Nearly nine out of 10 retailers are adopting or piloting artificial intelligence, according to Nvidia’s 2025 State of AI in Retail and CPG survey, but are retail professionals properly approaching AI so they can extract adequate value from it? Speakers at an ICSC LAS VEGAS session titled AI-Driven Retail: Insights to Innovation offered advice to ensure AI is an asset, not a liability:

• Pacific Retail Capital Partners COO Donna Blair suggested experimenting with AI slowly, focusing on one goal at a time rather than tackling several issues all at once.
• MRI Software senior director Steven McKissick assured audience members that incorporating AI into their operations doesn’t require an enormous investment. “The jump to get there is not as big as you think,” he said.
• Coresight Research president Max Kahn recommended treating AI as an effectiveness-improvement tool rather than an employee-replacement tool.
• Mark Kalkwarf, founder and CEO of real estate marketing and branding agency Atypical, cautioned against viewing AI as a “magic button” for solving an organization’s problems. “You have to be very conscious of what you’re putting into it and what you’re expecting to get out of it,” said Kalkwarf. “You are going to get stuff out and it’s going to be quick and it’s going to be at scale, but if you’re putting garbage in, you’re going to get garbage out — you’re just going to get a lot more of it.”