AI & Automation
Walmart announced it will debut 'Agent Profiles' in the next month, letting customers create dedicated profiles for AI agents that can make purchases with approval or within set spending limits. The retailer is also developing an 'Agent Gateway' beta for companies and developers, using the open Model Context Protocol to enable AI agents to shop for users without sharing personal information. Updated terms for AI agents emphasize customer approval and prevent agents from receiving payment-card details. This approach contrasts with Amazon's efforts to block external agents, as Walmart aims to keep customers in control of their AI commerce experiences.
Walmart U.S. President and CEO David Guggina said advances in ambient AI automation and customer-facing applications like AI assistant Sparky are leading to gains in store execution, delivery speeds, average order value and conversion. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Global Consumer and Retail Conference, Guggina noted Sparky drives 40% higher AOVs and weekly engagement grew 60% quarter over quarter, while visual search led to a 57% conversion spike versus text-based searches. He also highlighted partnerships with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, which deep link to Walmart and yield high conversion rates, contrasting with Amazon’s blocking of third-party AI agents. Walmart’s e-commerce sales grew 24% year over year in Q2, the 10th consecutive quarter of over 20% growth.
Target deeply applies AI technology in the 2025 back-to-school season, from wish list creation to personalized homepage layouts, aiming to improve customer experience. Data shows that customers who create wish lists have approximately 45% higher demand, while nationwide K-12 and college back-to-school spending is expected to reach $43.3 billion and $103.5 billion, respectively.
According to the latest Gartner survey, only 22% of enterprises have successfully scaled AI across multiple business units, and 85% of technology leaders plan to increase AI investment next year, but most lack visibility into AI spending, making it difficult to measure return on investment.
Retailers are accelerating their AI strategies to address the challenge of cautious consumer spending. Executives from companies like Ulta Beauty, Gap, Dollar General, and Kohl's shared applications of AI in supply chain, customer service, search discovery, and internal operations during earnings calls. Experts at Bain & Company noted that most companies are not pursuing comprehensive transformation but rather focusing on optimizing specific areas. Consumers will see more AI-driven personalized shopping experiences, though they may not notice the underlying technology.
Drawing on nearly 30 years of experience in the customer experience industry, the author of this article notes that traditional CX software architectures are human-centric, relying on nearly ten systems working together to solve a single problem. As AI takes on execution work, the industry needs to reintegrate fragmented intelligence so that systems can learn from every interaction and continuously improve, forming a composite advantage. The author introduces the AI-native platform concept of his company, Crescendo, emphasizing that governance and judgment become new human roles, and compares the significant differences between two AI deployment paths after 12 months.
During its Q2 fiscal 2027 earnings call, Best Buy announced the phased rollout of its AI shopping assistant, Ask Blue, which helps customers compare products, check compatibility, and transfer to human agents. Incoming CEO Jason Bonfig stated that the tool is part of the company's strategy to enhance the shopping experience. The company also plans to open Meta experience zones in 50 large-format stores and emphasized the importance of delivery speed for major appliances.
The Genesys Xperience 2026 livestream will be held on September 2-3, free and open to a global audience. The event will explore how to turn AI vision into actionable customer experience outcomes, including operating models in the intelligent agent era, customer case studies, and the latest innovations in Genesys Cloud.
A report released by Salesforce shows that from February 2025 to April 2026, the average number of AI agents per enterprise nearly doubled, and the average time to create and activate an agent fell to under two days, a decrease of 53%. Despite concerns about value, security, and workforce impact, the workload handled by agents continues to grow, with retail agents accounting for 22% of all agent work output. However, industry experts point out that deployment does not equal value, and fewer than half of organizations consider AI crucial to their core work. Salesforce introduced the Agent Work Unit (AWU) metric to measure value, but critics argue that this metric fails to fully capture real business outcomes.
Allstate is building a proprietary agentic AI platform named Allie, aimed at advancing its corporate strategy and improving customer service. CEO Tom Wilson stated during Thursday's Q2 2026 earnings call that the platform's architecture includes eight integrated components enabling inter-agent processing. The company has not disclosed a specific launch timeline.