Thanks to ​@johnOHara  for yesterday’s demo of Box AI for retail.  You can find the poll on AI use cases for retail, Box AI demo, and customer Q&A here

Poll on AI use cases

To gauge attendees' perspectives on AI's role in retail, ​@johnOHara launched an interactive poll. Participants were asked which applications of AI they believed would have the biggest impact, with options like personalized recommendations, supply chain optimization, and contract management. John emphasized the disruptive nature of AI, stating:

"It’s crazy to think that all of this is potentially disruptive innovation created by artificial intelligence — something we didn’t even consider just a few years ago."

Managing Digital Assets

​@johnOHara  began by addressing the challenges retailers face in managing digital assets—marketing collateral, campaign materials, and assets designed for omni-channel endpoints. He demonstrated how Box’s solutions simplify these processes, replacing outdated manual workflows with automation. Notable features included:

• Workflow Automation with Box Relay: "A Box Relay workflow under the hood...automatically takes the form that was submitted, moves the contents into a new folder, and gives it a consistent naming convention normalized to the agency and the date stamp of the submission."

This automation ensures assets are organized effectively, reducing manual labor and improving reliability.

• Metadata-Based Organization: Demonstrating the ability to configure dashboards with customized filter views, John described how metadata extracted from uploaded assets could be used for filtering by attributes like primary color or content type. He shared how Box AI eliminates the need for manual metadata entry, saying: "All I have to do is select this autofill with Box AI, and then metadata gets extracted for me."

• Human-Centric Scaling: While AI drives efficiency, John stressed the importance of keeping "a human in the loop" to refine results: "Box AI really scales the ability of your experts to do what they’re good at instead of just filling in manual data entry."

Real-time updates shown during the demo illustrated the visibility and flexibility that Box AI provides, making it easier for retail teams to adapt and scale.

Creating Marketing Campaigns with AI

In the second portion of the demo,  ​@johnOHara  showcased how Box AI simplifies creating marketing campaigns using a custom AI agent. The agent generated:

• A product description

• Key features

• Social media scripts with hashtags

• Ideas for co-branding and events

• SEO and paid ad keywords

John noted that the AI agent can be fine-tuned to match brand guidelines or target specific audiences, offering unmatched customization and speed in campaign development.

Key Insights from the Q&A

The Q&A segment brought clarifications and deeper insights into Box AI’s features. When asked by ​@jackbox  about metadata templates, John confirmed their importance:

"The answer is yes. We need a metadata template so that AI knows what fields need to be filled in. Metadata field descriptions serve as micro prompts embedded in the AI workflow, guiding AI to skip irrelevant fields for certain asset types."

This explanation underscored the strategic role of metadata in shaping robust AI workflows tailored to specific business needs.

See some tips here on customizing Metadata templates from ​@Jey Bueno Box  

If you are in retail or consumer packaged goods, we welcome you to share your content use cases here!