Opinion, by co-editor Owen Gorenc.

I'll say the unpopular thing first: I think a handful of retail companies that have rebranded themselves around "AI-powered shopping" are more hype than substance, and I think the stock prices reflect that hype more than the actual businesses.

Here's my reasoning. Adding a chatbot to a website is not the same thing as building a durable competitive advantage. Over the last two quarters, at least three retailers I follow have used the phrase "AI-driven personalization" in earnings calls without giving a single concrete number on how it changed sales, margins, or return rates. When a company can't or won't quantify the benefit of a big initiative, that's usually a sign the benefit is smaller than the marketing suggests.

Compare that to companies that talk about AI in boring, specific terms — "this cut our warehouse routing costs by 4%" — and you can actually evaluate the claim. Vague enthusiasm doesn't hold up the same way under a bad quarter.

To be clear, I'm not arguing AI isn't a real trend in retail — it obviously is. I'm arguing that the market is currently pricing in the hype of AI language rather than the evidence of AI results, and that gap tends to close eventually, usually not gently.

Disclosure, as always: this is my opinion as a high schooler who reads too many earnings transcripts, not investment advice. See the disclaimer below.