What Shoptalk Spring 2026 revealed about retail's AI moment

Every year, Shoptalk Spring draws together the people actually running retail. In 2026, the whole conference had one throughline: AI. Not whether to use it. How.

Gladly was in Las Vegas for all of it. Here's what stood out — and why it's shaping the conversations we're bringing to Gladly Connect Live in May.

What is Shoptalk Spring?

Shoptalk Spring is one of retail's largest annual conferences, held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The 2026 show ran March 22–24 and drew more than 10,000 attendees, roughly one in three of them C-suite. Speakers came from Wayfair, Macy's, GAP, Pinterest, Meta, SharkNinja, and over 180 other companies.

The format goes beyond keynotes. Shoptalk's Meetup program — the world's largest retail meetings program — generated more than 50,000 curated one-on-one meetings at the 2026 show. Part conference, part deal room. The theme for 2026 was Retail in the Age of AI, which set the tone for nearly every conversation on and off the main stage.

Where retail's AI questions are getting serious

Shoptalk's audience is the one Gladly is built for: CX leaders, digital teams, and operations executives at retail and consumer brands who are actively deciding how AI fits into their customer experience.

The 2026 theme made the timing feel right. Brands are past the "should we use AI?" stage. They're asking harder questions: Does it actually resolve customer problems? What does quality control look like at scale? How do you keep the experience feeling human when automation is doing more of the work?

Gladly showed up to join that conversation — not to sell into it. The 2026 theme put our core value proposition front and center in every room, and the brands we met with are asking exactly the right questions about what end-to-end AI resolution actually looks like in practice.

What the AI conversation in retail actually sounds like

A few themes surfaced consistently across sessions and one-on-ones at Shoptalk.

AI that routes customers around their problems can lower ticket volume — but brands are realizing that's not the same as building loyalty. The goal is both.

Build-vs.-buy is back on the table. The pace of AI development has many companies reassessing whether to build their own infrastructure or work with a platform that already has AI integrated with human workflows. The real calculation is total cost of ownership: not just licensing, but the ops, training, and quality control that building from scratch requires.

Traditional performance metrics are getting harder to interpret, too. When AI handles routine volume, the cases reaching human agents skew more complex. That shifts what CSAT scores actually measure and what a reasonable handle time looks like.

The work continues in Atlanta

The most useful conversations at Shoptalk happened between practitioners — people comparing what they'd tried, what held, and what broke. That's the same energy we're bringing to Gladly Connect Live.

Sessions go deep on AI implementation architecture, trust and governance, the right metrics for the AI era, and redesigning team roles when automation handles the routine. Speakers include CX leaders from Condé Nast, StockX, Ollie, The Black Tux, Crate & Barrel, and more.

Shoptalk confirmed that retail is figuring out AI in real time. Gladly Connect Live is where the people doing that work compare notes.