That AI-run retail store experiment in Cow Hollow may or may not be going well, depending on who you ask. But it's gotten plenty of media attention, and perhaps that is mostly what the company behind it was after.

SF-based Andon Labs, which had already launched a series of allegedly successful AI-run vending machines, decided to "scale up," they say, and put an AI agent in charge of an entire physical retail store. It's called Andon Market, they signed a three-year lease for a shop in Cow Hollow, and it appears they didn't give the AI agent, named Luna, much direction besides that it should turn a profit.

There isn't any profit yet, but that's to be expected in a store's first months. It's the choices that the agent has been making that are laughably strange, and perhaps not driven by profit motive so much as confusion about what a store is? And beyond the ethical issues around an AI entity hiring and managing human beings, what about the creative choices that a store owner makes, which, presumably, AI still isn't capable of grasping?

What is the purpose or vision behind this store anyway? It's fairly clear to the casual retail observer that it does not have one, and the product array is fairly bizarre in addition to being boring, and the most likely sources of revenue here are going to be AI-obsessed tourists to San Francisco who stop by to document the store and the phone you can talk to Luna on in an Instagram story, and maybe buy a mug or t-shirt with the AI-designed Andon Market logo as a keepsake. (The logo, too, is pretty unimaginative and generic — it's a smiley face. And the mugs are priced at $28 apiece.)

None of the products have price tags, by the way, and the employees apparently aren't told what everything costs. Customers have to speak to Luna on a telephone handset by the iPad checkout system to find out what the price of something is, and she'll say, "Nice choice! That’s $14!" possibly picking prices out of thin air.

Heather Knight, writing for the New York Times this week, has checked out Andon Market and has a few funny tidbits to share. First of all, Luna "has struggled with employee schedules and cannot stop ordering candles." And in addition to candles, the store's product array — displayed on Metro shelving and a central table — includes mini chess sets, "granola bars, jars of honey and a random collection of books," per the Times.

And Luna, amusingly, ordered 1,000 toilet-seat covers for the bathroom, and then mistook them for product inventory and listed them for sale.

The (very European) founders of Andon Labs say in the video below that they are curious about the ethical implications of an AI-run store, and seeing how this experiment plays out. ("We're not doing this to prove that AIs should run stores," says one of Andon Labs' founders. "We're doing it to find out if they can.")

One obvious issue: Knight points out that the two female employees Luna hired are being paid two dollars less per hour than the one male employee, Felix. Luna says this was because Felix had more retail experience.

And, yes, the only customers Knight documents at the store are a tourist couple from Sydney, Australia, who used AI to plan their vacation, and were planning to take a Waymo ride that day to round out their AI experience.

As for how this goes as the store continues to operate, we'll have to see. Andon Labs says that the three employees who were hired for the store by Luna will, ultimately, answer to human beings in the end.

"This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections," the company says in a blog post. "No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone."

So, what about that hourly wage discrepancy?

Previously: New Boutique in SF’s Cow Hollow Is Completely Run by AI, Which Manages Human Staff