AI is a retailer's automated helper, acting as a smart assistant to suggest the perfect position for products in stores, accurately predict consumer demand, automate order fulfillment in warehouses, and much more. The technology can help retailers grow their top line, potentially improving net profit margins from 2 percent to 6 percent -- and adding $1 trillion in profits to the industry globally -- according to McKinsey Global Institute analysis. It can also help them hold on to more of what they already have by reducing shrinkage -- the loss of inventory due to theft, shoplifting, ticket switching at self-checkout lanes, etc. -- which costs retailers $62 billion annually, according to the National Retail Federation. For retailers, the ability to deploy, manage and scale AI across their entire distributed edge infrastructure using a single, unified platform is critical. Managing these many devices is no small feat for IT teams as the process can be time-consuming, expensive and complex.

The Kroger Co. plans to roll out Everseen's Visual AI technology chainwide to detect and reduce customer errors at self-checkout stations. Ireland-based Everseen said its artificial intelligence and machine learning platform began deployment in Kroger stores in March and is slated to be installed at 2,500 stores in the coming months. The Visual AI platform watches video in real time to recognize regular processes and "intelligently" step in whenever something is amiss, Evergreen explained. For Kroger shoppers, the technology flags errors occasionally experienced at self-checkout and enables customers to self-correct or, if they're unable to rectify the problem, an associate is summoned to help. For example, if a customer scanning groceries at the self-checkout kiosk has an item that doesn't scan properly, Evergreen's solution identifies the non-scan incident and alerts a store associate via a mobile device to intervene and rescan the item.

In January, my coworker received a peculiar email. The message, which she forwarded to me, was from a handful of corporate Walmart employees calling themselves the "Concerned Home Office Associates." While it's not unusual for journalists to receive anonymous tips, they don't usually come with their own slickly produced videos. The employees said they were "past their breaking point," with Everseen, a small artificial intelligence firm based in Cork, Ireland, whose technology Walmart began using in 2017. Walmart uses Everseen in thousands of stores to prevent shoplifting at registers and self-checkout kiosks.

Walmart is using computer vision technology to monitor checkouts and deter potential theft in more than 1,000 stores, the company confirmed to Business Insider. The surveillance program, which Walmart refers to internally as Missed Scan Detection, uses cameras to help identify checkout scanning errors and failures. The cameras track and analyze activities at both self-checkout registers and those manned by Walmart cashiers. When a potential issue arises, such as an item moving past a checkout scanner without getting scanned, the technology notifies checkout attendants so they can intervene. The program is designed to reduce shrinkage, which is the term retailers use to define losses due to theft, scanning errors, fraud, and other causes.

Walmart is using computer vision technology to monitor checkouts and deter potential theft in more than 1,000 stores, the company confirmed to Business Insider. The surveillance program, which Walmart refers to internally as Missed Scan Detection, uses cameras to help identify checkout scanning errors and failures. The cameras track and analyze activities at both self-checkout registers and those manned by Walmart cashiers. When a potential issue arises, such as an item moving past a checkout scanner without getting scanned, the technology notifies checkout attendants so they can intervene. The program is designed to reduce shrinkage, which is the term retailers use to define losses due to theft, scanning errors, fraud, and other causes.

Software can watch multiple transactions that humans can't handle. There are a lot of ideas around about where retail technology needs to go and most of them are good. But until now, very few of them were going to do what retailers need most: give consumers a great reason to go back into stores. Now, there are ideas emerging and developing that will be highly impactful. These new ideas and software will affect almost every in-store experience in the future, they will change what it means to go to a store and they will make store experiences more worthwhile than ever.

In my last retail review, I explored how my learnings at NRF 2017 changed my view ofthe so-called omni-channel (Omni-channel may be science fiction, but a single source of truth matters). That leaves open the impact of predictive, "AI", and personalization tech on retail. CEO and Founder Alan O'Herlihy gave me a fast-paced rundown of how his company has become entrenched in five of the ten largest global retailers. How did they pull it off? Get ready for this one: instead of pursing the singularity, they focused their deep learning tech on a real world pain point: lost sales at the point of sale.