Revisiting AI's role in retail

It was just a few months ago that NRF looked at AI in retail, questioning whether 2020 might be the year that it finally took off. How quickly things can change. Artificial intelligence and its companion, machine learning, have been upended along with every other aspect of retail. And while AI's ability to anticipate the future might have been damaged by toilet-paper hoarding, bread-baking shoppers, it also might provide an unexpected roadmap for the future. Machine-learning based AI has been "thrown for a loop by the coronavirus," says Nikki Baird, vice president of retail innovation at Aptos.