Walmart pushes forward with AI adoption

With companies around the world showing different strategies around AI, Walmart now brings it to the workplace.

Walmart is expanding its AI efforts with the roll out of My Assistant, a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool that corporate employees in the U.S. will be able to use to assist with daily tasks.

While retail giants like Amazon, Apple and Samsung have limited the use of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Walmart’s 50,000 corporate employees will be able to use the “My Assistant” feature to summarize documents and speed up creating and drafting projects, reports Business Insider.

The multinational retail leader believes GenAI will revolutionize the retail industry, creating a better shopping experience for customers and improving working conditions.

“We believe the key to unlocking transformation lies in the creativity and innovation of our associates. Ideally, this technology will free them from monotonous, repetitive tasks, allowing more time and focus for improving the customer/member experience. Just picture the scale of what we can accomplish by putting a simple, easy-to-use GenAI tool in the hands of tens of thousands of associates,” writes Walmart in a LinkedIn post.

Despite the potential of AI as a tool to work faster and more efficiently, the retail chain believes people are still essential and their work will not be completely taken over.

“GenAI lacks judgment, has a limited understanding of context and is only as good as the data it’s trained on,” says Donna Morris, Exec. VP, Chief People Officer at Walmart, in the post.

Walmart has been experimenting with AI technology more than five years, including the rollout of a voice assistant, "Ask Sam," which helps Walmart and Sam's Clubs associates streamline various tasks.

Employees can ask the voice assistant for their schedule or pull up information such as where a product is located, how much a product costs or store sales information.

“As it relates to technology, our approach to new tools like generative AI is to focus on making shopping easier and more convenient for our customers and members, and helping our associates enjoy more satisfying and productive work,” said CEO Doug McMillon during a company earnings call in August.

Another tool Walmart have been testing is voice shopping. Through this application customers can reorder items using their voice by pairing their Walmart accounts to their smart speakers and mobile devices.

C-store industry welcomes AI with open arms

Almost every day new stories appear around AI-based innovations being applied by retailers and suppliers in the fuel and convenience industry. This week, Instacart looked to elevate shopper experience with new features like In-Store mode and AI-powered search functionality.

“We've long believed the future of grocery–and commerce in general–isn't online or in-store, it's both. And now, more than ever, it's being supercharged with AI,” said Asha Sharma, CEO.

InStore.ai, a provider of voice analytics to the convenience store industry, is primed to unveil its innovative Cashier Engagement solution at this year’s NACS Show in Atlanta. With the cashier scorecard and gamification application, stores can incentivize, measure and reward cashiers for outstanding effort, and discover best practices that can be used to train and uplift other cashiers, according to the Silicon Valley-based technology company.

AI is also making it easier and faster to grab a pizza at Casey’s General Stores. The convenience retailer, which has more than 2,500 locations, recently announced that it is rolling out a conversational AI from SYNQ3 Restaurant Solutions across its system to automate the process of taking call-in orders, reported PYMNTS.