With news that Home Depot is expanding its Magic Apron AI assistant across its US stores, AI is no longer just a digital shopping tool – it is becoming part of the physical shopping domain, creating a new kind of “search engine.”
A common assumption is that AI commerce means ecommerce but this is no longer the case. Chains like Home Depot are using omnichannel AI to effectively connect AI with its product data, inventory, and shop infrastructure, thus creating a streamlined journey between digital assistance and the physical shopping environment.
Next phase of retail AI is physical
By expanding its Magic Apron AI assistant throughout 2,000 plus US stores, Home Depot may be demonstrating the next era of retail AI, where the technology moves offline into physical shop floors.
The AI assistant includes localised store knowledge, allowing customers to use text, voice, and image queries to find products, navigate stores, and receive tailored expert advice. According to Home Depot, the AI assistant connects conversational AI with inventory, product data, and store wayfinding, enabling in-aisle assistance via smartphones.
Through physical AI, retailers can create a more connected shopping experience, one that could potentially help customers make decisions faster. What stands out is the role of AI beyond the digital channel. AI isn’t replacing the physical store, a common concern as retailers increase their use of AI. Instead, AI is enhancing the in-store experience.
AI could yet become a catalyst for cost-efficiency and productivity, both physically and digitally. As well as providing enhanced knowledge and decision support for customers and store associates, generative AI technology has the potential to fuel new growth through hyper-personalised offers.
AI is moving up the funnel
Generative AI is not just used to automate tasks anymore; it now augments frontline employees, improving how they serve customers. Experts believe the potential for AI-driven automation across retail roles, from first-line managers to entry-level employees, is significant, with up to 60% of tasks potentially being automated.
Such applications are largely driven by upstream functions like marketing and merchandising, rather than store operators highlighting AI’s influence on everything from customer targeting to product recommendations.
While AI is shaping the customer journey in-store, the core of its influence begins long before the point of purchase. AI is undoubtedly moving up the marketing funnel, with prospecting and lead generation emerging as key areas of adoption.
Through analysis of customer and market data, AI is helping brands identify high-value audiences, delivering more relevant content and offers at scale. By analysing customer and market data, AI can help brands identify high-value audiences, tailor messaging, and deliver more relevant content and offers at scale.
This creates a more connected journey between marketing and retail, with AI potentially influencing everything from how a customer first discovers a product to how they are supported when they eventually walk into a store. The opportunity is not simply to automate individual tasks but to use AI to connect the different stages of the customer journey.
Unified commerce could connect AI across the customer journey
A McKinsey report found that AI is reshaping the entire customer journey, with its biggest potential being across customer experience, growth, and productivity. Hyper-personalisation is the key to all three areas, according to McKinsey, helping brands and retailers create tailored content and messaging at scale.
As customers expect consistent experiences across both digital and physical channels, omnichannel is increasingly becoming the baseline. In a traditional omnichannel setup, a trailer may have a website, app, and physical stores, with each running on separate systems. Now, a unified commerce is emerging as customer, product, pricing, and inventory information are connected and shared in real time across digital and physical channels.
For AI to successfully bridge the online and in-store journey, access to this real-time information is needed. Therefore, retailers can move past standalone AI tools and offer a more connected customer experience.
The adoption of AI into physical stores and its greater influence on discovery means measurement may become a new challenge. Customer journeys may become harder to track across traditional digital touchpoints, so retailers and marketers must understand not only where the purchase happened, but how AI influences the customer along the way.
These challenges and questions are likely to become hugely important as marketers explore how AI is transforming discovery and conversion, themes that will be central to conversations at DMWF’s upcoming events, beginning with expert insight at the Digital Marketing World Forum North America 2026 in New York.
With Home Depot integrating AI into its stores, it is clear that the technology is becoming part of the retail environment itself, and not sitting alongside as another digital channel. For marketers, this makes the customer journey more fluid but also potentially more challenging to influence and measure.The next battleground for retail AI may not be on a screen, but within the physical spaces where purchasing decisions are actively made.
See also: Mastercard research highlights the next challenge for brands: Winning over AI agents
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