Will AI Be The Future Of Retail? - Veronika Sonsev

Will AI Be The Future Of Retail?

"Friend envisions a bigger opportunity for AI in retail as an enhancement to customer service associates in-store. “Imagine you’re walking into a Home Depot,” Friend says, “what if you could simply use your voice to ask the Home Depot app where the product you want is located and have it show you exactly where it is on a store map? You could avoid sales associates altogether.” Despite AI’s clear limitations today, as the technology improves and its applications feel progressively more human, its role in retail will only become more robust."

Here’s What’s Next for Retail - Ray Blanco

Here’s What’s Next for Retail

• Last week the retail conference Shoptalk, a veritable “who’s who” list of retail execs and industry experts, was held in Copenhagen, Sweden. The hands-down dominating consensus coming out of the conference was that artificial intelligence will play an integral role in traditional retail’s future success. “The clear takeaway is adapt or die….”, remarked one Shoptalk attendee.
• EBay’s chief product officer put it like this…“It’s bigger than the web and the mobile revolution combined. By 2020 if we’re not engaged with this technology and making it a meaningful part of our businesses – we are braindead.”

AI Vendor Research: Likelihood

Vendor: Likelihood

Website: http://www.likelihood.com

Headquarters: San Francisco

Key Product: Intelligent Creative

“Step 1) Design Creative - Our web-based designer lets you add graphic elements from scratch, lay them out on a custom canvas, and then style them by hand or with help from our artificial intelligence tools.”

“Step 2) Make it Dynamic - Likelihood’s AI-powered platform lets you connect elements of your creative to any data source — like a product catalog or digital asset management system — to make each creative impression relevant to the shopper viewing it.”

“Step 3) Publish Creative - Wherever you publish a static image today, you can easily publish an intelligent creative there tomorrow.”

Articles about Likelihood:

Likelihood’s AI design platform flexes the power of a million creations per second

Likelihood Launches AI-Powered Design Platform To Solve Marketing's Content Supply Problem

Clients: The site doesn’t explicitly say that these companies are clients, but their content is on display on their “Gallery” page. It’s either a very impressive customer list or a little misleading.

Companies include: Ann Taylor, Crate & Barrel, Staples, Home Depot, Sunglass Hut, Macys, Saks Fifth Avenue

Founders/Leaders:

I’ll give Garrett and Rob points for humility. On the company site their pictures are on the third row with titles simply listed as “Technology” and “Business.” It took a little work digging on LinkedIn to determine the c-suite.

Garrett Wu, CTO & Founder, LinkedInProfile

Rob Seaman, CEO, LinkedInProfile

Differentiator:

Leveraging AI to streamline, simplify and automate the development of creative.