What: Walmart is accelerating its Adaptive Retail strategy by integrating generative AI, augmented reality, and personalisation to create immersive shopping experiences across its stores, apps, and websites.

Why it is important: This initiative aims to differentiate Walmart from competitors by tailoring shopping experiences to individual customer preferences, improving search and discovery, and enhancing both online and in-store interactions.

Walmart is ramping up its Adaptive Retail strategy to leverage generative AI, augmented reality, and personalisation. The retailer has developed a series of large language models called Wallaby, trained on decades of internal data, to support customer-facing assistants and experiences. Wallaby will work with other language models to provide highly tailored responses within the Walmart environment.Walmart has also created an AI-powered Content Decision Platform designed to predict and display content on its website that aligns with each customer's interests, resulting in unique homepages for every user. This updated website is expected to launch in the United States by the end of 2025.

Throughout the year, Walmart has been rolling out generative AI tools, including enhanced search features on its app and an AI shopping assistant tested with select customers. These updates aim to reduce customers’ time searching and browsing online by allowing natural language queries and providing more accurate responses.

In addition to online improvements, Walmart's tech investments enhance in-store experiences. Generative AI has improved the quality of over 850 million pieces of data in its product catalogue, aiding store and warehouse associates in locating products and preparing deliveries more efficiently. The company also credited these associate-facing tools for a successful holiday season last year.Walmart is further expanding its shopping experiences through an augmented reality platform called Retina, which will enable customers to shop in virtual social environments. However, specifics and a launch date have not been disclosed.

Walmart's AI-powered personalized homepages revolutionise shopping