The dark funnel: Nikki Baird on how LLMs are disrupting retail data

On this episode of Talking Shop, we are joined by Nikki Baird, Vice President of Strategy and Product at Aptos. Nikki has spent decades separating technology hype from real-world consumer behavior. Today, we delve into the emergence of the "dark funnel" and how LLMs like ChatGPT are disrupting traditional retail search pipelines, breaking retail media networks, and forcing retailers to their re-evaluate product landing page.

We also discuss why AI adoption is hitting a wall because foundational data integration is still broken, how to transition high-turnover staff away from traditional cash registers into mobile sales-enablement tools, and where the smartest retail IT leaders are reallocating their budgets for the second half of 2026 to ensure real ROI instead of just firefighting.