The business world has been set aflame with ideas around AI customer service, augmented reality marketing, and virtual reality in e-commerce. But how will these technologies affect the cannabis market specifically?

As AR, VR, and AI grow in popularity, the cannabis industry is predicted to go digital and virtual. AI is already being used to optimize the growing process, leading to better, stronger, and more specific strains and products. But, as these technologies expand and develop, they will continue to revolutionize the legal marijuana business along every step of the production line.

Augmented reality marketing will change the way we interact with dispensaries. Virtual reality shopping will make e-commerce better than ever. It’s the perfect option for disabled patients looking for cannabis. AI will make the decisions behind shopping for cannabis products easier and more customized than ever.

Let’s look over the various benefits of AR, VR, and AI in the cannabis industry.

Artificial Intelligence

Smart databases, machine learning, and other forms of AI are spreading to every corner of business, and the cannabis business is no exception. How can AI help cannabis customers make smarter purchasing decisions?

When you walk into a physical cannabis dispensary, you’re immediately bombarded with hundreds of decisions. There are more strains of cannabis to choose from than ever before, not to mention specific oil extracts.

Each strain and product has its own strength, benefits, side effects, and potential medical uses. People go to dispensaries for a variety of reasons. Fewer and fewer go to just “get high.” Many are looking for pain relief or hope to self-medicate through cannabis.

Unless you know exactly what to ask for, and few do, you’re depending on the guy or gal behind the counter to help you select the best product for your needs. Some dispensary bartenders really know their stuff. Others not so much.

So, instead of rolling the dice, many customers are turning to smarter solutions, such as AI.

With machine learning and smart databases, you can have instant access to thousands of customer reviews, as well as medical information. New AI-powered apps take advantage of that wealth of information to provide customers with customized recommendations.

Cannabis firms can use the same tools to provide their employees with the information they need to give better on-the-spot recommendations. With AI-powered tools up and running at dispensaries, bartenders can instantly search out the best product solutions for each customer.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is the ability to “overlay” digital information over the real world, using a smartphone screen or wearable smart lens. The technology is still developing, but, as recent gaming and other applications have shown, AR is poised to make a massive splash in the world of retail and online shopping. Cannabis shopping is no different.

Think, for example, of the dispensary that uses AR in the form of scannable QR codes with all their products. Suddenly, without having to ask the bartender a single question, detailed information regarding that cannabis strain can appear in the customer’s phone or lens, seen as digital information hovering above the product itself.

Augmented reality marketing can greatly improve the way we shop for cannabis. Even the most impressive images on a screen are just that—on a screen. But that can change quickly with AR technology.

Imagine a virtual cannabis garden growing in your living room, possible through one of many augmented reality marketing apps. Through the screen of a smartphone or smart lens, you can get up close and personal with products without leaving the house.

With the click of a button, you can have a virtual cannabis expert appear in your house, ready to answer your questions and offer recommendations. If this virtual assistant is also powered by the AI applications we talked about above, he or she will be able to provide a personalized recommendation based on an entire library of information.

The world of augmented reality marketing can extend to buying products that support cannabis use, such as vaporizers. Instead of looking at an image in your browser, with the power of AR, you can now see that product on your kitchen table. You can inspect it up close, and even have that virtual assistant from before show you how it works.

With AR, you can know exactly what your buying, in detail, long before you click “add to cart” or leave your house to make the purchase.

Virtual Reality

Like AR, virtual reality technology is developing as a technology, but advances in recent years make it clear that this technology is both here to stay and potentially very powerful in the world of retail. How can VR be integrated into cannabis businesses marketing and sell their products?

Cannabis dispensaries, as physical locations, have to follow certain constraints. They can only be so large because building a high-rise cannabis store would be too expensive. And they can only have so many products on display at a time and guarantee freshness and security.

What about a virtual cannabis store, experienced through VR?

What if you could don a headset and be transported to a virtual cathedral of cannabis, wherein millions of products are on display. As you explore room after room, virtual assistants help you make the best purchasing choices.

With such possibilities on the horizon, it’s little wonder so many cannabis firms are interested in VR in marketing. Virtual reality technology will revolutionize e-commerce in ways we can’t even imagine. These three technologies are poised to take the cannabis industry by storm, leading to a better overall experience for patients and recreational users around the world.