The line between customer-facing and back-office software is rapidly vanishing. GK Software mostly builds retail Point of Sale systems, but they’ve expanded to other channels and adjacent functions such as merchandising and promotion management. They just announced they’ll be using artificial intelligence to generate personalized product recommendations, dynamic pricing and promotions, smart shopping lists, and individualized newsletters. These can be delivered via POS, mobile POS, and self-service channels. You can bet there’s a customer database lurking somewhere underneath.

Snark aside, I think Forrester is right. Accenture agrees: they found that 44% of consumers are frustrated by lack of personalization but 49% worry about privacy when they subscribe to data-driven services. More than half (58%) would switch to a company that personalizes without compromising trust.

There’s no shortage of lawsuits by publishers against genAI platforms for copyright infringement; now major studios are getting with the program. Walt Disney and Comcast’s Universal are accusing Midjourney of using some of their best known characters (think Darth Vader and the Minions) in its AI image generator — a “bottomless pit of plagiarism,” they say. No response yet from Midjourney.