Technology

Every earnings season brings another wave of headlines attributing retail and fulfillment gains to artificial intelligence. Stock prices react, press releases multiply, and retailers are told that a new era of automation has arrived. Yet a closer look at what's actually being described often reveals something less revolutionary: optimization logic, routing rules, and automated decisioning…

Investment in warehouse automation has moved from experimentation to a genuine spending priority for retailers racing to meet delivery expectations. Roughly 4.7 million commercial robots are expected to be installed across more than 50,000 warehouses worldwide by the end of 2026, according to recent warehouse automation research. And the automation market is on pace to…

The Home Depot enhanced its AI assistant, Magic Apron, to include localized store knowledge to assist in-store shoppers, reports Yahoo Tech. The retailer said in a Thursday press release that the tool is now available in all of the company's over 2,000 U.S. locations. Customers can access the tool while using Store Mode in the…

Eighty-four percent of software developers report they're using or planning to use artificial intelligence coding tools. These tools are especially useful in front-end e-commerce development, dramatically increasing developer productivity, accelerating feature delivery, reducing routine work, and more. Unfortunately, adoption of AI coding tools can often mean that digital accessibility suffers. Over the past decade, we’ve…

Walmart announced on Friday it will finally accept Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other tap-to-pay methods at its U.S. stores after holding out for over a decade, reports Yahoo Finance. Starting this past Monday, Aug. 24, Walmart and Sam's Club rolled out tap-to-pay options at select locations, allowing shoppers to pay with contactless cards, smartphones,…

For the last 20 years, e-commerce marketing strategy has revolved around a simple premise: get the consumer to your website, analyze their behavior, and optimize for conversion. Traffic was the goal and the homepage was the storefront. Performance marketing, search engine optimization, digital campaigns, and paid media all served the same purpose: driving shoppers into…

Many organizations approach artificial intelligence as a new layer of technology to add to their existing stack. However, AI doesn't create value simply because it exists. Its impact depends on the strength of the operational foundation beneath it. Businesses see the strongest results when AI helps reduce the time between insight and action. Connected systems,…

Amazon.com announced Wednesday that it plans to offer drone deliveries in nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of the year, a sign of momentum for a project that’s been slow to develop since founder Jeff Bezos first laid out his vision for the service almost 13 years ago. The planned expansion for…

As agentic artificial intelligence moves from pilot projects to production environments, retail CIOs are facing a growing challenge: How to accurately measure the total cost of ownership (TCO) of systems whose underlying economics change almost every quarter? Most organizations instinctively start with token costs, API consumption, and model pricing. That approach is understandable because inference…

The infrastructure marketers have relied on for neutral campaign measurement and data collaboration is undergoing a quiet transformation. Over the past 18 months, some of the industry’s most prominent data collaboration platforms have been absorbed into larger organizations with direct interests in advertising, media execution, identity, or data monetization. Publicis recently acquired LiveRamp. WPP acquired…