{"slug": "repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era", "title": "Repositioning retail for the AI era", "summary": "Macy's senior director of engineering Murali Murugan says the retailer is adopting an 'AI-first' approach to embed intelligence into personalization, search, and operations, aiming to make digital retail experiences more intuitive and seamless. The strategy includes tools like Ask Macy's, a conversational shopping assistant, and focuses on compressing the gap between customer signals and business actions.", "body_md": "Sponsored\n\n# Repositioning retail for the AI era\n\nFrom conversational shopping assistants to hyper-personalized recommendations, AI can make digital retail experiences feel more intuitive, seamless, and individualized, says Macy’s senior director of engineering Murali Murugan.\n\nIn partnership with[Infosys](https://www.infosys.com/)\n\nArtificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping retail, but not in the ways consumers might immediately notice. The biggest transformation may not be flashy virtual try-ons or chatbot shopping assistants, but in how decisions are made behind the scenes: how products surface in search results, how inventory moves through supply chains, how engineers ship code faster, and how retailers respond to customer behavior in real time. As legacy retailers navigate a fragmented and hyper-competitive landscape, AI is becoming an operating philosophy.\n\nAt Macy’s, that philosophy is more often defined by what senior director of engineering Murali Murugan describes as an “AI-first” approach. “AI first isn’t about adding intelligence on top,” Murugan says. “It’s about redesigning how decisions happen so the business moves faster and every experience feels more relevant by default.” Rather than layering AI onto existing workflows, Macy’s is embedding intelligence directly into systems that include personalization, search, operational planning, and software development itself.\n\nThe company’s strategy is reflective of a larger shift taking place across retail: moving from isolated AI pilots toward integrated systems designed to compress, as Murugan puts it, “the gap between the signal and the action.” Early efforts focused on narrow, high-impact use cases like search recommendations and customer engagement, where measurable gains in conversion and reduced friction quickly built internal momentum. “Once we established the quick wins, scaling was a business decision, not a technology debate anymore,” he says.\n\nThat momentum is now extending into conversational commerce through tools like Ask Macy’s, an AI-powered shopping assistant designed to act more like a personal stylist than a traditional search bar. Whether for a prom, a vacation, or a last-minute event, customers can describe what they need conversationally and receive curated recommendations informed by past purchases, preferences, and context.\n\nStill, the company sees AI as more of an invisible layer augmenting human judgment than a replacement for it. The long-term vision is retail that feels increasingly seamless, adaptive, and personalized, powered by systems customers may never even notice are there.\n\n\"The real transformation in this all comes from continuous improvement,\" Murugan says. \"It's about learning from the mistakes, quickly adapting to the newer technology standards that are coming into play, timing, and execution which compound into a meaningfully better customer experience.\" *This webcast is produced in partnership with Infosys.*\n\n*This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.*\n\n### Deep Dive\n\n### Artificial intelligence\n\n### A new US phone network for Christians aims to block porn and gender-related content\n\nLaunching next week on T-Mobile's network, the cell plan takes a nuclear approach to online safety.\n\n### A startup claims it broke through a bottleneck that’s holding back LLMs\n\nSubquadratic has now shared more details about its new model. But some are still skeptical.\n\n### Musk v. 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The answer might surprise you.\n\n### Stay connected\n\n## Get the latest updates from\n\nMIT Technology Review\n\nDiscover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era", "canonical_source": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/25/1137848/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era/", "published_at": "2026-06-25 14:22:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 14:56:51.077789+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Macy's", "Murali Murugan", "Infosys", "Ask Macy's", "MIT Technology Review"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/repositioning-retail-for-the-ai-era.jsonld"}}