Trend forecaster Stylus has published insights on how AI is going to impact every aspect of people's lives. In retail, it will reshape experience, communications and service, rallying personalisation, persuasion and co-creation.

• According to the US National Retail Federation, retailers that have embraced AI and machine learning technologies have achieved 2.3 times more growth in sales and 2.5 times growth in profits.
• AI synthetic (character)-centred service is gaining momentum, enhancing customer experience and engagement.
• Avatar spokespeople, synthetic sales associates and pocket mentors are evolving from AI-generated to AI-powered, creating more opportunities for brand servicing. American beauty brand Clinique, for example, has used multilingual avatars to talk beauty in shoppable virtual worlds, while US-based fashion label J.Crew has a Virtual Closet app that enables group video chats with friends and one-on-one video calls with J.Crew stylists – soon to include AI-trained avatar store assistants.
• Chatbots, or digital hosts, are increasingly effective as they amplify contextual awareness while being in tune with regional accents or leveraging the pacy power of internet slang and local colloquialisms. This can be seen with Virgin Money’s IBM-supported digital host Redi, which was initiated with the Scottish Glaswegian dialect. Meanwhile, American fast food chain Wendy’s launched a customised LLM (large language model) pilot that can handle customers using abbreviations for menu items and changing their minds. The pilot has successfully handled 86% of orders without staff intervention.

Katie Baron, Stylus’ Head of Retail Trends, said: “Brands can use AI to unlock progressive omnichannel retail and visionary visitor experiences – whether it’s aligning in-store tech with social media content, biometric signals and real-time inventory data, or transforming practical operational tools, like queue management, into in-situ channels for micro conversations. Looking to the future, it will be important to retain human agency in the use of AI and avoid the pitfalls of hyper-individualism that these exalted levels of personalisation bring. AI tools can also become great levellers, opening up accessibility for disabled consumers/audiences, and giving brands the chance to use AI for positive social impact. The opportunities are manifold.”

Stylus’ original research Life in AI is distilled into five trend reports, covering commerce, work, companionship, entertainment and human values, pointing to the consumer behaviours and expectations of tomorrow. Each report is designed to help brands and agencies, supported by stats and case studies of brands that are winning in this arena – available to Stylus members now, or on request by emailing here.