Walmart develops generative AI tool to help merchants

The Walmart 'Wally' AI merchandising tool.

Walmart’s latest internally focused artificial intelligence solution is designed to help its merchants become more productive.

The discount giant is rolling out "Wally," a generative AI tool built on its proprietary data. Wally is intended to automate a variety of time-consuming processes, including:

Data entry and analysis – Instantly generating insights from complex datasets;
Root cause identification – Diagnosing why certain products are under- or overperforming;
How-to support – Answering operational questions and raising tickets for unresolved issues; and
Advanced calculations – Automating complex formulas and predictions.

Walmart designed Wally to be intuitive and require no technical training. Merchants can ask the assistant questions and receive insights in seconds. With AI removing the friction of manual reporting, the retailer seeks to provide merchants with more time to focus on delivering products with greater efficiency and accuracy.

To train Wally’s AI models on its proprietary merchandising data, Walmart built a semantic layer enabling the tool to handle and process large volumes of product data efficiently through advanced algorithms and its computational infrastructure.

Walmart says its merchants’ response to Wally has been “overwhelmingly positive,” and it plans to continuously improve the tool with guidance from the feedback and needs of its merchants.

The retailer’s ultimate goal is to enabling Wally to act autonomously on a merchant’s behalf within configurable guardrails, executing tactical actions that align with established merchandising strategy.

"By automating time-consuming tasks and providing actionable insights, Wally enables merchants to focus on strategic, creative and innovative activities that enhance customer experiences and meet evolving customer expectations," Walmart said.

Walmart provides internal tools to generative AI developers

Walmart recently unveiled a strategy to accelerate what it calls "adaptive retail," defined as "profoundly personal experiences that brings shopping to customers in exactly the ways they want and need" via AI, particularly generative AI.

To further support these efforts Walmart, which has also provided employees with the Walmart GenAI Playground, an early-stage internal tool where they can explore and learn about the technology, since June 2023, is enabling AI development within the company through a number of proprietary developer experience (DX) solutions.

Based in Bentonville, Ark., Walmart Inc. operates more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites in 19 countries.