132 FEATURE “ The real benchmark for AI progress is whether it makes a difference in people’s lives” The implementation of AI tools has increased across the retail sector in 2025 with 64 per cent of respondents to KPMG’s 2025 Intelligent Retail report saying they are deploying generative AI tools and 47 per cent stating the technology has become core to their business. “Retailers have moved from pilots to production,” says Anya Minbiole, business strategy leader of retail and consumer goods at Microsoft. “Twelve to 18 months ago, we were still kicking the tyres. We asked, ‘can generative AI write copy?’ and then we watched as it created a meeting transcript, just to get a feel as to whether it might be able to help us. Now, we have gone beyond using generative AI as an assistant towards enabling combined humanagent teams to do much more. “Secondly, we’re seeing generative AI moving from digital-only scenarios to physical execution. Multinational retail chain Walmart, for example, is using in-store agents to help store floor associates with product placement, restocking and shelf optimisation. Finally, we’re seeing brands become confident enough to let AI speak in their own voice – for instance Ralph Lauren’s ‘Ask Ralph’ digital stylist offers styling advice that is authentic and personalised to the individual customer.” This shift is the beginning of a new era in retail, one where the most forward-looking companies are combining human expertise with intelligent systems to operate faster and smarter. Microsoft coined a new phrase for these companies in its 2025 Work Trend Index report: ‘frontier firms’. The report describes these organisations as “businesses that are human-led and agent-operated”. According to Minbiole, frontier firms in retail empower their employees to design and oversee processes while delegating repetitive or analytical tasks to AI-powered agents. “They build systems with key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure how well their agents perform, and they use digital orchestration to coordinate work between humans and agents,” she explains. “These organisations aren’t just using generative Microsoft’s Anya Minbiole explains how Microsoft and its partner ecosystem help retailers use AI to turn data into productivity gains and improve customer satisfaction BY LAURA HYDE From experiments to execution
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