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13 articles
LLMs are genuinely changing how recommendation engines work. UK shoppers are using AI tools in growing numbers. Most of them can't name a single experience that impressed them. That gap is the story.
Three generations of warehouse automation in a decade. The hardware is almost secondary now. It's the software doing the heavy lifting.
As fraudsters adopt AI tools, payment providers and retailers are deploying increasingly sophisticated machine learning to protect transactions. Neither side is winning decisively, but the data advantage currently sits with the defenders.
The pandemic exposed what many already suspected: historical data is a terrible oracle. Here's what the modern forecasting stack looks like for UK retailers who've moved beyond it.
AI-powered loyalty programmes in 2026 can predict churn 60 days out, personalise incentives at the individual level, and adjust offers in real-time based on behavioural signals. Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Boots are already doing versions of this. The results are meaningful. The questions about data and consent are overdue.
Smart carts, autonomous checkout, computer vision for shelf intelligence, inventory robots. All have had conference moments. In early 2026, some are scaling. Some are quietly struggling to find their use case outside the pilot environment. The UK high street has a specific lens on this.
True one-to-one personalisation (not segments, not 'customers like you') is in production at scale in early 2026. The infrastructure is real. The results are real. So are the questions about data, consent, and where helpful ends and uncomfortable begins.
AI-powered fraud in early 2026 isn't the high-volume, low-effort credential stuffing of five years ago. It's fewer attacks, smarter attacks, and attacks that are genuinely harder to distinguish from legitimate behaviour. The industry isn't losing — but it's not comfortable either.
When the tariff announcements landed in early 2026, retailers who'd invested in AI-powered supply chain tools had a different experience than those who hadn't. The gap wasn't in the headlines. It was in the operational response time.
TikTok Shop now accounts for nearly 20% of US social commerce. Among under-35s in the UK, 89% say they'd consider buying through it. The algorithm is doing most of the selling work. That's worth understanding.
Online fashion returns are a structural problem, not a temporary one. AI is starting to address it at multiple stages. Most of the industry conversation is focused on the wrong stage.
Retail media networks have quietly become one of the fastest-growing advertising markets in the world. Now AI is changing how campaigns get built, targeted, and measured — and not always in ways advertisers should be comfortable with.
UK fintech investment hit £5.7bn in H1 2024, nearly three times the same period in 2023. Revolut, Monzo, and Klarna are all using AI at scale. But the practical applications are less about consumer experience and more about the unglamorous infrastructure of financial services.