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.

翻译：新冠疫情严重扰乱了零售业格局，并加速了创新技术的应用。一个显著例子是在线杂货订单的激增以及为促进此类物流而部署的技术。事实上，对许多零售商而言，这种中断是一记警钟，促使他们开始认识到数据分析与人工智能（AI）的力量。本文探讨了在“新常态”零售格局下，人工智能可为零售商提供的机遇。部分描述的技术已被大规模应用于调整先前部署的人工智能模型；而在其他情况下，则需要开发全新的解决方案，以帮助零售商应对近期的干扰，例如意外的恐慌性购买、预测模型的重训练，以及线上线下协同效应的利用。