Technology vendors scan attendee nametags to find willing participants from brands and retailers touting the latest AI-powered upgrades. On stage are executives eager to talk about the results of their new AI chatbot. And at off-site happy hours, managers exchange notes about vibe coding and the latest discoveries on Claude and Gemini.

While AI has been a dominant topic at major industry conferences for several years now, the conversation around it seems to shift in small, subtle ways every year as the technology moves further and further from the experimental stage. That was evident at this year’s Shoptalk Spring.

Two years ago, many of the AI ​​tools from technology vendors and retailers were still in their infancy, so conversations focused primarily on the risks and benefits of AI.

Over the last year, much of the conversation has shifted to how brands and retailers are leveraging AI to drive efficiencies in business-critical areas like customer service and inventory planning. While some eager first movers started using AI to generate ads, most brands and retailers remained hesitant.

This year, even more use cases were showcased. Elina Vilk, president and chief business officer of David’s Bridal, talks about Pearl, the company’s AI-powered wedding planning platform, which she says has increased time on site. Macy’s executives discussed their new shopping assistant, Ask Macy’s. Early tests showed that shoppers who use it spend 400% more than those who don’t.

But what started to change this year was that brands, retailers, agencies, and technology vendors wanted to not just talk about how they were leveraging AI to increase productivity or increase sales, but rather demonstrate that they had a genuine AI strategy.

The conversation wasn’t just about new tools, but how brands and retailers are using AI to reimagine entire processes. They shared more notes about how they’re making adjustments as they get new data about what their customers do and don’t want to use AI for. And we discussed how to find new levers within your tool of choice, whether it’s Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT, to make your processes and workflows even more productive.

Joe Yakuel, CEO of digital marketing agency Within, says that when he talks to people about using AI at big industry conferences like Shoptalk, “My question is always: ‘Rather than just talking about what you think AI can do or what you’re going to do with AI, what are you actually doing with AI?'” The gulf between the two is huge. ”

A year ago, Yakuel said, the conversation around AI was still centered around how brands, retailers and agencies like his could leverage AI to “bring about strategies that previously had to rely on humans with subject matter expertise.” In other words, people were using AI as a work assistant. And certainly, that’s how many people are still using AI today. They ask Gemni to analyze a specific spreadsheet or identify potential podcasts to run marketing campaigns that are a good fit for their target audience.

But as people have become more familiar with using AI, Yaquel says the conversation has shifted from how to simply use AI to increase efficiency to how to use AI to do things that couldn’t be done before. Yaquel said this means clients expect agencies like Within to leverage AI to increase production.

“We need to harness the power of AI to build products we couldn’t build before, and build them at speeds we couldn’t build before, so we can accomplish things for our clients that we couldn’t accomplish before,” he said. “The question is not, ‘How can we serve our clients more cheaply today than we did a year ago?'” The question is, “How can we serve our clients better today than we did a year ago? And how can we do it faster and in a higher quality way for them to achieve better results?”

As a result, more companies are talking about how they’re taking a multi-pronged approach to AI to leave no stone unturned.

Consider the beauty of elves. As explained by Ekta Chopra, the company’s chief digital officer, the beauty brand’s AI strategy has four pillars. These include using AI to improve human productivity and serving as an authority on LLMs. But Elf is also thinking about how AI can be used to rethink every process within an organization, and which processes can achieve end-to-end autonomy.

She added that she believes change management is still under-discussed when it comes to implementing AI in retail. “I think I need treatment. [AI] “It’s like a big change for an organization. You almost have to think about how your employees are going to evolve, what new titles they might have, what new roles they might have to fill,” Chopra said.

“Our industry is still in a period of adjustment,” said Jessica Ramirez, co-founder and managing director of Consumer Collective.

He said the industry as a whole is still adjusting to “how AI is going to impact jobs, how it’s going to impact skills, and how it’s going to work with the skills that are currently in demand.”

As a consultant, she said the conversations she’s been having with people in the industry lately have centered around how AI can “reshape the way brands work to be more profitable.”

At the same time, there is still much work to be done to separate reality from hype.

This was made clear by ChatGPT’s recent withdrawal from instant checkout. What ChatGPT, and other retailers who have tested Instant Checkout, have found is that many shoppers aren’t yet ready to checkout within the generative AI engine of their choice.

This is consistent with Ramirez’s recent informal research. In a poll conducted by Ramirez among his newsletter, co-founders, and social media profiles, 73% of respondents said they use AI in their work, but only 6.6% said they use AI in their shopping.

All of this points to Ramirez believing that while there is a lot of excitement around AI and many people are using it in their daily lives, consumers are “still trying to figure out what they like and what they don’t like about using AI.”

Second, what constitutes a good AI playbook is still up for debate. As such, the time is ripe for brands, retailers, agencies, and technology vendors to continue the discussion at major industry events like Shoptalk.

Sarah Engel, president of media agency January Digital, said one of the most impressive things about the AI ​​boom is that it has spawned more industries out of their own bubbles, and people have become more proactive in sharing notes about what’s working and what’s not working for them so they don’t get left behind.

“I really like that in an industry where there are people who say, ‘I don’t get it, what are you trying to do, what did you see?’ or ‘I’ll just test it out,’ maybe it won’t work, and that’s OK,” Engel said.

Jill Manoff and Allison Smith contributed reporting.