Dive Brief:
- Walmart is accelerating its Adaptive Retail strategy, aiming to combine generative AI, augmented reality and personalization to create immersive experiences in Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, apps and websites, the company said Wednesday.
- The retailer has developed a series of LLMs called Wallaby and plans to use the technology to support customer-facing assistants and experiences. Walmart has trained Wallaby on decades of internal data, which lets it work with other LLMs to create responses that are highly tailored to the Walmart environment.
- Walmart also created an AI-powered Content Decision Platform that tries to predict what customers want to see on its website to create unique homepages for every customer based on their interests. The updated website is expected to launch in the United States by the end of 2025.
Dive Insight:
Walmart is continuing to invest in AI and personalization technology aimed at creating experiences that help the retailer stand out from the competition.
The retailer has been rolling out generative AI tools throughout the year, with an emphasis on improving search and discovery. Walmart added enhanced search to its app in January, and began testing an AI shopping assistant with select customers in June.
“A standard search bar is no longer the fastest path to purchase, rather we must use technology to adapt to customers’ individual preferences and needs,” Suresh Kumar, global chief technology officer and chief development officer at Walmart, said in a prepared statement Wednesday.
The average customer spends 6 hours searching and browsing online every week, Anshu Bhardwaj, SVP and COO at Walmart Global Technology and Walmart Commerce Technologies, told CX Dive at National Retail Federation’s conference in January. The generative AI updates aim to cut this time by letting customers use natural language queries and receive more accurate responses in return.
Walmart isn’t the only one updating its search with AI. Google rolled out AI-powered search updates last week. They include improvements to the Google app’s Lens feature, which lets customers take photos of items and then search for similar products, and curated results pages for recipe and meal inspiration searches.
Walmart’s tech investments are aimed at enhancing in-store experiences as well. The company used generative AI to create or improve the quality of more than 850 million pieces of data across its product catalog. This information connects to store and warehouse associates’ mobile devices, helping them find products in the backroom or put together deliveries faster.
Walmart credited associate-facing tools for a successful holiday season last year.
Walmart is expanding shopping experiences to new channels too. The company developed an augmented reality platform called Retina, which will let customers shop in virtual social environments, though Walmart has yet to provide specifics on the experience or a launch date.
