When Adolfo Rodriguez, Guitar Center’s CTO and CIO, was learning to play the six-string some two decades ago, he wanted to get his instrument to imitate the crunchy power-chords of AC/DC’s lead guitar player, Angus Young. He’d turn the knobs on his Gibson SG, yank the gain way up on his amp, and try pedals—only to figure out that Young rarely used pedals.
Now he wants to help rockstar hopefuls find their sound quickly. In the coming months, Rodriguez said, an in-store large language model, trained on musical data and developed in partnership with an AI-service provider, will assist customers. He tested out the AI model recently.
“I told it, ‘Hey, I play this ’83 Les Paul Studio, and I have a Boss ME-70 pedal. How do I sound like Angus Young?’ And it spits out to me all of the settings that I need to do to approximate Angus Young’s sound, as close as possible with that equipment…That’s amazing,” he said. Rodriguez imagines patrons using the capability in-store, with the help of a QR code.
Guitar Center—a place where you grab any guitar off the wall and play it—also wants to bring digital tech like GenAI into its store, to help employees and customers. As CTO, Rodriguez must find the right balance of adding a “generative” component that, at times, feels at odds with the creative process, generating ideas for the creator.
“The responsibility that we have to bring capabilities and empower our citizens to create music, to bring music to life, is an incredibly daunting responsibility, but one that I think about every day, the second I wake up,” Rodriguez said. “It is incredibly exciting, but we can’t lose the touch that it is about the experience, and that is a very human thing.”
We’re going to Guitar Center! As CTO and CIO, Rodriguez is in charge of supporting all operational technology, including retail systems, and customer experiences at Guitar Center, a place with lots of guitars on lots of walls—and drums, DJ equipment, and other instruments, too, by the way.
Rodriguez sees the store as a “Disneyland experience for the serious musician.”
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“We hear this story a ton from our customers. They often talk about their younger version of themselves walking into a Guitar Center for the first time and just marveling at the product,” he said.
GenAI for everyone. While he has to push the customer experience, he also needs to ease the employee one. A GenAI feature currently helps Guitar Center employees with buyback transactions. Now after an attendant enters a few manual details like brand, model, and year, an AI model automatically generates broader product descriptions covering attributes and specs—and backgrounds are automatically removed from photos. One automatically generated description, on the site, begins: “Vintage 1968 Gibson ES-335 Sunburst Hollow Body Electric Guitar in good condition, offering the warm, resonant tones that have made this model a legend.”
That kind of poetry used to have to be done manually by the in-store employee, who now has free time (once the output is reviewed) that Rodriguez says can be dedicated to more immediate tasks, like talking with customers and polishing up the store.
The art of AI. A study from Deloitte found that 59% of global C-suite and executive leaders and 46% of board members had high or very high interest in GenAI technology in Q4 2024—a dip from Q1 numbers but still a sign of enthusiasm across industries.
Saving a retail employee time has perks, but the role of AI in artistic endeavors has led to concerns of piracy and the end of creativity.
Rodriguez has to find the right mix with AI, adding to a customer’s experience while not reducing the Disneyland effect. The tech pro wants you to try the hundreds of pedal stations, bang on a drum, spin a record and be wowed. He hopes AI can add to the mix, not overwhelm it.
“AI is a tool. It is not perfect, right? It is an aid that will allow you to be more efficient, to be better. But it does not replace humans,” he said. “I believe very unequivocally, that music is an important part of the human experience.”