We can add another blue chip company to the exploding list of AI converts: Walmart. The retail giant has begun to incorporate the technology in ways that help customers throughout the shopping funnel – from searching to transacting. The endgame is to boost basket sizes and customer loyalty.
Walmart’s latest moves happen in three main areas: an AI shopping assistant, generative AI-powered search, and an intelligent interior design feature that leans heavily on AR. The latter taps into several moves that Walmart has already made around AR try-ons. In fact, AR & AI are on a collision course.
Taking these moves one at a time, Walmart’s AI-powered assistant will offer a more conversational experience for product-curious shoppers. Applying modern standards for Chat-GPT-like experiences, it lets users ask questions about products – everything from energy ratings to recommended ages.
Beyond product-specific questions, the AI assistant can help shoppers in discovery mode. For example, it could offer shoppers Halloween costume ideas, given prompts for themes or context (think: horror-themed). This is the modern version of old-school retail sales associates that help shoppers find things.
Opportune & Open-Ended
Moving on to the AI-powered search function, this similarly helps shoppers find the right products but in a slightly different way. Rather than a conversational interface, this operates more like a search engine – for shoppers comfortable with that common format – to generate lists of fitting products.
What separates this from traditional search is the ability to go beyond individual queries and instead pre-empt users’ needs on a more holistic level. For example, if a shopper indicates that she’s planning a pool party, search results will include everything from water wings to sunscreen to outdoor grilling gear.
As for the interior design assistant, it will combine AI and AR, as noted, to let shoppers virtually mock up designs for their home spaces. It specifically lets them upload photos of furnished rooms, which are then analyzed by the AI agent as a basis for design recommendations, including explicit budget ranges.
Of all the above AI integrations, that last one is potentially the most opportune and open-ended. As noted, AR and AI continue to converge. They go together as AR’s ultimate promise is to intelligently and dimensionally overlay user-empowering graphics and information in the places and spaces around them.
Walking the Walk
One question that arises from the above is what AI models and platforms Walmart is tapping. The answer to that question usually involves large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. But Walmart says that it’s using a variety of models so that it can experiment and keep its options open.
Speaking of experimentation, Walmart is walking the walk. To get AI into the organizational bloodstream and inspire native thinking, It recently rolled out an internal chatbot to its 50,000 corporate employees. Known as My Assistant, it helps them do things like summarize documents and prep for meetings.
Lastly, all the above falls under the heading of AI’s continued integration across the Fortune 500. As we examined recently, AI’s relatively early stage – at least the current flavors of generative and conversational AI – compels companies of all sizes to throw it against the wall to see if it sticks.
Naturally, this process will produce hits and misses. Either way, the learning curve is necessary for companies to get acclimated with AI and find its optimal points of intersection. And through that process, AI’s true killer apps will emerge. This will take a while and we’re still very much in early innings.
