When you hear "AI in retail," what's the first thing that pops into your head? For a lot of us, it’s probably something futuristic and flashy. Maybe a chatbot that feels like you're texting a personal shopper, or an augmented reality app that lets you "try on" a new sofa in your living room.
And sure, that stuff is cool. But here’s a little secret from someone who watches this space closely: that’s not where the real revolution is happening.
The biggest, most profound changes that AI is bringing to the way we shop are completely invisible. It’s not about the shiny new features you see on the front end. It’s about a fundamental rewiring of how retailers operate behind the scenes. We’re talking about the nitty-gritty decisions—how a specific product shows up when you search for "blue dress," how a warehouse knows to restock before you even click "buy," and how the entire business can pivot in real-time based on what you and millions of other shoppers are doing.
This isn't just about adding a few new tools. It's about building a whole new operating system for retail.
It's More Than Just an "Add-On"
For a long time, companies treated AI like a new coat of paint. They had their old, established ways of doing things, and they’d just try to "add some AI" on top, hoping for a little boost. It rarely worked out well.
But now, smart retailers are realizing that’s completely backward. Take Macy’s, for example. I was really struck by how Murali Murugan, their senior director of engineering, described their strategy. He calls it an “AI-first” approach.
Now, that might sound like just another piece of corporate jargon, but the idea behind it is incredibly important. Murugan says, “AI first isn’t about adding intelligence on top. It’s about redesigning how decisions happen so the business moves faster and every experience feels more relevant by default.”
Think of it like building a smart home. You could take your 50-year-old house and stick a bunch of smart plugs and smart bulbs in it. And yeah, it’ll be a little smarter. But it’s not the same as building a new house where the smart technology—the wiring, the sensors, the network—is integrated into the very foundation of the building.
That’s what Macy’s is doing. Instead of just layering AI onto their old systems, they’re weaving it directly into the core of everything they do: personalization, search, planning, and even how their own engineers write and ship code.
Closing the Gap Between "Seeing" and "Doing"
So, what’s the point of all this deep, foundational work? It’s all about speed.
Murugan talks about compressing “the gap between the signal and the action.” In simple terms, a "signal" is anything that gives the retailer information—a customer searching for a product, a new trend emerging on social media, a sudden spike in sales for a particular item. The "action" is how the business responds to it.
In the old world of retail, that gap was huge. A human analyst might spot a trend, write a report, have a meeting, and then maybe, weeks later, the company would adjust its inventory or marketing. By then, the moment might have passed.
With an AI-first system, that gap shrinks from weeks to minutes, or even seconds. The system can spot the signal and trigger the right action automatically, making the whole business feel more alive and responsive.
Of course, you don’t get there overnight. Macy’s was smart about it. They started with what Murugan called “quick wins”—small, focused projects where the impact was easy to measure. They improved their search recommendations and found ways to make the customer experience smoother.
Once they could point to real numbers and show how these projects were boosting sales and making customers happier, the conversation inside the company changed. As Murugan put it, “scaling was a business decision, not a technology debate anymore.” They had proven it worked, and that gave them the momentum to go bigger.
Your Own Personal AI Stylist
Once that powerful, AI-driven foundation is in place, you can start building some of that cool, futuristic stuff on top of it. And it actually works.
This is where things like “Ask Macy’s” come in. It’s an AI-powered shopping assistant, but it’s designed to be much more than a simple search bar. The goal is for it to feel like you’re chatting with a personal stylist who really gets you.
You can tell it something conversational, like, "I'm going to a beach wedding in two weeks and I need a dress," or "Help me find an outfit for prom." Because the AI is plugged into that deeper system, it can give you curated recommendations based on your past purchases, what you’ve browsed, and the context of what you’re asking for. It’s a far cry from just typing “dress” into a search box and getting 10,000 random results.
The Goal is for You to Not Even Notice
Here’s the part that I find most interesting. For all this talk of advanced technology, the ultimate vision isn’t a world full of robots and algorithms making all the decisions. The goal is for the AI to become an invisible layer that helps the human experts do their jobs better.
It’s not about replacing the fashion buyers or the store associates; it’s about giving them superpowers. The AI can analyze massive amounts of data to spot a trend, but it’s the human buyer who uses their taste and experience to decide which specific styles to stock.
For us as customers, the end result is an experience that just… works. It feels seamless, adaptive, and uniquely personal. You find what you’re looking for faster. You discover new products you genuinely love. You feel like the store understands you. You may never even realize there’s a complex AI system working tirelessly behind the curtain to make it all happen. And that’s exactly the point.
This isn’t a one-and-done project. It’s a constant process of learning and refining. As Murugan says, “The real transformation in this all comes from continuous improvement.” It’s about trying things, learning from mistakes, and constantly adapting. But all those small, steady improvements add up, creating a shopping experience that is meaningfully, tangibly better for all of us.
