The feature serves two purposes. Firstly it helps to focus attention on the person that is speaking, but secondly -- and perhaps more importantly -- it hides any untidiness (or secrets) that may be going on behind the speaker. It's another push from Microsoft to move people away from Skype Classic to Skype 8.

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If you are like me, there is a good chance that you are confused as well about the most recent terminology to use in the field of data science … pardon, artificial intelligence … no, I mean data science. No, I mean artificial intelligence. Please, somebody tell me what I should call it and what the difference is!

Isn’t artificial intelligence just a new cool name to label the old traditional data science? Don't both concepts cover the same algorithms? And isn’t it all machine learning anyway? This is what I used to think until I took a pause to write this post. During this breather, I went back in time and tried to remember all the names that used to be used to label this field of what essentially is data analytics. Let’s see …

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Most organizations are currently in the process of investigating, planning, or deploying artificial intelligence (AI) implementations, but there’s a problem: businesses -- or even AI designers -- don’t understand how or why the AI arrived at a specific decision. This is a big hurdle for businesses who want to begin relying on AI-based dynamic systems for their decision making. In fact, a recent PwC survey found that 37 percent of executives said ensuring AI systems were trustworthy was their top priority, and 61 percent would like to create transparent, explainable, and provable AI models.

The need for transparent, explainable AI goes beyond individual business preferences. Interpretability, fairness, and transparency of data-driven decision support systems based on AI and machine learning are serious regulatory mandates in banking, insurance, healthcare, and other industries. In addition, regulations like GDPR’s right to explanation clause or the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act will compel businesses to know what their AI algorithms are thinking. The solutions to these issues of trust and explainability typically have been to stick with simpler models, improving transparency at the expense of accuracy. From my perspective, understanding how to create trust -- more so than creating transparency -- in AI is going to be crucial to success.

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Thanks to increased ability to collect data in real time, and the use of AI to process and interpret that data, marketers have more opportunity than ever to personalize their offerings to customers.

But what does this mean for enterprises when it comes to spending their marketing budgets and establishing a digital strategy? We spoke to the CEO of DMA | Digital Marketing Agency, Solomon Thimothy to find out how digital marketing can be used to drive business growth.

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Netflix has millions of users around the world, but how many of these are actually paying customers? Many of us either know (or are) people who share their Netflix account with friends and family, or leech off the one person they know that's willing to pay for a subscription.

But Netflix free rides could be coming to an end. At CES, UK-based firm Synamedia revealed artificial intelligence software that could be used by Netflix and other companies to detect and block the sharing of account credentials.

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Is artificial intelligence the future of customer service, or is it the jump-the-shark moment that slows our society’s reliance on technology and automation? It’s fair to say that 2018 didn’t make the answer any more evident. In 2019, most businesses will seek a balance between the added efficiency and responsiveness that AI customer service can provide and the human touch that customers still value.

There are two significant areas where businesses are finding success with AI in customer service: chatbots and data. Expect to see both areas grow in 2019 as companies look for ways to serve their customers more efficiently and intelligently.

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In 2018, digital workplace transformation across the professional services market finally began to take hold. Today, applications for professionals across accounting, insurance, consulting and other industries are actually providing anywhere and anytime access, seamless collaboration, intuitive experiences and smart capabilities.

For years, those who worked in the professional services market expected these capabilities from their applications, having used consumer tools like Google, Facebook and Amazon that provide a consistent, easy-to-use experience across every device, allow for straightforward collaboration with trusted friends and family, automate tedious tasks and anticipate needs based on preferences and past behavior. After first resisting these demands and then struggling to deliver such capabilities, 2018 saw the wide-scale emergence of comprehensive technology platforms that deliver mobile, intuitive, collaborative, secure, automated and smart digital workplaces. The digital transformation of the professional services market made professionals’ day-to-day tasks easier, reducing training and other costs for firms, increasing productivity and empowering professionals to be more creative.

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According to a new study released by ProtectWise, AI has already established a strong foothold in the security space, with 73 percent of respondents reporting that they have implemented security solutions that incorporate at least some aspect of AI.

Most organizations cite AI's ability to improve the efficiency of security staff members and make investigation of alerts faster as top priorities.

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Artificial intelligence has been 'the future' for quite a long time, but it seems that the potential of the technology is at last starting to have an impact on the real world.

What do industry experts think will be the things we'll see from AI in 2019? We've put together some of their opinions below.

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When you're taking a flight, you can check the arrivals and departures section of your airport website to see if you're going to take off on time, or just rely on an airline announcement. Or you could just ask Google Assistant.

Google has announced that it will start to predict flight delays, using a combination of historic flight information and machine learning. The company says that it is able to deliver predictions with 85 percent confidence.

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AI technology has become widespread and accessible to hundreds of thousands of IT security professionals worldwide. Human researchers are no longer behind their computers crunching the data and numbers, nor should they be when AI technology is available. The increase in computing power, especially through economical cloud solutions and easy-to-use tools, has allowed a much wider range of users to apply sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to solve their problems.

At the same time, companies and security vendors have realized how difficult it is to fight cyber criminals who are constantly evolving to find new ways to infiltrate corporate networks without being spotted. For IT teams, updating and maintaining security solutions and policies to keep up with this volatile threat landscape is extremely costly and an unsustainable solution to protecting against incoming threats.

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Since the birth of social media, employee vetting, including social media background checking, has been a way for employers to legally or illegally gain information about employees or prospective hires. They know what we all know: posts on Facebook and Twitter can shed a light on our true selves in a way that a resume or job interview might not.

Until now, employee screening tactics and social media checks have only been as powerful as the amount of time employers sink into them. That could change dramatically as artificial intelligence gets in on the action.

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Google recently rolled out a floating keyboard option to Gboard, and now the company has introduced another new feature -- AI-driven suggestions for GIFs, emoji and stickers.

The move sees Google acknowledging that we increasingly communicate with images rather than words. Or, as the company puts it, it's a feature designed "for those of us who just can't even without the perfect GIF".

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Medicine and other scientific areas have always used computing power wherever they could find it-- to help modeling go faster and arrive at viable drugs more quickly.

But when we apply the most recent advancements in artificial intelligence to the most advanced drug development programs, we get something else entirely: truly "personalized medicine." But what's personalized about it, and how does AI play a role?

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Google may have pulled out of the Pentagon's $10 billion JEDI cloud project, but Microsoft has no intention of following suit. Company president Brad Smith has used a blog post to defend the decision to bid for military contracts, despite pressure from its employees.

Smith recognizes that there are ethical concerns about getting involved in military projects, particularly when artificial intelligence technology is involved. However, he says: "we believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation's best technology, including from Microsoft".

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