NRF 2024 Recap: The AI Age is here
There was one dominant topic of conversation at the NRF 2024 “Big Show,” and it wasn’t the cold, snowy weather.
Everyone who attended this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show conference in New York City went in fully aware that artificial intelligence (AI), especially innovative models such as generative AI, would be a major component of every exhibit booth, educational session, and conversation.
But the unknown quantity was, exactly how would AI fit into the industry landscape for 2024? Here are some answers.
AI is accepted and assumed – but it isn’t routine
AI itself is not new. It has been a widely accepted tool in retail technology for 30 years or more, showing up in solutions such as the algorithmic optimization applications that started becoming popular around the turn of the century.
However, leading-edge AI models based on concepts such as machine learning, advanced computer vision and next-generation predictive capabilities are still new and rapidly evolving – in some cases gaining significant new functionality on a month-to-month basis. So, it’s premature to suggest the new generation of AI technology is routine.
At the same time, next-generation AI is showing up in solutions being used in every area of the enterprise. Generative AI is enabling supply chain planners and frontline associates, as well as shoppers, to ask questions in conversational language and get concise, informative answers.
Advanced computer vision helps retailers track store activity and performance in real time, and machine learning-based predictive analytics can aid retailers anticipate and quickly react to global supply chain shocks that seem to pop up more frequently than ever.
Everyone understands the importance of AI
Since the turn of the century, a lot of transformative technologies, such as e-commerce, omnichannel and mobile, have emerged and evolved. In just about every instance, there has always been some industry pushback.
For example, it has largely been forgotten just how many retailers and industry experts did not see the value of e-commerce when it began its journey to becoming a mainstream retail technology practice and sales channel in the late 1990s. Many in the industry felt that a sale made online was simply “cannibalized” from a store, or that high-touch products like apparel would never sell on the Internet.
Amazon’s early struggles toward profitability and the “dotcom” crash of the early 2000s only reinforced this viewpoint. Everyone knows what happened with e-commerce (and its later iterations such as omnichannel), and to be fair most new technologies meet widespread skepticism and resistance from all corners.
But multiple surveys have shown that the industry also uniformly sees the value of next-generation AI, and conversations at the show with both retailers and technology providers confirmed that fact.
AI obtains the value from what’s already there
Next-generation AI doesn’t create anything new but extracts previously unobtainable value from existing assets and data sets. The granular data on why and how each individual customer makes purchase decisions exists, but advanced sorting, segmentation and analysis tools enable retailers to capture and leverage it to improve the customer experience.
This truism also applies to the ultimate role of AI – as a co-pilot (a term frequently used at the Big Show) to assist humans in doing their jobs better. AI is not here to replace people, just to make them more effective and efficient.