From the shop floor to the analyst’s desk, Sucharita Kodali, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, has spent over twenty years studying how technology reshapes retail. Her experience spans big-box brands, startups, and global marketplaces, giving her a front-row seat to how data, automation, and consumer trust define modern commerce. In this episode of VTEX Live, Sucharita joins Santiago Naranjo, Chief Revenue Officer of VTEX, to unpack the real story behind AI in retail. She explains how machine learning has quietly powered the industry for decades, what separates generative tools from truly agentic systems, and why trust, not algorithms, remains the hardest challenge. Together, they explore practical use cases, the slow journey toward autonomous decision-making, and how human oversight still anchors innovation in commerce. If you’ve been trying to understand where AI truly meets retail reality, this conversation delivers clarity, depth, and direction for leaders ready to build technology on a foundation of trust.