• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to take over retail. Google and Walmart separately released tools on Thursday that will prompt massive changes to the way consumers shop and the way advertisers buy media.

These two companies with their vast scale have historically influenced their respective industries, setting trends and impacting the practices of others. Google with developers and Walmart with suppliers. 

Walmart today announced a series of agentic agents designed to handle everything from routine grocery orders to complex purchase research.

Company execs, who call the tools “Retail Rewired,” believe these AI agentic agents will make search bars obsolete across the company’s services.

This is part of a series of predictions and announcements from Walmart released Thursday. “AI is the last mile in tech,” according to Walmart, which became one of the first retailers in the late 1990s to use radio frequency to identify technology to track inventory through its supply chain.

The agents are targeted to support shoppers, store employees, sellers and suppliers, and developers. Not surprisingly, this is intended to consolidate multiple tools into one interface to become the way users interact with Walmart's digital systems.

Walmart is taking steps to create four interfaces it called “super agents.” One is for customers, one is for employees, one is for engineers, and one is for sellers and suppliers. Walmart began talking about personal agents in May. The Wall Street Journal published an update today.

Sparky, an AI agent already active in the Walmart app, uses generative AI to help shoppers with tasks like product suggestions, summarizing reviews, or finding the right ink cartridge. Eventually the agent will be able to reorder household items, plan themed events, and suggest recipes. It will do this by analyzing the contents of a shopper's fridge via computer vision.

The "Associate" super agent for employees will streamline internal tasks - from applying for parental leave to real-time sales insights.

"Marty" for suppliers will automate order management, and assist with campaign creation for advertisers, and "Developer" will serve as a foundational platform for testing and launching future AI applications.

Daniel Danker, an executive at Instacart, has been hired to head of global AI acceleration, product and design, reporting to Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon.

Google also launched AI-powered shopping tools Thursday that includes a virtual try-on, enhanced price alerts, and upcoming design inspiration features. The company debuted the artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool earlier this year and released it in limited beta in Search Labs.

The virtual try-on tool is now live in the U.S. The price alert system lets you track deals by size, color, and budget, and AI Mode this fall will add shoppable style and room design inspiration using vision-based search.

The feature lets consumers upload a full-length photo and use AI to see how clothing items might look on their body. It works across Google Search, Shopping, and even product results in Google Images.

Google later this year plans to launch a shopping experience within AI Mode that offers outfit and room design inspiration based on queries. The feature, per Google, uses the company’s vision match technology searching across more than 50 billion products indexed in the Shopping Graph.