RetailROI 'Super Saturday' examines AI and human potential
The annual RetailROI "Super Saturday" event highlighted how artificial intelligence can enhance retail while also focusing on the importance of helping people.
Celebrating its 17th year, RetailROI once again brought together industry thinkers and experts for in-depth discussions on retail technology and assisting vulnerable children worldwide at the Super Saturday event hosted Saturday, Jan. 10, at Microsoft headquarters in New York.
Held the day before the official kickoff of NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show, the event included a review of findings from the CI&T “Retail Tech Reality Check” survey of 1,040 U.S. consumers about their feelings on AI-enabled shopping and the economy.
Findings included:
- 10% of respondents start their shopping journey with an AI assistant.
- 64% of respondents said they were interested in shopping with agentic AI after reading a description of it.
- The top respondent concern with AI-enabled shopping experiences was data privacy (44%).
- Almost 75% of respondents use AI to shop at least occasionally.
- The most popular reasons respondents appreciate retailers using AI for their shopping experiences include saving them time (60%), making it easier to find products (56%) and helping them to discover new products (50%).
- 58% of respondents think retailers should use AI to improve the shopping experience.
- 71% of respondents think prices have gone up compared to a year ago.
- 65% of respondents expect prices to go up in the next few years and 57% plan to cut back on their spending in response.
AI-native retailing
The event also included a discussion featuring Vanessa Yan, founder and CEO, Ise AI, an AI-native fashion brand. Yan discussed how Ise AI uses an AI infrastructure for all creative design tasks.
"We do things pretty differently," said Yan. "There is no barrier to entry in generating images and videos."
Ise AI develops apparel items and creates promotional and sales strategies using AI tools, with a small team of human employees acting as safeguards on the AI systems. Production and distribution is then outsourced.
Yan advised that AI creates a continuous feedback loop where product creation and other tasks keep getting accomplished faster, allowing humans to engage with the technology and improve their performance.
"You can’t just put AI into your workflows," said Yan. "You can rethink how humans operate based on what AI can do. You can debate with it and innovate."
Tech and Tears
Retail ROI also always includes a segment called "Tech and Tears" highlighting some of the charities the organization works with and also featuring a keynote speaker who has overcome childhood adversity to achieve personal and professional success.
Genesis Miranda Longo, head of industry marketing for Shopify, described growing up in poverty in Mexico’s Sinaloa province, a dangerous place where the influence of drug cartels is strong and many of the men in particular (including her father) fall into crime, alcoholism and domestic violence due to a general background of hopelessness and having few options.
However, aided by her mother, grandparents and U.S. church organizations, Longo was able to break the cycle and escape to Arizona, where she became a straight A student while also helping run her mother’s bean importing business and then got accepted to Cornell University where she both met her husband and received a degree in business.
In addition to going on to a successful business career, Longo helped her mother survive cancer, saw her father turn his life around and rejoin his family, and with her husband first took in a teenage Iranian refugee as their foster child and later adopted him as their son, and are now watching him receive honors as a mechanical engineering university student.
Get more information on Retail ROI, including its numerous annual international volunteer trips, here.
