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Over the past year, there has been no shortage of buzz on Generative AI (“Gen AI”). However, widespread adoption of Gen AI tools within enterprises has not yet happened. When engaging with enterprise users, two common objections arise: 1) The time it takes for Gen AI models to learn the job properly, and 2) The perception that Gen AI will replace human jobs. Our response to these two objections is the framework of an AI Intern.

Just like any new hire, Gen AI requires the right onboarding, context, and instructions to perform at its best for a specific industry. In the retail industry, merchandising interns provide valuable support to senior merchants during assortment planning. They collect competitor pricing data, monitor consumer trends on social media, and analyze sales data across different markets. These tasks are time-consuming and used to be done manually at a limited scale but they are essential for effective sell ins and sell throughs. While teaching the intern to perform these analyses may take some time, it is a worthwhile investment because it frees up the merchant's capacity to focus on interpreting the insights and their implications for negotiations with other human stakeholders. Similarly, if a merchant decides to use a Gen AI tool, they need to ensure accurate and up-to-date data inputs, as well as provide feedback to the tool on the expected output. Although training the Gen AI model may have an initial learning curve, it unlocks long-term productivity gains. Furthermore, the reinforcement learning mechanism of Gen AI improves its output over time, making early learning even more valuable.

Some pundits in the media have raised concerns about job displacement due to AI. However, the promise of Gen AI is not to replace human thinking but to handle manual repetitive tasks that devalue human labor. Gen AI enables humans to surpass the natural limits of information processing. For example, while an intern analyzing assortment whitespace can only handle hundreds or thousands of SKUs across a few brands at a time, Gen AI tools can summarize catalogs and predict trends at much larger scale within seconds, ensuring no insights are left untapped. Just as an experienced merchant does not fear the intern taking their job and collaborates with them to achieve better business outcomes, users should reevaluate their work processes and leverage Gen AI tools to their advantage. With the Ise AI intern by their side, brand merchants can amplify their own capabilities, derive more impactful insights, and negotiate with confidence with other stakeholders.

Ise AI builds technology that serves humans. To see how we build Gen AI tools to transform the retail industry, schedule a demo with us and follow the Ise Insights series to learn more.