How AI Is Gatekeeping Businesses

But look, I think it's the key question.

I'm not sure storefront even goes far enough.

You know, the storefront still belongs to the retailer, but AI could become the shopping street, you know, the landlord and the sales assistant combined.

It may even decide which brands the customer sees before the retailer gets anywhere near the conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

I agree about the scale of the change, but I'm less convinced the power automatically moves away from retailers.

Google became the front door to a vast amount of commerce and e-commerce, and yet strong brands still built direct relationships.

So I think the retailers have adapted to new gatekeepers before.

It's

true, you know, they have.

But this gatekeeper doesn't just send you somewhere.

You know, it can interpret the need.

It can compare the options and make the recommendation.

We used to fight.

for location, then for shelf space, then page one on Google.

And I was looking this up the other day.

We've been doing that for about 25 years now, which seems mind-blowing, right? But now the fight may be to become one of the top three brands that just get included in the answer.

Yep, it may well be.

But that could improve retail, you could argue.

Search has often rewarded whoever spent the most or understood the algorithm best.

And an AI assistant ought, at least in theory, to reward relevance.

The better product or better retailer may have a stronger chance of being surfaced in the first place.

Possibly, you know, or it rewards whoever has the richest data, the most reviews and the strongest platform relationships.

You know, my concern is not that AI makes bad choices.

It's that retailers underestimate how much of the customer journey they may surrender.