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You might have seen\u00a0viral videos<\/a>\u00a0of Wendy\u2019s drive-thru customers in the United States ordering their fast food from the firm\u2019s generative AI bot\u00a0Wendy\u2019s FreshAI<\/a>. Most show a very human-like transaction punctuated with\u00a0cries of amazement<\/a>\u00a0at how fast, accurate and polite the system is.<\/p>\n While the system and others like it are in their infancy, and some still\u00a0rely heavily on human assistance<\/a>, retailers are investing\u00a0huge sums in AI<\/a>\u00a0to replace human workers.<\/p>\n Why the rush to automate? It might seem like it\u2019s all about slashing the wage bill, and straight AI-for-human swaps are indeed\u00a0happening in many roles<\/a>.<\/p>\n But there is another force driving the\u00a0tsunami of restructuring<\/a>\u00a0in retail. At stake is the hidden lifeblood of the 21st-century business: data.<\/p>\n Retail employees don\u2019t typically feed much data back into a business. Instead data flow shapes them personally, and they develop what we recognise as experience or expertise. This is one of the reasons businesses traditionally\u00a0try to retain employees<\/a>\u00a0for long periods.<\/p>\n Retail AI bots<\/a>, on the other hand, completely automate data collection. The bot is part of a business\u2019s broader computer system, so the details of every customer interaction can be piped straight to a database. The data harvest can include the complete \u201cstimulus\u201d presented to each customer: the initial greeting, the volume, the tone, the pacing, responses to customer questions, and of course the dollar and cents outcome.<\/p>\nSuperhuman data harvesters<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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