AI Is the New Sales Associate in Physical Retail

Walk into a Guitar Center on a busy Saturday, and the sales floor tells the story. Associates are stretched thin, and customers face a choice: wait for help, or scan a QR code and get instant answers.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) is stepping in. Tools like Guitar Center’s Rig Advisor, an AI-powered shopping assistant, are designed to replicate what a human associate can do, delivering product guidance on demand. And it’s not just one retailer or one category. Across the industry, AI is moving directly into the shopping experience, reshaping how customers browse, decide and buy.

“This is basically everything an associate can do, on your app or on your mobile device,” Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto told Modern Retail.

From Fitting Rooms to the Aisle

When Vitamin Shoppe opened an innovation store on New York City’s Upper East Side in February, it introduced a “Shoppe Advisor” touch screen that delivers product information, wellness content and inventory data.

Crave Retail put smart fitting room screens inside Victoria’s Secret, Under Armour and Foot Locker locations, where customers can request different sizes, get styling suggestions or browse product information without flagging down an associate.

Nike’s House of Innovation flagship stores use RFID technology to identify customers as they enter and pull recommendations from their Nike profile—such as color preferences, favorite sports or foot measurements—before they’ve reached a single shelf.

Meanwhile, Walmart added AI-generated audio summaries to product pages on its app for more than 1,000 beauty items. Shoppers using AI-powered tools spent 25% more on average, the retailer said in a release.

The common thread is personalization at the moment of decision.

The Invisible Layer

While customer-facing tools get the attention, deeper investments are often out of sight.

Starbucks has run its Deep Brew AI platform since 2019. The system drives labor scheduling, inventory levels and cold brew prep timing in the app, all adjusted to local demand and time of day. Deep Brew connects to point-of-sale systems so baristas can anticipate a customer’s order before it’s placed. The platform serves 17 million app users and handles about a quarter of all Starbucks transactions.

Melissa Minkow, global director of retail strategy and insights at CI&T, told Modern Retail that most in-store AI still operates out of view.

“AI has been used for two decades at this point in retail,” she said. “It’s used in a lot of processes, but it’s not a very front-facing tool. It’s a support tool to achieve something front-facing.” For instance, the RFID scanners at Uniqlo self-checkout areas may use AI on the back end to process scan data and flag replenishment needs. Customers never see it.

Consumer Appetite and Open Questions

Business consulting firm Capgemini found that 71% of consumers want generative AI integrated into their shopping experiences. Gen Z and millennial shoppers reported the strongest interest. As PYMNTS reported, 33% of consumers who have used AI for shopping discovery say it has replaced their previous methods, signaling a measurable shift away from traditional search and browsing toward conversational interfaces.

Greg Carlucci, a senior director analyst at Gartner, told Modern Retail that hesitation persists on the retailer side.

“Brands are still trying to figure out what consumers want, because it is such a new technology,” he said. “There’s this first-mover hesitation right now to understand what will be positively received and also what creates a value add.”

Minkow pointed to AI color-matching in beauty as a case where the technology hasn’t yet caught up to the human associate. “This technology is iterative, and it needs as many entries as possible to aggregate and then get smarter,” she said.

AI is becoming a permanent layer in physical retail, much like it already is online. Stores are no longer purely physical environments. They are hybrid spaces where digital intelligence shapes how customers browse, decide and buy.

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