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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cMike\u201d is one of the flashier products exhibited at the National Retail Federation\u2019s enormous annual trade show, where more than a thousand retail-adjacent companies descend on New York City to try to sell each other products and services that will then be used to sell actual goods to the rest of us. There are the big names (Google, Alibaba, Amazon) along with scores of other companies that help power the online and in-person shopping experiences but are unknown to the average consumer. No matter what vendors are exhibiting, though, one thing is clear: The future they imagine for all of us is overwhelmingly filled with AI \u2014 often in ways that a consumer would probably hate.<\/p>\n
A few feet away from \u201cMike\u201d is another hologram, also suspended midair in a clear box a few feet tall; this one is a small, gnome-like creature dressed in a monochromatic, vaguely medieval outfit (I did not catch his name). At times he responds in rhyming verse to audience questions, his tiny hands gesturing as naturally as a theme park animatronic. Retail clients are increasingly requesting non-human holographic characters, a Hypervsn attendant tells me, in an effort to distance themselves from fears that AI will replace or eliminate people\u2019s jobs. If this is the future of retail, even \u201cMike\u201d may not have a place in it.<\/p>\n
There were many promises made at the National Retail Federation\u2019s massive trade show, held in mid-January. Some exhibitors swore to provide \u201ctouchscreens for everything,\u201d others reassured convention-goers that \u201ccommerce favors the bold.\u201d But the most urgent hopes were around AI. Shopify announced that \u201cthe commerce renaissance is here\u201d (italics theirs). Other exhibitors touted \u201csmart people counting\u201d and \u201cAI customer flow analysis.\u201d We come to this place not for magic, but for \u201cmerchandizing execution with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of this is likely word salad to the average consumer \u2014 but if you shop online, the AI creep has become inescapable. Retail and tech companies have crammed AI into just about every step of the purchasing process, from designing products<\/a>, to discovery and comparison<\/a>, to calling brick and mortar stores<\/a>, to trying on clothing<\/a>, and finally checking out<\/a>. At NRF\u2019s trade show, Google announced an open-source standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)<\/a> that allows retailers and AI agents to communicate and integrate, so shoppers can buy products from Target within Google\u2019s AI Mode, for example, without going to Target\u2019s website. As tech companies build more direct buying features into chatbots, some are hoping coupons and deals can entice purchases: Google also announced that retailers will be able to set up discounts for shoppers browsing in AI Mode<\/a>. Monetizing AI-powered shopping is clearly a priority for Google: the company had a large presence at the show, and CEO Sundar Pichai gave a keynote address (on the other hand, Pichai had no public appearances at CES, and Google had no major announcements).<\/p>\n As AI has snaked its way into every gadget, platform, and service imaginable, it\u2019s hard not to wonder who the intended user is \u2014 and whether anyone, ever, has wanted the kind of features AI makes possible.<\/p>\n Pizza chain Papa Johns is one of the partners integrating<\/a> Google\u2019s agentic shopping features into its ordering system. Customers will soon be able to order via a chatbot that can autofill in their last order, suggest items based on dietary restrictions, add coupons and deals, and use a \u201cpizza assistant\u201d to get recommendations for group orders. In a demo video shared by Papa Johns, the chatbot assistant asks for the number of people in the group. Don\u2019t want to count how many people are eating? No problem \u2014 just upload a photo of everyone in the group into the Papa Johns chatbot.<\/p>\n There is also, of course, the evolution of industries that were upended by the rapid introduction of AI. Retailers used to prioritize tweaking their websites<\/a> to get Google to place their link above competitors\u2019 in search \u2014 but now search engine optimization, or SEO<\/a>, has branched off into new AI-focused acronyms: AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization), GSO (generative search optimization), and likely other future terms the general public will come to despise. A company called Fabric promises to help brands and retailers monitor their performance within platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, measuring how often your items are surfaced relative to your competitors. A representative from Fabric says some retailers are especially good at getting surfaced in AI chat \u2014 Nordstrom, for example \u2014 but acknowledged that nobody really knows how the systems work or what they choose to elevate. Fabric\u2019s AI monitoring service starts at $500 a month, according to its website.<\/p>\n Many of the products and services on display at the NRF show are on the back-end \u2014 firms working on things like inventory management tools or logistics, where consumers have less insight. But the consumer is an ever-deepening well of data; the promise of AI in retail is that these tools can extract more and more information from us, which can be used to sell us more things.<\/p>\n Solum is a South Korean company specializing in digital displays and shelves \u2014 those signs in the supermarket playing glossy ads for chips or beer, for example. But the next iteration is to hyper-personalize and target shoppers in stores, the way digital retailers are able to do to online shoppers. Using a technology built by a South Korean startup called SpaceVision, a retailer could assign a number to each shopper and track their movements through a store: how long they watched an ad, whether they simply walked by without engaging, if they picked up a product off the shelf. The store could then use that data to trigger certain behaviors: for example, if you watched a certain chip ad on a display, the store could push through a deal for you for beer to go with your chip purchase; it applies the tracking of online shopping into the real world. As I approached a wall of Coors and Heineken (not affiliated with SpaceVision) cans arranged on a shelf at the Solum booth, I noticed a screen above the display. It took me a moment to realize my own image was staring back at me, captured by the SpaceVision demo. With a bold box surrounding my face, I was Global ID number 485, gender: female, age group: 18\u201329. Retailers can use the data to track the demographic breakdown of people who pass displays, along with their \u201cglance\u201d and \u201cattention\u201d rates and conversions.<\/p>\n A SpaceVision employee working the booth at the show said that when deployed in the real world, video is deleted a millisecond after the metadata is captured \u2014 they are focused on milking the engagement data that can be used to retarget shoppers later on. The technology has so far only been used in select stores in South Korea and Japan, but the staffer acknowledges that shoppers in Europe or the US might be uneasy about the technology becoming part of the in-person shopping experience. It creates, essentially, a vast data dragnet of IRL shopping habits to mine for new and more invasive ways to sell things \u2014 the monetization of that omnipresent surveilling eye. Shoppers in Europe would balk at cameras. On the other hand, the staffer says, \u201cAsian people don\u2019t give a fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n Equapack\u2019s booth at NRF 2026 stood out for a few reasons: For one, it was empty when I stumbled upon it in one of the trade show\u2019s many, many rooms. It was also calm: No giant LED screens, no holographic gnomes, no humanoid talking robots, and no grand AI-related promises. The booth consisted of several long, white shelves with dozens of shopping bags, totes, cooler bags, and other retailer packaging carefully lined up. Among the selection were iconic and instantly recognizable names: the classic red and white Supreme streetwear logo on plain white bags; US Open drawstring backpacks; a tote bearing the logo of Broadway\u2019s The Lion King. Unlike everything else I saw during the day, Equapack\u2019s offerings were designed to be closer to the human at the end of the transaction \u2014 not to add additional layers of data, AI-powered analysis, and abstraction.<\/p>\n Equapack\u2019s booth had no robots, no screens, and no big AI promises.<\/p>\n The trade show used to be more tactile like this, says Eran Rothschild, Equapack\u2019s founder and CEO. All the packaging they design starts from a problem that the brand needs to solve: perhaps they need something to keep perishable items cold for a certain number of hours, or maybe they simply want a bag that is aesthetically beautiful and evocative. Equapack does not promise AI-powered solutions because it doesn\u2019t use AI, though Rothschild admits that it probably should, at least for back-end operations \u2014 design is just 25 percent of the job.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll probably never use AI visualization because it\u2019s not true to the product that we\u2019re going to be delivering,\u201d Rothschild says. \u201cWe prefer making samples and making that tactility. No one\u2019s going to purchase something that they can\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n AI slop has only one goal: scale. It does not matter if the AI-generated clips flooding social media are good or even entertaining \u2014 they simply need to take up space, and by extension, a human\u2019s time. Could an AI chatbot on every online ordering page transform the customer experience, whether they\u2019re ordering clothing or pizza delivery? Maybe. But it also feels like added bulk that has little bearing on whether the thing we bought \u2014 the actual product coming into our homes \u2014 is better than it would have otherwise been.<\/p>\n As we\u2019re talking, I realize that I personally own several bags that Rothschild has worked on, including packaging from The RealReal, a secondhand clothing and accessories marketplace. Whether the item you purchase is $30 or $3,000, The RealReal mails products in fabric dustbags, a practice largely limited to luxury retailers. I reuse every dustbag I get, carefully storing items in them to protect them and extend their life. For every project, Rothschild thinks about how the consumer will experience the packaging \u2014 is it reusable, is it luxurious? Does it make the purchased product feel like money well spent? Of all the tech and services I saw throughout the day, Equapack\u2019s offerings are one of the few that a consumer will actually hold in their hands and take home with them. There is intention, a sense of intimacy. I will likely never think back fondly to an experience chatting with an AI shopping assistant. 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