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This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail.

2025 was another challenging year for the retail industry, as tariffs added another crushing blow to an industry that had already been dealing with sky-high inflation and waning VC dollars in recent years.

The numbers lay bare how challenging it was for the retail industry: As of October, job cuts across U.S. firms hit a 22-year high, with retail being one of the hardest-hit industries. And of course, there were bankruptcies. U.S. business bankruptcies as a whole reached 6,574 in the third quarter of 2025, the highest since mid-2014.

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Generative AI tools crept closer to the uncanny valley this year as tools like OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Nano Banana, have flooded the market. Marketers have higher expectations than ever for AI to streamline marketing processes and save dollars. The novelty of generative AI has worn off and marketers want controllable, consistent tools that can be easily integrated into the creative ecosystem.

“If you’re using AI to automate a certain task, but then you have to move files from 15 different softwares, you’re not actually making your life more efficient,” said Freddy Dabaghi, chief transformation officer at Crispin.

This year has brought winners, losers and middleground contenders based on their integration capabilities, user interface and of course, final output. To get a better sense of how these tools performed this year, Digiday pulled together a 2025 agency generative AI report card ranking based on output, user experience and capabilities. This list is by no means exhaustive as generative AI tools continue to flood the market. 

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