Ultra-Flagships: AI-Augmented Venues

AI-infused physical spaces will progress both omnichannel retail and visitor-reflexive experiences. Richer coalescences of channels and tools – physical design, visitor profiles, generative creativity, mixed reality, social media, biometrics and product inventories – are cultivating next-level cohesion, from the theatrical (beauty workshops, museum activations) to the practical (transforming operations like queue management into micro bonding moments).

Delightful Deepfakes & Mass-Personalised Marketing

Clever uses of generative AI and deepfakes in ads and e-commerce are feeding the appetite for hyper-personalised communications and experiences (see Key Stats) at scale, and challenging prejudiced perspectives (by visualising hard-to-imagine worlds). While strategies contributing to an ultra-individualistic culture warrant cause for concern, pitched well, they can also prompt positive behaviours.

Language & Conversational Commerce: Accents, Colloquialisms & Zeitgeist

Large language models (LLMs) are changing the conversational commerce game – fuelling chatbots/’digital hosts’ capable of countering consumers’ wariness (see Key Stats) by facilitating smoother conversations, amplifying contextual awareness, leveraging the pacey power of internet slang, and grasping regional accents.

Higher Tech Prep: Planning & Curation with Personal Agency

AI-powered planning capable of custom-crafting programmes at speed, curating more considered ‘consumption options’ or even joining the lifestyle to take a leap into the future, are already seducing consumers. Covering finance plans, meal prep, travel itineraries, prediction-based beauty regimens and ‘relevancy apps’ for fashion, blending AI with personal (and creative) human agency and/or specialist curation is key (see Key Stats).  

Multi-Modal XR Agents & Elevating Virtual Worlds

As extended (XR – augmented, virtual and mixed) realities infiltrate daily life more deeply (see Key Stats), AI-backed XR ‘agents’ in phones, headsets and smart glasses capable of ‘reading’ the world around us will become prized guides, supporting those navigating disabilities. Virtual world experiences are being elevated, too, as prompts go 3D and personalisation turbocharges.

Turbocharging Talent: Staff Co-Pilots

Also centring personal agency are ‘pro-human’ AI tools for augmenting, accelerating or  complementing the expertise, soft skills and life experience of associates on brand frontlines. Hearable tech, ‘finishing concepts’ (where staff build on what AI starts) and quick-fire ‘synthesiser tools’ turning raw (barcode) data into discussable content are bolstering engagement.

Embodied AI: Synth (Character)-Centred Service

Avatar spokespeople, ‘synthetic sales associates’ and pocket mentors are gaining momentum, elevated by gaming-originated AI attributing personality, mood and memory. Especially key for Gen Z, for whom conventional authenticity is less vital to engagement (see Key Stats), the era of in-depth human-meets-machine relations is here.