Since the dawn of civilization, there have always been places and markets where people gather to purchase essentials and luxuries. The earliest bazaars are believed to have originated in ancient Persia, and the first shopping mall is widely considered to be a Trajan's market, which housed more than one hundred and fifty shops and was built around one hundred AD, not
far from the Roman Colosseum. Of course, shopping has evolved a lot since the days of ancient Rome, but the appeal of visiting your favorite store has remained unchanged over time. And despite the ways that online retail has transformed the way we shop, new technology has revitalized the brick and mortar shopping experience, with retailers eager to create unique spaces where they can connect customers with products in person and
reduce product theft. But what does the future hold for the shopping experience as we witness the rejuvenation of in person retail, and what can retailers do to create a more engaging and exciting experience for customers. Welcome to Technically Speak, an Intel podcast produced by iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio in partnership with Intel In every episode, we explore how AI innovations are changing the world and revolutionizing the way we live. Hey,
then I'm grand class. Regular listeners know that in the past we've covered topics like how AI impacts healthcare and urban planning. This season, but now we're headed into the world of retail, where online director consumer brands are seeking innovative spaces to connect customers with products in person, and retailers are eager to remain competitive by creating a frictionless
customer experience. We wanted to understand how technology is helping to improve the retail space, making shopping easier, seamless, and exciting. In this episode, we will focus on what shopping looks like with an AI enhanced self service check out. Just imagine a life without barcodes and smart technology that helps retailers attract and retain consumers. Today, we'll continue our journey of discovery into Intel's innovative ideas for the future and
how they will impact something as steadfast as retail. But before we go any further, let's welcome our guests. Joining us today is Shoalie's Childry, the general manager of Consumer Industries at Intel and an expert in the intersection of technology and the retail, banking, hospitality, and quick serve restaurant industries. His team at Intel is responsible for delivering innovative technological solutions and tools and building an ecosystem of partners to
scale those solutions. Welcome to the show, Shalish.
Thank you, Graham. I'm super excited to be here.
Also joining us is a Kert Denghi, the co founder and CEO of Radius AI, a pioneer in transforming retail operations with advanced human centric AI solutions. Acold also founded the Internet of Things Collaboratory at Arizona State University in twenty seventeen.
Welcome to you, too, Acold. Thank you Greg. It's a pleasure to be part of the show.
I think we'll start with a little bit of background on how retail has changed during the Internet era. Shelley shall begin with you. What kind of shift have we seen over the past two decades when it comes to people opting for online shopping over in person shopping in breaking mortar stores?
Thank you Graham.
Before starting about how Internet has changed retail, I like to stab back at what I see as the core retail experience. It's really a human experience. So from the dawn of retail, there's something fundamental about retail that has not changed, and that's about that experience. It's how we feel after we have conducted the shopping, so the commerce
and the transaction that comes later. And as we have progressed through all the developments, there have been new tools and capabilities and technologies and those have shaped our expectations. And that is exactly what has happened to Internet era as well. So while we're happy shopping and tradition more Internet it pvided a different technology which was pervasive in all aspects of our life, and we carried those expectations in retail as well. And for us it's just a different means
of shopping. And let's be honest, depending on our needs, sometimes it's just way more convenient to shop online. And it's not just about certain products that have better suit it for online shopping. Same product at one moment, I'm going to go buy in a physical restore, the other time, I'm just going to go on internet. And as we've all seen, retailers initially fail to see that. They saw Internet just as a tool and technology that are separate.
They saw it as a competition as opposed to seeing it as something that can enhance and augument retail experiences. So initially a lot of us shifted to internet shopping because that's where our needs are better met. But through that twenty a decade, physical retailers started to see that's not just a technology and they can just have a website, and now they can compete with the online retailers. They
have integrated Internet into their physical operations. And now we've also seen the retailers who started as pure prey online retailers, they've started to open physical stores. So since then we have reached what I call a steady state after initial what I call the gloom and doom. I started in retail industry in two thousand and eight, and I remember everyone was predicting the death of physical retail, and even then I had this conviction about this coat experience. And
then we started off at Intel. Our journey retail is how we can bring all these great technologies and the experience that are online, but deliver and working with retailers and our technology partners that I could and others so that the enhances and complements physical retail. And that's what's happening.
Yeah, and we're going to talk a little bit about the technology side of things and particularly the role of AI. But I would like your thoughts about the last two decades of how we've evolved, you know, from brix and mortar stores to online and there I think there is probably a shift back to the brick and mortar stores.
I agree with Shilesh that we've seen exciting developments in retail. Retail is one of the most complex human activities, and I actually really enjoy being in retail because it's not only human, it's also social. There is a complex web
of people who work together to create this experience. But people missed, especially during the pandemic, they realized they missed the social experience they missed going into a store interacting with humans, and retailers also saw that the characteristics of shopping in person may actually be more favorable for their financial goals as well. People who shop in stores may not return things as often as they do in detail, and that is one of the biggest expenses in online shopping.
They may actually be more satisfied with their purchases because they talked about it to store clerk and they interacted with the other people in a store, So creating an experience, a positive experience in the store has become more important once again. Besides keeping the store efficient and profit fitable, we see once again gaining speed the trend of making customers want to go back every day.
Now you've heard Akould mention some of the social impacts of the COVID nineteen pandemic, but I want to dig a little deeper on its implications for the retail industry. It's no surprise that some small retailers in your community didn't survive the pandemic. Some of those businesses simply couldn't pivot from their in person to online retail fast enough to save their shop, or they didn't have the resources
to make the change at all. But the businesses that did survive were able to invest in technology that allowed them to make online retail easy and accessible. These companies came out on the other side of the pandemic not just alive, but stronger. With this in mind, I asked Akut, what have you seen from companies that are investing in technology to help fortify their retail business.
The pandemic changed human behavior, and we saw that impact retailers differently and to rapidly adapt to behavioral change, you need data and this is one of the ways that technology help retailers. So if you have consistent, objective data to guide your decisions, then you adapt faster, learning and changing your processes and procedures, adapting to the market as part of the system, as opposed to people saying now we have to change. Change becomes part of your culture.
And as Charlie said, right now, the arrow is pointing towards increasing the productivity of the people you have because you cannot hire too many of them. Retailers that are rapidly expanding right now, but one of the things they
don't want to drop is the customer experience. So you want to automate things that are not visus to the customer that is behind the desk, and you want to allow the employee to personally interact with the customers so that they get that in person experience so that they want to come back.
Yeah, I would like to talk a little bit more about the technology specifically, what would the customers feel, what would they experience that would be different, whether it be price, better information, better stock availability. What are some of the tangible things that a person like myself just walking into a store would actually experience.
So all of the questions you've post I think exactly that's what the role of technology is. However, I see the technology as something that will augment enhance existing experiences. As an example, in all days, the only way I would get introduced to products, new products was through stores were the curators of the product. That is not true anymore. We are introduced to new products through social media channels, through all sorts of other technology. Then we go in
the stores. I'm not necessarily a lot of I'm looking for that product in the store. I already know it. I probably have done a lot of research as well, so I'm not just relying on the associate to tell me everything about too often because I'm only focused on that one product. So I know a lot more than an associate probably can because he or she has to worry about thousands of fiscus in the store. So now the focus is not so much about curating the products
more about meeting my needs there. So maybe when I walk in the store, can you help me find the product easily? Technology can help to make sure that they have the right products in the store. Because now with artificial intelligence supply chains will be way more efficient. Technology like computer vision or RFID can help you to make
sure that you have products on the shelf. Technology can also make sure that you are able to deliver more personalized experience to shopper in all kinds of retail setting, not just high end stores.
So I want to point out that there are different types of customers and for some customers this omnichannel experience where they enhance their experience through online knowledge is very important, and sometimes we become a different customer ourselves at different days. For instance, sometimes I'm in a hurry. I'm there just to find one thing, and I really want to know where exactly it's in the store, and I want to
just start there get it come out. There are other times when I want to be at my leisure, I want to discover new things. And for the retailer also, they want to inspire their customers and lead them to spontaneous purchases. So you want to create an experience for those people who have time in their heads. It becomes a challenge, of course to provide these different types of experience all at the same time in the same store. So given this challenge, you need to customize technology to
the different needs. I want to point out some of the technology that you actually want to be invisible. You put it there, it makes life easier, but the employees or the customers don't even need to think about it. So taking such a technology and making it disappear is one of the goals of technology companies, and a lot
goes in the background of making that possible. Artificial intelligence at its best is one of the empowering technologies that makes it possible, and one of the interesting things ABOUTNOLO. There are different ways it can become visible. For instance, there's a lag, so you're doing something and you're expecting your response and it takes forever for it to actually happen. Why does that happen? Of course, as a customer, I don't care. I'm just waiting there and it's not responding.
But from a technological point of view, that tells us, well, maybe there's a communication link right between the store and the cloud and that's taking a long time to go and come back. Well, maybe I need to put things at the edge, meaning the store, right where the customer is,
and then you can take that data that's happening. Whatever the customer said, or the object they put on the counter and process it, respond to it there and create that instant experience so that it disappears because the lag is the one that alerts to them that there's something going on there. So that leads us into edge AI, which is one of the things that huge industry working all together, has been able to put together recently. It's right now becoming feasible at actual locations.
Coming up next on Technically Speaking and Intel podcast.
Biggest advances in the last few years, and AI is technology that learns by itself.
We'll be right back after a brief message from our partners at Intel. Welcome back to Technically Speaking an Intel podcast. I'm here now with Shailish Chowdhry and Akuttinghi. Chalie, I know that you have the team there at Intel working on these sorts of smart retail solutions at any that you can share with us, ones that you're quite excited about.
Yes, we're actually working on a wide range of products and like majority of them are AI. Every retailer today is interested how they can use AI both to drive or productivity but also to drive better experience for us as shoppers. So I see two categories one is some of the larger retailers, they are in the front edge of innovation, so they are working on a lot of what I call pilots and demonstration projects. One of the examples at the checkout because checkout is one of the
most critical experiences. Also, we're working on the projects which they call store automation, that has to do with better visibility the inventory, also the improving receiving and the operations
the pack end. We're also engaged in the projects which a lot of time gets referred to as last mile delivery, which is a lot of times they're shopping online that gets delivered through the physical retail and instead of opening massive distribution centers, a lot of retailers already have stores in all around neighborhoods and they're starting to use them as their fulfillment centers, and they're upgrading a lot of them to deliver similar experience that some of the larger
online retailers can within half an hour a you ordering a product and showing up at your door. The third area we're seeing a lot of interest is on personalization. So it's just not about mass personalization, it's about individual personalization. The one I'm really excited about. We cannot name who that retailer is, but that has to do with search. In spite of all the advances, Say, if I like a shirt that you're wearing, grab I don't go buy it.
I have to go through like ten to fifteen searches to be able to find the same shirt unless I know exact brand and style. But with advances like Jenney AI, I should be able to find exact same shirt with literally one or two prompts. And that's going to be a game changer on how we shop and where we shop, but also how retailers are going to deliver the shopping experience for us.
Yeah, so in that scenario, you might get your smartphone out, take a photo of someone with that shirt, searches for that vision to all the various local retail stores, and then be able to deliver it, or you can go pick it up and try it on and still have that in person experience.
Absolutely in that scenario. The thing when I heard about it, the word that came to my mind that each and every one of us will be a walking model. Now, the social media has made a lot of people influencers, and that great, we are getting influence, but now everybody's an influencer, everybody's a.
Model, and I could what are your thoughts around using computer vision, particularly more towards I guess the checkout experience. Do you think we could do away with barcodes or do you think there could be a time where we could almost go in and walk out and charge our cards.
Well, we're still experimenting as a technology and retailers together as a team, and also customers as willing participants, are giving us great feedback. On one end was the vision of totally friction less checkout, right, so you walk in, you walk out, and automatically you get charged for whatever you bought. And we found that people did not respond very positively to the totally friction less experience. What we perceived as friction, like that hello from the employee was
not friction. That was actually a positive thing. Don't discard that. Yes, and you might need help, and who's are to help? There needs to be somebody to help. So there was some adjustment there in terms of perception. What do customers actually want? So you don't want to turn your brick
and mortar store into a glorified vending machine. So on the other hand, people do not enjoy scanning items either, so there needs to be some sort of middle ground, and I think that's the hybrid experience now that is gaining traction, where we mold the technology into the natural flow of the store and make each of those steps frictionless. So picking up the item is frictionless, you actually have real time inventory, much faster inventory check, and it's accurate.
It starts there and then it goes towards putting your items and you don't have to scan them. Computer vision is used to recognize the items immediately, even if you put twenty of it takes the same amount of time. You just put it there, and then it may even actually say hey, that's an age verified item, automatically alerts the clerk. You don't have to call anybody, and then they're already there.
What ACRED is describing this hybrid frictionalist experience that still provides for human touch when necessary might be the future of grocery shopping. And I think we can all agree that an experience like this one will make running errands or picking up milk and bread on the way home from work simpler for all of us. But what about
the business owner's tasks? With implementing this frictionless experience. If we take employees largely out of the equation, do we also lose some of the oversight that keeps people from forgetting to scan their items? Does this technology make it easier for customers to steal from the store? Retail stores lost and estimated eighty seven billion to theft in the United States in twenty twenty two, and this could reach
one hundred and fifteen billion by twenty twenty five. So I asked Shelish about the challenges businesses my face as they adopt this frictionless experience when it comes to product loss and product theft.
Very interesting topic and we've been seeing this debate as well. And Graham, the product loss that a lot of time gets referred to as shrink has always been part of industry, So it includes not just the product loss due to theft, but also a product that gets lost during shipping, during receiving, so that a lot of different ways that product loss can happen. Now when it comes to theft, there are
multiple elements there as well. So one is organized crime and one is just consumer trying to sometimes mislabeled products. Other times it's just not even scanning products. What does computervision allows us to do is accurately see a product. Now you can what product is. You're not just relying on the barcode that somebody may have switched. So it's actually in that instance will help you reduce the product loss. If somebody doesn't scan a product, there's an alert that
gets sent to store associate. So what we are seeing is in the back of the store. A lot of loss happens there as well, and you'll be surprised how in a creator receiving is a part of it, and computervision technology can help drive the accuracy in the receiving and further reducing the product class. So these are some of the early reserves that we have seen in the pilot and these are all read examples.
Yeah, because I was thinking of that trade off between what you call the customer experience and this computer vision, because I went to a new self checkout and I think it detected my hand going over the scanner but without a product, and it thinks that I didn't scan it properly, and it kind of alerted the shop as system next to me. So I guess, as you say, it is a journey but the positive thing is that
there was a person there. It wasn't like the alarms and everything and the security guards coming down bearing down my neme. So is there any day that you've seen and some of the trends around product loss and product theft, particularly around that sort of self checkout area.
Yes, we hear from our customers that it is a top concern of theirs loss in general and not just theft, as Shylish very aptly described. But one of their biggest problems is food waste, and it is part of their business model. It can be improved massively by AI models, but also alerting the store employees, Hey, that item there has been sitting there for more than three hours. You need to remove that so that the quality is preserved, basically balancing waste and quality at the same time, but
also ringing up the right item. Not everything has a barcode in a store. So you pick up a hot dog. There'sn't, thank god, a barcode on the hot dog. So you picked it up, maybe you put some condiments, maybe that's price separately, right, ringing that up right now requires the employee to ask you, what do you have there? Right, so that already extends the process and the accuracy of the reporting and so on. I mean, we need to really for the environment too, we need to lower food waste.
So if you do accurate checkout and you know exactly what was picked up and you ring it up, then you improve on waste. So the important thing there is doing the right thing at the right time, and that helps your inventory controls, that helps your customer experience, that helps your shrink.
And Shelly, I just wanted to get a like a final thought from yourself if you were in the retail industry and you're a manager there, what's the top issue or consideration they should be thinking about if they want to implement this sort of technology that we've been talking about today. What are some of the challenges that they
need to be on the lookout for. What are some of the intelligent questions they can ask their vendors to make sure that they're getting the best value from their time and money.
Now, that's a great question at a question that comes up a lot. So I think everybody sees the potential of what not just computer vision, but AI in general, will bringing The challenge they're facing is threefour One is the cost. So in this first stage. Majority of them, especially with computer vision, are using specialize ecceletors for AI that are very expensive. The second challenge that comes up
is availability of an ecosystem of technology providers. So while large detaders have the resources both financial resources but also the engineers and data scientists to go work on the concepts that they can try understand the ROI, but majority of the retailers do not have those resources and they really need an ecosystem for partners. The third one is the ROI the time to really get returns on their investment.
Those are the three questions. The good news is I think they're starting to change and one of the technologies that I'm excited about that will help with the cost as well as with the ecosystem is AIPC concept. The reason I'm excited about this because this is a technology there's an extension of existing PC technologies and it is not any specialized hardware. This already runs all of the applications because in retail store, most of whether you're talking
about point of sale CHAOS or other instare devices. They're all embedded PCs, so that will significantly reduce the cost and att as first challenge, but that's also the technology that a lot of technology products are very familiar with. Now they have to augment what they're doing rather than reinvite.
Our regular listeners to Technically speaking, might recognize that term CHAI. Let's just referred to the AIPC, which we covered in episode three of this season. Aipcs I think represent the future of computing. They'll incorporate cutting edge AI tech faster and more effectively than anything we've seen before, and in relation to today's conversation, they'll play a key role in
a faster, more efficient world of retail. And these aipcs are relyingt on the Intel Core Ultrapersonessa Wish debuted last year in twenty twenty three and offers the best AIPC experience to mobile platforms and right out to the edge, and it will power more than two hundred and thirty
models of the world's first aipcs. But given how much of a game changer this Intel tech represents for the retail industry, I want you to know some of the challenges business owners would consider when attempting to adopt this. He's acred with the.
Answer, So focus on the total cost and that will lead you to Okay, this software vendor works only on this hardware that is very expensive and custom and is not available. That's not going to scale out in two three years. So that's a very important part. And part of that problem of scaling is adaptability. So a lot of AI solutions they pilot very well, but then they
stumble on expanding two thousand locations. So pay attention to whether the technology you're selecting has scaled out, has the adaptive features that is prerequisite, and then how expensive is
it to this machine? Right? So let's say you have a computer vision technology that recognizes products, but as a retailer, you have new products coming in and their faces changes all the time and so on, and why are you going to have to have someone in the back constantly scanning items and teaching the device so that it remains accurate or does the technology automatically get to learn. So that's the biggest advances in the last few years in AI is technology that learns by itself and knows what
it doesn't look. So basically you need to evaluate the technology what it tries to do, with all its failure mechanisms and all the edge cases right, and select the technology that adapts to the environment and during the pandemic, we also learned things can change in a hurry, and will your technology adapt with you with the circumstances. Can it actually work outside of the very narrow path that it was done for so that it continues being useful
over the lifetime of a product. Retailers have long lifetime expectations for their technology. The technology has to last five ten years. Both the hardware and the software needs to be resilient work in a store environment, not be overly fickle and robust. So that's very important to evaluate before you actually choose the technology.
Okay, I think I've learned a lot, and hopefully all listeners have as well. I could and Shaley, thanks very much for your time.
Thank you Graham, Thank you Graham.
Thank you to Shalley's childry A Denghi for their expertise in today's episode of Technically Speaking. The advent of trading between each other has been the cornerstone of our civilization and I think one of the main reasons for our advancement as a human race. Retail will continue to be a social experience, and any technology that can help bring people together and harmoniously trade with one another will continue
to drive our society positively into the future. The advancement in AI and in particular computer vision will help all businesses large and small, be able to serve their customers better by making retail interactions more meaningful for the owners, it will allow them to serve their customers at a higher standard, even if they are challenges with staff shortfalls.
For those with retail stores, the implementation of AI can seem daunting, but you can always try to experiment with the technology discussed in today's episode at a small scale. This is so you can continue to build confidence and continue need to learn. Remember you are the expert in your field. AI is there to lift you to the next level. In our next episode, we will look at how AI is helping improve manufacturing holiday So join us on June eighteenth or the next edition of Technically Speaking
and Intel podcast. Technically Speaking was produced by Ruby Studio from iHeartRadio in partnership with Intel and hosted by me Graham Class. Our executive producer is Molly Sosher, our EP of Post Production is James Foster, and our supervising producer is Nikia Swinton. This episode was edited by Sierra Spreen and written by nick Firschel,