  The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted the retail landscape and has
accelerated the adoption of innovative technologies. A striking example relates
to the proliferation of online grocery orders and the technology deployed to
facilitate such logistics. In fact, for many retailers, this disruption was a
wake-up call after which they started recognizing the power of data analytics
and artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, we discuss the opportunities
that AI can offer to retailers in the new normal retail landscape. Some of the
techniques described have been applied at scale to adapt previously deployed AI
models, whereas in other instances, fresh solutions needed to be developed to
help retailers cope with recent disruptions, such as unexpected panic buying,
retraining predictive models, and leveraging online-offline synergies.
