On Tuesday, US Eastern Time, Wal Mart, the world's largest retailer, released the latest AI technology product at CES 2024, the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas: the company launched a generative AI tool that allows shoppers to search for products by specific use cases, rather than just one product at a time.
Wal Mart Launches Online Shopping AI Assistant
Through this generative artificial intelligence search technology, shoppers can search for a series of related categories of products and items based on a specific topic or idea. For example, users can request some shopping assistance for a football viewing party and may receive advice on French fries, chicken wings, beverages, and widescreen TV.
Wal Mart released a beta test version of the tool last November, and now this technology can be used on Wal Mart applications on Apple's iOS mobile operating system. This tool is built using a series of large-scale language models, including Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service.
Wal Mart also launched a home replenishment system, which can use artificial intelligence technology and decades of Wal Mart's replenishment expertise to ensure that customers' online shopping carts are filled with the right goods at the right time, so as to achieve easier shopping.
Wal Mart CEO Doug McMillon and other executives delivered a keynote speech on this technology, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also attended the speech.
This tool will boost Wal Mart's online shopping business. Wal Mart has always attached great importance to online business development, and its online business performance has always been better than other large retailers. The company has been investing in warehouse automation and has made improvements to its website and applications last year.
Online business is also the main growth engine of Wal Mart. In the context of high interest rates in the United States and declining household savings last year, consumer spending has become more cautious, but Wal Mart's overall sales are still rising.
Wal Mart also announced other technological innovations
Wal Mart also announced that it would promote its generative AI tools for its employees worldwide. Last August, Wal Mart launched My Assistant, an AI tool that can help Wal Mart employees generate draft documents and summarize large documents. Wal Mart announced that it will promote the tool in 11 countries in the future and provide local language versions for these markets.
In addition to artificial intelligence and software, Wal Mart is also expanding its technological footprint in the real world. The company is expanding the delivery range of drones to 1.8 million households in Dallas Fort Worth, USA. The Dallas Fort Worth region is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States.
In contrast, when Wal Mart just launched the UAV distribution service last August, the coverage was only 60000 households.
Sam's Club, Wal Mart's high-end membership store, also recently demonstrated a kind of artificial intelligence and computer vision technology. This technology can scan shoppers' shopping carts when they leave the store and compare their contents with transaction receipts, eliminating the need for manual inspection at the door.