Tech Corner:

The Year of AI

A decade from now, will we look back on 2025 as a landmark year for unattended retail?

Regardless of the fact that the “AI” of today is not the artificial intelligence of the sci-fi movies we grew up with, “AI” as a catch-all label for technologies that offer automated judgement has been the hot topic of 2025.

It would seem obvious that this is the next step in our industry. By definition, unattended retail depends on technology that allows operators to manage their machines, locations and sales without being there to oversee every transaction. The more tasks that can be performed by a machine, the easier it becomes (in theory) to run your business and provide an elevated customer experience.

On the supplier side of our membership, we can see that businesses are already exploring the advantages of AI, from stock management, to theft detection, to customised interactions with the end user. Smart machines can now monitor stock levels and feedback the real-time data on when and how each sale is made. Internal monitoring tracks maintenance issues and can even prompt inbuilt software diagnostics and simple fixes. How much time would it save if your machines could reliably clean themselves during quiet periods? How much less waste would there be if you could reliably track products with shorter shelf lives? Access to these benefits without having to increase an operator’s physical presence with the machines promises a boon for unattended retail.

So what happens next?

Analysts are predicting continued escalation in the mass adoption of AI technologies, but with a catch: huge investment is needed to create the necessary infrastructure to support it.

AI systems like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Meta AI, and Microsoft’s CoPilot, have been at the forefront of the conversation on AI and the most openly available systems to use. ChatGPT reportedly had over 900 million weekly users in 2025, more than double its 2024 numbers. The infrastructure needed to support this type of growth is beyond current resources – and the world is rushing to catch up in key areas:

Energy production

One AI data centre is predicted to need more energy per year than the total used in the entire province of Ontario. With ten of these centres approved for construction in the US alone, energy production needs to increase dramatically to meet demand. In the UK, three new Small Modular Reactor (SMR) nuclear power stations were announced this year to address the needs of AI infrastucture, and it’s expected that more countries will turn to nuclear power.

Water Supply

Data centres need massive amounts of water for cooling systems. Its been reported that some current data centres in the US have placed such high demands on the local water supply that it’s been causing droughts in the nearby towns. Innovation in cooling technology and water reclamation are priorities for both developers and governments.

Hardware Availability

AI programs need a lot of advanced hardware; the physical drives, chips and motherboards that sit inside the neat package of most machines. But one type of component – random-access memory or RAM – is causing a crisis. RAM demand had been increasing before AI, with use in all laptops, phones consoles and cars, and older formats recently being retired pushing companies to both purchase new and replace old stock.

With the AI boom, and its vast RAM requirements, the supply of this vital component can’t meet demand and has sent prices skyrocketing. It’s not going to improve any time soon – one of the big three manufacturers announced its exit from the retail market to serve its largest commercial contracts exclusively from January.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, with so many advantages for the unattended retail market in the adoption of AI tech, both operators and suppliers will be investigating every opportunity. It will be important to keep ahead of the news, to help predict potential fluctuations in pricing, parts and reliability.

With these considerations in mind, this is the beginning of an exciting era in tech - and the industry is about to take a ground-breaking step into the future.

The Canadian Automatic Merchandising Association

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