As we entered 2024, the hype around Generative AI was reaching its peak. Generative AI became retail tech’s 800-pound Gorilla, sucking the oxygen from other conversations and dominating discussions.
By the time the year closed, whilst some were wallowing in the GenAI ‘Trough of Disillusionment’, many in our industry were focused on unlocking value-adding use cases in their organisations, many of which were focused on marketing automation and personalisation at scale.
And at Shoptalk we looked forward to a year where the conversation shifted from understanding a new type of AI, to one focused on business benefits. Where talking about AI in isolation became almost obsolete, recognising that there are virtually no technologies now that do not feature some element of AI.
Well, we were wrong.
No sooner had 2025 started than the next AI hype cycle was truly underway. AgenticAI has arrived, but what is it, and why does it matter for retailers?
Shoptalk friend, speaker, and Global Retail Lead at Capgemini, Lindsey Mazza defined it well. “Think of AI Agents as interactive systems that handle complex, human-language tasks autonomously. They execute actions, optimize processes, analyze data, resolve issues, and answer questions—all with minimal human intervention. In short, they plan, reason, and execute tasks for users”, she wrote on LinkedIn.
It’s a fundamental shift. From AI being used to complete individual tasks, at scale and speed, to AI being able to run whole processes and systems.
And that’s exciting when we think of scale retailing as a game of process. The point of distribution of product in retail isn’t where margin is made. Rather, retailers build profit through scale, efficiency and replication. Through small, incremental improvements to processes and systems. And AgenticAI offers the potential to automate and especially optimise these processes.
For store teams, the opportunity to free resources from planning and scheduling tasks to enable those hours to be invested in direct customer services is potentially transformative. Store managers will be able to augment their teams with AgenticAI tools, enabling them to focus more on their shoppers. Who, in turn, should enjoy a better unified commerce experience, as inventory visibility and accuracy are improved across the supply chain.
For shoppers, the game-changer could be the development of Agent Commerce. Technology companies are developing consumer-facing agents to automate administrative tasks, for example ordering food for a family based on understanding their dietary needs and preferences. And the more data a consumer shares, the more complexity can be automated. Provide access to one’s digital calendar, and the agent can take into account a family’s commitments, movements and holidays when creating and ordering a menu for the week ahead.
Predicting a timeframe for agents to impact commerce is difficult, though the first consumer-facing agents are now becoming available, like Operator from OpenAI launched in late January in the US. Expect a battle of the largest retailers to create their own agents, to lock in their most loyal customers.
Such proprietary models will be the domain of the few, further driving bifurcation, whilst introducing challenges for all retailers of how to influence the consumer as automation accelerates; how to drive incremental higher margin purchases; and how to mitigate lost revenue from ad spend as sites could attract fewer human eyeballs.
All this remains in the future, and whilst the temptation to resist being drawn into a new hype cycle is great, one thing is clear; there’s a new Agent in town.
Shoptalk Europe takes place at Fira Gran Via, Barcelona from 2-4 June. Get your tickets here.
Ben Miller, VP, Original Content & Strategy, Shoptalk Europe