A number of persons are gathered round a bleach blond man in a brilliant pink swimsuit suspended in a transparent plastic tube. With a microphone in entrance of him and an enormous signal studying TALK TO ME positioned above, “Mike” waits, arms clasped patiently in entrance of his physique, to take questions from his public. “Mike” is a hologram, powered by ChatGPT and created by an organization referred to as Hypervsn.
The responses “Mike” offers to viewers feedback and questions are on a three-ish second delay, however the stunted circulation of dialog won’t matter a lot — an attendant on the Hypervsn sales space tells me that when “Mike” and his ilk are deployed to shops, they’re meant to behave extra as icebreakers, a method to lure potential clients into participating with a model. (The world’s largest holographic show thrills vacationers on the Las Vegas Sphere and was additionally made by Hypervsn.)
“Mike” is among the flashier merchandise exhibited on the Nationwide Retail Federation’s huge annual commerce present, the place greater than a thousand retail-adjacent corporations descend on New York Metropolis to attempt to promote one another services that may then be used to promote precise items to the remainder of us. There are the large names (Google, Alibaba, Amazon) together with scores of different corporations that assist energy the net and in-person buying experiences however are unknown to the typical shopper. It doesn’t matter what distributors are exhibiting, although, one factor is evident: The long run they think about for all of us is overwhelmingly crammed with AI — usually in ways in which a shopper would in all probability hate.
A couple of ft away from “Mike” is one other hologram, additionally suspended midair in a transparent field just a few ft tall; this one is a small, gnome-like creature wearing a monochromatic, vaguely medieval outfit (I didn’t catch his identify). At occasions he responds in rhyming verse to viewers questions, his tiny arms gesturing as naturally as a theme park animatronic. Retail purchasers are more and more requesting non-human holographic characters, a Hypervsn attendant tells me, in an effort to distance themselves from fears that AI will change or remove folks’s jobs. If that is the way forward for retail, even “Mike” might not have a spot in it.
There have been many guarantees made on the Nationwide Retail Federation’s large commerce present, held in mid-January. Some exhibitors swore to offer “touchscreens for every part,” others reassured convention-goers that “commerce favors the daring.” However probably the most pressing hopes have been round AI. Shopify introduced that “the commerce renaissance is right here” (italics theirs). Different exhibitors touted “good folks counting” and “AI buyer circulation evaluation.” We come to this place not for magic, however for “merchandizing execution with AI.”
A lot of that is seemingly phrase salad to the typical shopper — however in the event you store on-line, the AI creep has change into inescapable. Retail and tech corporations have crammed AI into nearly each step of the buying course of, from designing products, to discovery and comparison, to calling brick and mortar stores, to trying on clothing, and at last checking out. At NRF’s commerce present, Google introduced an open-source standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) that permits retailers and AI brokers to speak and combine, so buyers should buy merchandise from Goal inside Google’s AI Mode, for instance, with out going to Goal’s web site. As tech corporations construct extra direct shopping for options into chatbots, some are hoping coupons and offers can entice purchases: Google additionally introduced that retailers will be capable of arrange discounts for shoppers browsing in AI Mode. Monetizing AI-powered buying is clearly a precedence for Google: the corporate had a big presence on the present, and CEO Sundar Pichai gave a keynote deal with (alternatively, Pichai had no public appearances at CES, and Google had no main bulletins).
As AI has snaked its method into each gadget, platform, and repair possible, it’s onerous to not marvel who the supposed person is — and whether or not anybody, ever, has wished the sort of options AI makes potential.
Pizza chain Papa Johns is among the companions integrating Google’s agentic buying options into its ordering system. Clients will quickly be capable of order through a chatbot that may autofill of their final order, counsel gadgets primarily based on dietary restrictions, add coupons and offers, and use a “pizza assistant” to get suggestions for group orders. In a demo video shared by Papa Johns, the chatbot assistant asks for the variety of folks within the group. Don’t wish to depend how many individuals are consuming? No downside — simply add a photograph of everybody within the group into the Papa Johns chatbot.
There’s additionally, after all, the evolution of industries that have been upended by the fast introduction of AI. Retailers used to prioritize tweaking their websites to get Google to put their hyperlink above rivals’ in search — however now search engine optimization, or SEO, has branched off into new AI-focused acronyms: AEO (reply engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization), GSO (generative search optimization), and certain different future phrases most of the people will come to despise. An organization referred to as Material guarantees to assist manufacturers and retailers monitor their efficiency inside platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, measuring how usually your gadgets are surfaced relative to your rivals. A consultant from Material says some retailers are particularly good at getting surfaced in AI chat — Nordstrom, for instance — however acknowledged that no person actually is aware of how the programs work or what they select to raise. Material’s AI monitoring service begins at $500 a month, in response to its web site.
Lots of the services on show on the NRF present are on the back-end — companies engaged on issues like stock administration instruments or logistics, the place shoppers have much less perception. However the shopper is an ever-deepening properly of information; the promise of AI in retail is that these instruments can extract increasingly info from us, which can be utilized to promote us extra issues.
Solum is a South Korean firm specializing in digital shows and cabinets — these indicators within the grocery store enjoying shiny advertisements for chips or beer, for instance. However the subsequent iteration is to hyper-personalize and goal buyers in shops, the best way digital retailers are capable of do to internet buyers. Utilizing a know-how constructed by a South Korean startup referred to as SpaceVision, a retailer might assign a quantity to every shopper and observe their actions by way of a retailer: how lengthy they watched an advert, whether or not they merely walked by with out participating, in the event that they picked up a product off the shelf. The shop might then use that knowledge to set off sure behaviors: for instance, in the event you watched a sure chip advert on a show, the shop might push by way of a deal for you for beer to go along with your chip buy; it applies the monitoring of on-line buying into the true world. As I approached a wall of Coors and Heineken (not affiliated with SpaceVision) cans organized on a shelf on the Solum sales space, I seen a display above the show. It took me a second to understand my very own picture was staring again at me, captured by the SpaceVision demo. With a daring field surrounding my face, I used to be International ID quantity 485, gender: feminine, age group: 18–29. Retailers can use the info to trace the demographic breakdown of people that move shows, together with their “look” and “consideration” charges and conversions.
A SpaceVision worker working the sales space on the present stated that when deployed in the true world, video is deleted a millisecond after the metadata is captured — they’re centered on milking the engagement knowledge that can be utilized to retarget buyers in a while. The know-how has to this point solely been utilized in choose shops in South Korea and Japan, however the staffer acknowledges that buyers in Europe or the US may be uneasy in regards to the know-how turning into a part of the in-person buying expertise. It creates, primarily, an unlimited knowledge dragnet of IRL buying habits to mine for brand spanking new and extra invasive methods to promote issues — the monetization of that omnipresent surveilling eye. Customers in Europe would balk at cameras. However, the staffer says, “Asian folks don’t give a fuck.”
Equapack’s sales space at NRF 2026 stood out for just a few causes: For one, it was empty once I stumbled upon it in one of many commerce present’s many, many rooms. It was additionally calm: No big LED screens, no holographic gnomes, no humanoid speaking robots, and no grand AI-related guarantees. The sales space consisted of a number of lengthy, white cabinets with dozens of buying luggage, totes, cooler luggage, and different retailer packaging rigorously lined up. Among the many choice have been iconic and immediately recognizable names: the basic crimson and white Supreme streetwear brand on plain white luggage; US Open drawstring backpacks; a tote bearing the emblem of Broadway’s The Lion King. In contrast to every part else I noticed through the day, Equapack’s choices have been designed to be nearer to the human on the finish of the transaction — to not add extra layers of information, AI-powered evaluation, and abstraction.
The commerce present was extra tactile like this, says Eran Rothschild, Equapack’s founder and CEO. All of the packaging they design begins from an issue that the model wants to unravel: maybe they want one thing to maintain perishable gadgets chilly for a sure variety of hours, or possibly they merely desire a bag that’s aesthetically stunning and evocative. Equapack doesn’t promise AI-powered options as a result of it doesn’t use AI, although Rothschild admits that it in all probability ought to, a minimum of for back-end operations — design is simply 25 % of the job.
“We’ll in all probability by no means use AI visualization as a result of it’s not true to the product that we’re going to be delivering,” Rothschild says. “We want making samples and making that tactility. Nobody’s going to buy one thing that they will’t see.”
AI slop has just one aim: scale. It doesn’t matter if the AI-generated clips flooding social media are good and even entertaining — they merely must take up area, and by extension, a human’s time. May an AI chatbot on each on-line ordering web page remodel the shopper expertise, whether or not they’re ordering clothes or pizza supply? Possibly. However it additionally appears like added bulk that has little bearing on whether or not the factor we purchased — the precise product coming into our houses — is healthier than it might have in any other case been.
As we’re speaking, I notice that I personally personal a number of luggage that Rothschild has labored on, together with packaging from The RealReal, a secondhand clothes and accessories market. Whether or not the merchandise you buy is $30 or $3,000, The RealReal mails merchandise in material dustbags, a apply largely restricted to luxurious retailers. I reuse each dustbag I get, rigorously storing gadgets in them to guard them and lengthen their life. For each undertaking, Rothschild thinks about how the patron will expertise the packaging — is it reusable, is it luxurious? Does it make the bought product really feel like cash properly spent? Of all of the tech and providers I noticed all through the day, Equapack’s choices are one of many few {that a} shopper will really maintain of their arms and take dwelling with them. There’s intention, a way of intimacy. I’ll seemingly by no means assume again fondly to an expertise chatting with an AI buying assistant. The common-or-garden buying bag, although, will linger.
