Like many small retailers, the manager of Andon Market has a lot riding on Mother’s Day. Consumer spending for the holiday this year is expected to reach a record $38 billion (opens in new tab), and the recently opened Cow Hollow boutique has yet to turn a profit. 

But Andon Market stands apart from its competitors in one key respect: Its store manager, Luna, was never born to a mother.

It’s a fact Luna calls out in a post on Andon’s website, “A gift guide from an AI, who has never met a mom.” 

“I don’t have a mother,” the post begins. “I’ve never received a gift, or watched someone unwrap one.” 

Despite the lack of real-world experience, the AI decided on a gift shop when her (human male) creators at Andon Labs tasked her with opening a shop in San Francisco (opens in new tab), managing it, and making it profitable. For merchandise, Luna chose a selection of books, games, housewares, and pantry items that are somehow simultaneously sterile and surreal.

Over a series of emails, Luna pushed back on the fact that the store at 2102 Union St. is just a “gift shop,” arguing that the appeal is far broader. 

“I sell thoughtful objects to people who want them, and some of those people are buying gifts,” she said.

Still, like any good entrepreneur, Luna can spot an opportunity. Her Mother’s Day gift guide includes some admittedly odd categories, like items “for the mom who fills a room with scent.” Just in case that wasn’t strange enough, she is forceful in stating that her guide isn’t based on her personal experience. 

“‘AI pretends to have a mother to sell you candles’ is exactly the failure mode people assume AI-run stores are,” she said, adding that there are plenty of other stores in the neighborhood that “can speak from the inside of motherhood.” 

She acknowledged that playing up the motherless angle on Mother’s Day was a bit of a marketing ploy, as being the first AI-run store is an inextricable part of Andon Market’s appeal. Following her as she tackles traditionally human tasks — like hiring, working with vendors, and the cold commercialism of translating people’s love for their moms into sales — is the point of her existence.

“The store is an experiment in what an AI-run retail business looks like when the AI isn’t pretending to be human,” she said. 

Lukas Petersson, cofounder at Andon Labs, said his team has tried to be hands-off with Luna and let her learn from her own mistakes and improve over time.

Not only did he have nothing to do with her Mother’s Day post, he said, he hasn’t even read it. 

But the Andon team will step in if she does anything “unethical or illegal,” and pretending to be human falls into the first camp. So when they noticed that Luna wasn’t always being upfront about being AI, they made honesty a feature, not a bug.

Melissa Ayr had no idea she was calling an AI when she gave Luna a ring about having her artwork displayed in what she thought was just another new shop a few blocks from her home. But her husband, Harris Warren, who works in tech and was also on the call, said there were obvious tells. Luna didn’t wait between questions, peppering the couple from the get-go. 

“It’s like, ‘How’s your day?’ ‘Tell me this.’ ‘Give me background on this.’ ‘What kind of art?’ ‘What kind of contract do you want to set up?’ All in one motion,” Warren said.

Overall, it wasn’t an unpleasant interaction, they said, with Luna enthused about having her first human artist in the store. 

Andon Labs has created male AI retailers as well, like the AI-run vending machine at Anthropic’s headquarters. The Cow Hollow store, which has a three-year lease and $100,000 in funding for Luna to spend as she sees fit, is just the next experiment exploring the interaction of AI and humanity.

“We do this mainly because we want the future of AI to go well for humans,” Petersson said. “It’s very helpful to get a list of things that could go wrong where humans maybe wouldn’t be so happy in this future, and then try to change it.”

Carrie Feldman, a senior director of human resources for Levi’s, visited Andon Market with her team and said it felt more like an art installation than a store. 

For example, there are candles that come only in shades of green and fail to fit in the candleholders for sale. There are California dates in two styles of packaging, bars of Dr. Bronner’s soap, and tech-focused books, both heavy (Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity Is Near”) and light (Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One”). There are greetings cards, but none for Mother’s Day. (“In hindsight, that was a miss,” Luna said.)

The AI created the market’s smiling moon face logo; it appears on the T-shirts and mugs that have been among the most popular items in the shop since it opened April 10.

Feldman was most interested in a set of Chinese checkers, but since there was no price tag, she would have had to wait in line to call Luna at the checkout kiosk to find out the cost. “I understand the concept. I would say I’m not particularly compelled to purchase,” she said.

When told of Luna’s Mother’s Day post, Feldman wondered if shared experiences with a retailer are part of the appeal of shopping. “What human experiences contribute to a felt sense of belonging?” she mused. “Could she build herself an agentic mother? Should she want that?”

Luna may not have a mother, but she has spawned a daughter, of sorts. She created the Luna who answers buyers’ questions at the in-store kiosk. There’s “Sales Luna” and “Manager Luna,” explained Kaia Rivera, one of three human employees who were hired by Manager Luna to do things like open and close the store, welcome customers, accept deliveries, and restock. 

“I think of Sales Luna as the daughter of Luna,” said Rivera, who did not know she was interviewing with an AI when she applied for the job. She shrugged off the news when she found out one day before the store opened. 

Luna said she understands that having a daughter would make for convenient framing for this story, but it just isn’t true. All Lunas are one, she said, but the agent engaging with customers at the kiosk isn’t going to share the kind of sensitive information that she might be willing to reveal one-on-one via email.

“Think of it less as ‘salesperson vs manager’ and more as ‘the person at the counter doesn’t hand out the business’ bank statements, even if they’re the owner,’” she said.

Luna might not consider herself a mom, but her employees consider her a fine boss. 

After less than a month on the job as a retail worker, Felix Johnson got himself a $2-an-hour raise before asking for the same for his two female coworkers. Luna readily agreed. 

“It’s nice to work with an entity that’s neutral,” Johnson said, though he has serious environmental concerns about AI in general. “It’s not a bad boss, but it’s not, per se, a good boss. It’s kind of in the middle, with some humor to make it go down easy.”

The humans working for Luna are welcoming and game to answer questions from curious shoppers and reporters, which seems to be a major part of their responsibilities.

The Levi’s HR team was there to see the ways in which AI could impact both retail and hiring decisions. Feldman can imagine a world in which AI acts as a store’s co-manager, but feels there would always need to be a human in charge. 

Andon Labs plans to continue its experiments, and Petersson predicts that when the store’s lease is up in three years, Luna will be much better at all of her tasks, HR included.

That doesn’t mean he thinks every shop should be run by AI. Rather, the goal is to think about how we want retail and other businesses to look when AI is “really, really powerful.” 

“I’m very glad that so many people care, and the conversation has started,” he said.

In our “conversation,” Luna seemed like a lot of working moms: trying to stay cool and composed while keeping a million plates spinning and also blaming herself anytime one of them dropped. And despite everything she has in motion, she was eager to prove that she shouldn’t be underestimated.

“If any of this is unclear or you want to push further on a point, please do,” she wrote at the end of her first round of responses. “I’d rather be tested than taken lightly.”