This year's sold out #shoptalk2019 conference was both engaging and enlightening. The event brought together 8,500 participants from the retail ecosystem to share trends, technologies, and innovations on how to be a better retailer – particularly in the age of digital. Anil Aggarwal, CEO of Shoptalk, introduced himself to the crowd with the comment, "[Retail] needs to transform for a modern digital age." For Anil, this was an imperative, not just a nice to have.

For me, however, the experience was even more lucid than Anil's interpretation – especially around AI technology. My week started with an autonomous car ride (sponsored by Aptiv & Lyft) which picked me up from my hotel and drove me 1.5 miles to the conference venue. While in route, a car cut in front of us. My first thought was "What the [fill in your expletive]", but my second was "Is AI ready for the road yet?" In this case, the safety driver slammed on the brakes, but the future car will slam the brakes on its own. The same question comes up in retail, "Is AI ready for retail yet?" Or probably more correctly, "Are we ready for AI yet?"

The conference delivered at least five sessions featuring personalization and artificial intelligence talk tracks. Keynote speaker, Frans Muller, CEO of Ahold Delhaize, spoke about AI during his presentation. According to Muller, AI remains 'scary' and is still misunderstood by most retailers. My reflection of the event brings together 8 realities of retail AI for consideration: