jjudeBeen reading Walmart Tech blog on how they are using AI. These are some of the insights I got:
Search is where they are using AI more.
A customer can simply key in their need in natural language: “Help me plan a football watch party” or “What supplies do I need for a newborn?” and voila! Walmart’s GenAI Search gets to work pulling the list of all the relevant products
What is interesting is that,
our system will create distinct categories that collectively cover all possible customer needs, avoiding overlap or gaps
They are also using for product summarization and product comparisons. Their product comparisons seems interesting. It is not just on features, but
fulfillment, price, unique specifications, customer ratings
They utilize voice too.
pair their Walmart accounts to their smart speakers and mobile devices
It is not just for customers. They use AI for their in-store agents too:
Imagine you want to pick up a last-minute gift for your friend, but the Walmart store you walk into does not have the item you want in stock. Not to worry, because our associates can use real-time inventory data to find a store nearby that does have it in stock and reserve it for you, with the option to pick it up or have it delivered to your doorstep.
In their recent earning call, the CEO said:
the GenAI product that we're using has helped us populate the attributes and the characteristics of hundreds of millions of items and that would have taken, as I said, 100 times longer if we had
tried to do that manually
All of this would need tons of data, possible combination of products to an intent. They have invested heavily in data & ML. They have their own LLMs custom built for their usage.
