Walmart Bets Big On Artificial Intelligence To Fuel Shopping Future

Walmart is stepping up its adaptive retail strategy using artificial intelligence to create a "hyper-personalized" shopping experience for customers in its Walmart and Sam's Club stores and apps.

The world's largest retailer said on Wednesday that it will use its proprietary artificial intelligence, generative AI, augmented reality and immersive commerce platforms to "create hyper-personalized, convenient and engaging shopping experiences."

"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 statement.

"At the heart of our platform strategy is developing common global core capabilities that are built once and deployed across Walmart U.S., Sam's Club and Walmart International. As a global company with multiple business segments, this enables us to move with speed as we bring consistent experiences to all our customers and members," Kumar said.

Its GenAI platform, called Wallaby, involves a series of retail-specific large language models that will be used to create new experiences for customers.

Wallaby, which contains decades of Walmart data, will allow the company to combine it with other large language models to fashion responses "that are highly contextual and tailored to the Walmart environment."

Through the use of the GenAI platforms, Walmart said it has created a new version of its AI-powered customer support assistant that will immediately recognize the customer and go beyond just understanding a shopper's intent to taking orders and managing returns.

The company said during testing customers said it offers an overall smoother shopping experience that helped them handle their issues quickly.

Walmart "is actively building dozens of additional GenAI tools for customers, members, associates and partners that leverage its GenAI platforms, including enhanced care assistants for Sam's Club and Walmart International," the release said.

Walmart has also developed a content decision platform that uses AI-based technology to better understand the customer and predict the types of content they'd prefer seeing on the company's website.

The technology will be used to create a unique homepage for individual shoppers to make the "online shopping experience as personalized as stepping into a store designed exclusively for each customer."

The platform is expected to launch in the United States by the end of next year.

"Being people-led means we start with the human need, and often, a combination of technologies like AI, GenAI, AR and Immersive Commerce, is key to the solution," Kumar said. "Our customers guide us, and with these platforms, we're ready for whatever they need."