Retail giant Walmart (WMT) is always keen to help its customers find their favorite products – and they don’t even have to be human.
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AI Shopping Bots
The company is investigating how to make products which appeal not just to the customers they have been selling to for decades but also the AI agents that they are starting to use to shop for them.
It is also increasingly using AI in its production and design processes.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Walmart U.S. chief technology officer Hari Vasudev said the company is building its own shopping agents that customers can access on the company’s app and website.
They will be able to carry out basic tasks for Walmart customers such as reordering weekly groceries and filling a shopping basket in response to various prompts like ‘products for a party or a barbecue.’
Vasudev also believes that how retailers like Walmart advertise in the era of AI agents will have to evolve. That’s because AI bots can bypass traditional online search and promotional tricks aimed at attracting human beings not robots. “It will be different,” said Vasudev.
Indeed, retailers will have to think of new ways to describe their products online and even how they are displayed or priced because again AI will not respond to the emotions around product positioning or discounts in the same way a human does.
Vital Human Relationships
The risk is that the vital relationship between retailer and human could be severed.
According to the WSJ piece, Vasudev believes that an industry protocol will be established enabling third-party shopping agents to communicate with retailers’ own agents. They would hand over product recommendations from the retailer’s website based on user preferences.
Vasudev said some of these protocols are already being developed. But he cautioned that these changes for the ordinary shopper aren’t going to take place in time for the weekend shop.
“This is going to take time to transform,” he said.
It could be worth the wait though for Walmart. According to recent research the global artificial intelligence in retail market size was valued at $11.61 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 23% from 2025 to 2030.
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