Christine Russo with Greg Wilson of RELEX on Moving Retail AI From Insight to Action

What Just Happened went to NRF 2026 in New York City. Christine Russo sat down live at the RELEX booth with Greg Wilson, VP of Field Strategy at RELEX Solutions, to unpack how AI in retail is finally moving from experimentation to real world deployment.

Wilson explains why RELEX has a structural advantage in the current AI moment. Long before large language models dominated the conversation, the company built deep infrastructure using advanced mathematics, optimization, and exception based decisioning to solve complex retail problems. That foundation now allows RELEX to deploy targeted AI agents that move seamlessly from insight to action, rather than simply flagging issues and leaving teams to piece together solutions on their own.

Russo and Wilson discuss why AI cannot live in silos, and why retail organizations structured around product movement rather than the customer are hitting real limits. As customers themselves become AI enabled and more informed across pricing, promotions, and availability, retailers must respond faster and with greater precision. Wilson makes the case that the real challenge is no longer technology, but organizational change.

The conversation also explores how RELEX is applying AI at the store level, especially in complex areas like fresh grocery, where intuition has historically driven decisions. By equipping store teams with AI powered recommendations and aggregating that intelligence upstream, RELEX is helping retailers improve availability, freshness, and execution in real time.

The episode closes with a pragmatic view of AI’s hype cycle and a clear analogy for how it should work. Large language models act as orchestrators, while specialized agents and tools do the real work. The takeaway is simple. AI delivers value when it is purpose built, interactive, and designed to turn decisions into outcomes at speed.