Every entry is dated and traced to a named source: 160 deployments, 7 pieces of evidence of adoption, 4 pieces of evidence of impact and 2 regulations.
More on Retail & Consumer lands here as we find it.
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WHSmith — WHSmith is extending Wildix's x-hoppers headsets, with an AI assistant for store staff, to over 300 UK shops, opening with 32 priority sites; Heathrow Terminal 5 is live. Through the assistant, colleagues hear broadcasts and reach named teammates. A late-2025 Manchester Piccadilly pilot sent over 43,000 headset alerts; selected categories saw sales climb up to 22%.
Bojangles — Bojangles' Bo-Linda voice AI from Hi Auto handles upwards of 1 million drive-thru orders weekly at 500 restaurants with 98% accuracy, the chain reports. Live since 2024, the AI drive-thru ordering will reach 100 more sites by mid-2027, about two-thirds of 890 locations. Bojangles supplied the accuracy figure for the voice system itself; no independent evaluation has appeared.
Kao — Kao has rolled ChatSense from Knowledge Sense out to every research team as a data assistant, applying generative AI for R&D across laboratories and product lines in Japan. Scientists can mine archived reports, and this research knowledge search goes past keywords to suggest new leads.
MISUMI Group — MISUMI Group has handed listing upkeep for tens of thousands of store items to nine Fujitsu-built agents, a case of AI agents for e-commerce product data in Japan. The software drafts, sorts and scores entries that employees handled manually, with humans approving output. Delivery of this catalogue automation took about 2.5 months.
Just Eat — Just Eat has frozen AI menu images meant for little independent eateries after the generator showed sausages and fried eggs bobbing in cola. Just Eat's spokesperson said sorry for the faulty pictures, and the food-photo AI stays on hold while engineers refine it.
Bunnings — Bunnings has put Buddy, an AI shopping assistant, on the New Zealand website and app, after the recent Australian launch. The retailer says Buddy makes Bunnings the first in the country to introduce a shopping agent.
Kroger — Kroger intends to remove roughly 3,000 corporate positions over three years alongside wider AI adoption, chief executive Greg Foran wrote in a staff memo. Foran tied the reductions to lower prices and more investment in store workers. The share of the cut attributable to AI is not stated.
Sands China — Sands China is using AI guide robots in hospitality: a first batch of Tutu units from Alibaba's Amap steers guests around Sands Resorts Macao, from NBA House in The Venetian. One 11-hour trial logged 214 direction requests and 4,546 queries in Chinese and English. Staff will work alongside these resort concierge robots.
Avia Thévenin-Ducrot — Avia Thévenin-Ducrot has switched on Manako Labs' Vision Agents, round-the-clock AI video analytics, at an initial 124 unmanned Avia Xpress fuel stations. Using cameras already on site, the camera AI flags broken payment terminals, damaged pumps and equipment, and dead cameras, then routes each fault to whoever can repair it. TaoWeave, a Manako investor, supplied these figures.
Plub — Paraguay grocery delivery app Plub has added Plubi, an AI shopping assistant, for customers across Asunción and nearby areas, with deliveries from 30 minutes. A photo of a paper list or product, a voice note, a recipe, a budget or past orders lets the in-app helper fill the basket, plan weekly or monthly menus and respect sugar-free, gluten-free or keto diets. Plubi is live on iOS and Android.
City of Seattle — Seattle's Fair and Transparent Pricing ordinance bars large grocers and delivery services from individual pricing based on shoppers' personal details, including location, browsing history or chatbot conversations. Mayor Katie Wilson signed after a 7-2 City Council vote; it covers chains with 20 or more locations worldwide, applies from 1 September 2027 and spares traditional coupons and open discounts like those for seniors and veterans.
PriyoShop — PriyoShop has added AI voice ordering for retailers: shopkeepers on the B2B distribution platform speak everyday Bangla to place and manage orders, and software identifies products and quantities. Every active PriyoShop retailer gets the spoken-order tool, built for MSME shopkeepers.
Colruyt Group (Boir) — Colruyt Group's drinks webshop Boir introduced Babette, an AI sommelier choosing from nearly 2,000 products by budget, occasion or taste. Customer service and sommeliers take tricky questions.
Bunnings New Zealand — Bunnings has switched on Buddy, an AI shopping agent for its New Zealand website and app, the first local retailer using Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Shoppers type queries, send photos or snap scribbled lists; Buddy maps jobs step by step, picks products and draws on Bunnings how-to guides. Manager Melissa Haines expects the DIY helper to complement team members' guidance, following Australia's earlier launch.
Mercadona — Mercadona has over 500 engineers on Atenea, an in-house platform of agentic AI for software development. Specialised AI coding agents draw on Mercadona's quality standards, tools, processes and knowledge.
Riachuelo — Riachuelo lets 84% of WhatsApp Business shoppers settle requests unaided, versus 30% under older chatbots, after switching to Genesys Cloud Agentic Virtual Agent. The retailer's agentic AI customer service tackles cases like late parcels and escalates the rest to staff. Genesys cites satisfaction up 60% and tech costs down 26% for the AI virtual agent; nobody has independently evaluated them.
Lawson — Convenience chain Lawson has debuted its first large-scale AI-conceived sweets and bakery items, built from flavour pairings a generative AI system dreamed up before staff refined them into sellable products. The lineup spans a pickle-lemon tart, a sake-fermented red-bean-and-yoghurt bread, and a parfait-style salad in Japanese presentation. About 4,700 shops across Kanto and Koshinetsu began selling all three, with the AI-generated flavour concepts serving as the starting point for each recipe.
McDonald's Australia — McDonald's Australia is piloting AI drive-thru ordering at the Schofields outlet in Sydney, the chain's second market after the United States. Part of each day, a voice ordering agent handles the lane, leaving crew free to get orders right and look after guests; anyone may still ask for a human. No jobs should go, management says.
Walmart de México — Walmart de México has put Sparky, a free AI shopping assistant, inside its official app for supermarket orders. Shoppers type a need in plain words, say groceries for an in-laws' visit, and this virtual grocery helper proposes a basket they can drop into the cart with one tap.
Mastercard — Mastercard polled 26,000 parents and teenagers in 13 European countries: 43% of Norway's teens finished a purchase via AI shopping last year. Over half use such tools monthly to hunt products or compare prices, and nearly two in three expect AI-assisted buying to handle some purchases within five years.
FamilyMart — FamilyMart's debut in AI product development in retail: a caramel-sauced sweet potato canele, 285 yen, now stocked nationwide. An algorithm processed two years of sales and customer data into about 1,000 candidate recipes; humans chose this one. 10 AI-generated confectionery items follow by February 2027.
IKI — IKI is extending AI promotion planning to 250 supermarkets in Lithuania with SymphonyAI's Promotional Evaluation and Promotional Planning products. Category trials lifted promotional forecast accuracy by more than 10 percentage points and cut empty shelves, vendor-reported figures. Category management head Klavs Berzins says buyers now foresee demand, the point of retail demand forecasting.
Macy's — Macy's is scaling AI inventory replenishment from pilot to wider rollout, overlaying AI forecasts on replenishment to raise in-stock rates and inventory efficiency, COO and CFO Tom Edwards told the 10 September earnings call. The forecasting layer sits inside a supply-chain-led transformation plan expected to save $235 million by 2026.
Msheireb Properties — Msheireb Properties has started phase one of Rashid, an AI digital concierge answering from 15 interactive smart kiosks in Msheireb Downtown Doha. Rashid gives wayfinding plus live detail on events, parking and nearby restaurants, day and night, taking spoken Arabic and English. Hewlett Packard Enterprise built the smart city AI assistant on Fanar, Qatar's Arabic large language model, with MEEZA running the platform.
Carrefour Belgium — Two Waterloo sites, a hypermarket and a franchised Carrefour Market, mark Carrefour Belgium's rollout of AI shopping trolleys. Smart carts for grocery shopping, built from Instacart's Caper Cart, detect products on contact and weigh loose produce automatically.
AEON360 — AEON360, AEON Malaysia's data and AI unit, uses AI customer profiling to sort shoppers by life stage, not transactions alone, pooling retail, mall and financial service records. Customer profiling with AI feeds a recommendation engine weighing transaction data, buying frequency, engagement and preferences, so personalised suggestions evolve with shoppers.
Allegro — Allegro has made a voice AI agent, built with ElevenLabs, the first point of contact on its Allegro Delivery hotline after a testing period. The agent answers questions on parcel collection and delivery status, and hands more complex cases to a hotline employee.
Seznam.cz — Seznam has switched on AI agent shopping across Zboží.cz, its Czech price-comparison platform, as a pilot. A signed-in shopper's agent completes the purchase, cutting checkout to two clicks and skipping manual delivery entry. Compatible retailers are joining gradually, and Seznam plans to extend this automated buying feature sitewide.
Högskolan på Åland — Högskolan på Åland's Light in the Dark project has produced Tourism Business Idea Generator, an AI for tourism businesses tool with a €20,000 budget. Small and medium operators around the Baltic Sea can use it for custom low-season products and marketing content, no prompt engineering required. The AI tourism idea tool targets quiet-season gaps with tailored suggestions over generic templates.
Best Buy — Best Buy launched 'Ask Blue', a conversational AI assistant drawing on product details, reviews, availability and pricing, helping shoppers compare items, check compatibility and answer questions, and routing them to self-service or live support. Incoming chief executive Jason Bonfig announced the phased rollout, without technology or adoption figures.
Sainsbury's — Sainsbury's says it will extend Facewatch facial-recognition technology for loss prevention to about 200 stores in 2026, following a false shoplifting accusation against a customer. The retailer put the incident down to human error, not the technology, and says the system is 99.98% accurate, with a trained manager reviewing every match.
Dollar General — Dollar General has deployed RELEX Solutions' AI platform for replenishment, allocation and demand forecasting across 21,000-plus stores and 34 distribution centres, uniting forecasting and replenishment in one system. Jeff Vaughan, the retailer's SVP of global inventory management, said it gives teams more visibility across the network.
Marks & Spencer — Marks & Spencer has put CattleEye's AI welfare monitoring on all 46 farms in its dairy milk pool, with cameras and video analytics scoring each cow's feeding, lying time, mobility and body condition into a 'cow comfort score'. M&S claims a retail first on dairy farms; earlier trials prompted new bedding, feeding schedules and cubicle designs.
The Home Depot — Home Depot's Magic Apron AI assistant is now live in all 2,000-plus US stores with localised store knowledge, helping customers and associates find products, get answers on specific items and plan projects in the aisles. Shoppers reach it via the Home Depot app or an in-store QR code and can type, dictate, upload photos or use their preferred language. The retailer says it already fields millions of questions a month.
Lotte Department Store — Lotte Department Store's in-house 'Brand AI' analyses more than 4,000 brands for AI merchandising strategy and emerging-brand scouting, the company says. Launched in late July 2026, it processes the data buyers need into visuals, with a natural-language chatbot due in the second half of 2026.
Carrefour Belgium — Carrefour Belgium has launched an AI shopping assistant inside ChatGPT, built with Mealz.ai, that places grocery orders, checks stock and draws up shopping lists. It proposes priced meal plans, remembers dietary preferences and connects to the Carrefour Bonus Card, with home delivery or in-store pickup, following Carrefour France's earlier launch.
JAZA Supermarkets — Discount chain JAZA runs AI for pricing in retail alongside stock control and delivery routes across Kenya, a 2026 KPMG case study found. Real-time rival comparisons and behaviour tracking feed a central warehouse linked to branches for faster restocking. Founder Willy Kimani said the same data guides marketing and new site choices, echoing AI-driven inventory management.
Canadian Tire — Canadian Tire is giving corporate staff Microsoft 365 Copilot alongside AI pricing and retail-intelligence tools. Its DaiVID platform sets prices and promotions, while MOSaiC, built with Microsoft on Azure, had found over 1,000 customer 'life occasions' and 180,000 demand signals by the first quarter of 2026. Staff numbers were not disclosed.
Rotana — Rotana has introduced H2O Hospitality's AI hotel check-in at 15 Rotana-branded Abu Dhabi properties, 4,240 rooms across Rotana Hotels & Resorts, Arjaan and Centro. Guests send passport details and a face photo over WhatsApp a day or two ahead, and facial recognition confirms them at the front desk. Both firms are discussing expansion outside Abu Dhabi.
AllSaints — AllSaints has taken a Klaviyo-based customer engagement platform live worldwide, using AI to tailor content and open new customer channels. The retailer calls the platform the first project of its new engineering team at its Global Capability Centre in India. No store, country or customer figures were given.
Just Eat Takeaway.com — Just Eat Takeaway.com has taken its AI voice assistant Europe-wide after UK and German launches, letting customers search restaurants, grocers and shops by speech on iOS and Android. Early UK company data show users finding things about 40% faster than with text-only AI and 30% likelier to choose a recommended dish or restaurant; no independent evaluation exists.
Kroger — Kroger now runs 500 Simbe 'Tally' shelf-scanning robots across its stores, the 500th going live at its Smith's Marketplace banner, Simbe says. The autonomous robots patrol aisles checking on-shelf availability, price accuracy and inventory; Kroger has published no figures for its fleet.
Morrisons — Morrisons has begun putting Everseen's 'Evercheck' computer-vision system on self-checkouts in up to 200 stores, where real-time image recognition spots possibly mis-scanned items and prompts customers to correct them. The retailer says it checks transactions rather than people, with no facial recognition, and aims to keep queues moving and cut staff interventions.
Asda — Asda has extended Auror's AI retail-crime intelligence platform to every store after a 10-week pilot in 30 London stores. Asda's own pilot figures, not independently evaluated, show over £100,000 of goods recovered, incident reporting cut from about 25 minutes to under five and crime-prevention rates up 55%. Chief operating officer David Lepley said staff now report incidents and identify repeat offenders faster.
B.TECH — AI pricing electronics retail took hold at B.TECH, Egypt's biggest electronics chain, after a two-year McKinsey overhaul of pricing, logistics and credit. Conversion rose 14 per cent on a new AI-driven e-commerce site, while an AI logistics hub sped deliveries. Mylo now scores borrowers, chases collections and flags fraud via AI-driven e-commerce and credit scoring methods, reaching hundreds of merchants across over 15 Egyptian cities in year one.
Rohlik Group — Rohlik bills the new offering as among Europe's earliest AI shopping apps living inside ChatGPT. Ordinary conversation covers finding goods, turning up recipes, assembling or revising a basket, and steering a whole order to completion. Rohlik's in-house Model Context Protocol server enables the hookup and reaches others, alongside Maia, the grocer's own conversational shopping tool; no user or order counts are given.
Swisscom — Swisscom is piloting an AI system named KIRA that analyses customer conversations in three Swiss retail branches, located in Bern, Aarau and Lausanne, as part of a broader push toward AI in retail customer service. Motion sensors monitor shopper movement while microphones capture sales discussions with customer consent, and anonymised transcripts are then reviewed through AI-driven retail analytics to surface what shoppers are actually seeking. The trial is scheduled to last two to three months, and if it proves effective, Swisscom intends to roll KIRA out to 10 to 15 branches by the end of the year.
Pick n Pay — Pick n Pay's asap! arm has switched on Penny, an AI grocery shopping companion built on Google's Gemini AI models, billed as a South African first. Customers speak, type or send a photo instead of clicking menus; the AI-powered shopping assistant draws on Smart Shopper loyalty history to shape suggestions.
Tourism Development Department — The Tourism Development Department and Dynamik Technologies have switched on Nakhoda, a booking hub whose AI trip planner drafts a tailored route around a holidaymaker's likes and wallet. Operators use the same website to post services, build packages and collect money without cash. Nakhoda arrives before Visit Brunei Year 2027, handing tourists AI itinerary planning early.
Mironet — Mironet, a Czech retailer, now leans on five home-grown AI agents in e-commerce — DÉDAL, ATLAS, IRIS, FÉNIX and ARGOS — covering code, analytics, mail, freight and security. Work once eating a whole shift of hand-built exports and spreadsheet formulas now wraps up daily. Mironet reckons the agentic automation platform worth up to 19 million crowns yearly, equal to 20 percent of wage costs and to 24 posts, contractors included.
Visa — Moroccan shoppers rely on AI in online shopping at a rate of 83%, per Visa's survey with Bank Al-Maghrib and Switch Al Maghrib — a pattern of AI-assisted e-commerce seen in gift-hunting (57%), price checks (55%) and reading reviews (42%). Trusting an autonomous AI agent with an actual purchase, though, draws only 23%.
Visa — Visa's Stay Secure study finds 91 per cent of consumers in Egypt have used AI tools for shopping, for price comparison (75 per cent), gift ideas (65 per cent) and reviews (65 per cent). Wakefield Research's annual poll of 5,800 adults across 17 CEMEA markets shows 97 per cent think AI-powered tools make online buying quicker and simpler, and 88 per cent expect AI to be critical to future fraud protection. AI shopping assistance stops short of payment: only 38 per cent currently trust AI agents with checkout.
Visa — Visa's Stay Secure study by Wakefield Research found 89 percent of Kenyan consumers used AI shopping tools: 60 percent checking reviews, 55 percent finding gift ideas, 53 percent comparing prices. Though 91 percent say AI-powered tools speed up and simplify buying online, only 29 percent would let AI agents complete checkout. Sample: 5,800 adults across 17 CEMEA markets.
Kenzz — Pricing guidance, demand forecasting and market intelligence reach sellers through Bosla, the AI seller platform built by Kenzz for Egypt's first mass-market e-commerce site. Shoppers interact with Morgan El Kenzz, an in-app assistant suggesting products and fielding support questions, escalating harder cases to staff. Kenzz's figures show conversions climbing 4.5 to 5.3 times above ordinary browsing, alongside a near-25 per cent gain in first-contact resolution, within the company's AI-driven e-commerce ecosystem.
Anguilla Tourist Board — The Anguilla Tourist Board has put an AI concierge for tourism into visitors' hands with the 27 May 2026 launch of its Xcape destination app, part of its "Taste, Feel, Live" summer campaign. The concierge weighs weather, safety concerns and user ratings, flagging unsuitable sea conditions or tides and suggesting safer options, alongside GPS routes, nearby beaches and sights, and where to eat. Wilson Jno Baptiste and Gavin Jean built the platform; Destination Experience Manager Keri Rogers said the idea came from wanting to help visitors find their way, and anyone can download it at no cost from the App Store and Google Play.
Rohlik Group — Rohlik Group has wired card payments straight into Maia, making AI grocery shopping one unbroken flow: pick items, check out, approve the charge on a saved card, never quitting the thread. Maia also takes spoken orders via Siri and Google Assistant, plus product hunts, recipes, lists and complaints. An MCP server lets ChatGPT and Claude plug in behind secured OAuth verification; the voice commerce assistant operates wherever Rohlik claims a Net Promoter Score beyond 90.
Allegro — Allegro has opened its AI selling assistant to every marketplace partner after positive early feedback, and made its shopper-facing AI Assistant fully available in the Allegro app after well-received tests. The Polish marketplace, with over 80 million products from more than 150,000 sellers, announced both with its first-quarter 2026 results. It runs close to 100 AI projects and aims for AI to underpin about 40% of its technology portfolio by year-end.
Woolworths Group — Woolworths has made its Olive tool an agentic AI assistant for all roughly 200,000 group staff, live a week before an executive described it at a conference. Combining search and chat, it adds requested items to carts, suggests recipes from meal photos and offers cheaper or organic swaps, while in-house 'agentic judges' vet answers for accuracy and compliance first.
CEMACO — Guatemalan hardware, home and decoration chain CEMACO has launched MACO, an AI shopping assistant that helps customers choose purchases. Shoppers reach the virtual adviser through in-store digital kiosks, WhatsApp or the chain's website.
Shoprite Holdings — ShopriteX built Pixie, an AI shopping assistant for the Shoprite Group's Sixty60 app. Machine learning lets it study buying habits and flag restocks, unfamiliar products and deals automatically. Now in beta for Xtra Savings Plus members, it makes Sixty60 the country's first online grocer with a personalised AI shopping tool.
METROPOLE optical salon chain — METROPOLE is Latvia's first optical salon chain offering AI eye screening and digital vision testing, now across 18 salons. The chain's AI-based eye disease detection rates risk of three common conditions early, while digital testing enables remote optometrist consultations. Upgrades have cost METROPOLE over €2 million since 2024.
Trial Company — Every one of Trial Company's 264 super centre branches has gone live with CIX-自動発注 (CIX-Auto Ordering), finishing a nationwide push for this AI ordering optimisation system. Machine learning paired with digital twin simulation drives down surplus stock by close to 30%, while liberating 180 person-hours of labour monthly at each branch. Automated inventory ordering has become the chain's standard practice.
Shimamura — Shimamura's group EC sites and store app now run on a Neural Group engine built for AI product recommendations in fashion retail. Tens of thousands of product images get cross-matched with live stock, buyer history and web trends to surface tailored picks, while the app flags nearby shelf availability instantly through AI-driven personalised shopping recommendations.
Loblaw Companies — Loblaw has put a PC Express app inside ChatGPT, letting Canadians order groceries and plan meals with their local store by chat. OpenAI models already run behind its own tools, including Robin, an AI assistant for store owners and managers, and agentic supply-chain systems for inventory accuracy and logistics. Corporate staff will get ChatGPT Enterprise.
Metro Slovakia — Metro Slovakia runs an autonomous store retail site in Mlynky, part of the Môj obchod partner network, staffed by day and switched to unattended AI-run operation once employees leave. Computer-vision cameras log every item taken from shelves, giving shoppers 24/7 access without a cashier on duty. Staff return each morning, so the shop is only self-operating outside normal opening hours.
Pyramid Continental Hotel — A humanoid figure named Ayen now greets diners at Pyramid Continental Hotel in Juba, marking South Sudan's first AI robot waitress hospitality installation. She wanders the dining floor, converses with patrons, and reinforces food and beverage staff, sharpening the overall guest experience — billed as the nation's debut humanoid service robot hotel case.
Aldar — Aldar has partnered with Visa to bring AI-powered property payments to the UAE, using an agentic checkout system called Visa Intelligent Commerce in its first live regional rollout. Speaking a request into an AI agent on the Live Aldar app or website triggers the transaction, with the customer's approval required before anything is charged for real estate service fees. An Emirates NBD Darna Visa Credit Card processed the debut payment.
Ditano — Thousands of fragrance and beauty products now get algorithm-driven suggestions on Ditano's site, where the Italian retailer has rolled out conversational AI in e-commerce built by TextYess, spanning both its online store and WhatsApp. Acting as an AI beauty consultant, the system walks shoppers toward tailored picks. Recovering carts customers abandoned, it converts at 11% and returns 128x ROAS, per figures the companies published.
Empik — Empik's AI gift advisor, built by Polish developer Zowie, lets shoppers describe what they want in plain speech or text instead of using category filters. The conversational shopping agent, live on the retailer's website, reads context and recipient details to recommend presents, replacing product search with natural conversation.
Olsson Parts — Olsson Parts now offers AI customer service through CAI (Customer Artificial Intelligence), a six-language chatbot on its site. Human staff still handle tricky queries; CAI covers the routine ones — the retailer's first AI-driven customer support tool.
Siam Piwat Group — Siam Piwat Group now runs AI in retail across its ONESIAM SuperApp, spanning Siam Paragon and ICONSIAM, on Google Cloud infrastructure. Vertex AI drives semantic search for shoppers, swapping older rule-based lookup for personalised recommendations, while a predictive segmentation tool targets marketing campaigns as part of the retail AI stack. Snap & Collect applies Vision AI to receipts, automating loyalty rewards and e-stamping without staff handling.
Carrefour LabelVie (LabelVie Group) — Carrefour LabelVie now runs the LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency system to handle AI planogram management across 180 stores in Morocco, spanning four formats from convenience shops to hypermarkets. Store teams execute layouts on mobile tools instead of building shelf plans by hand, since the platform generates planograms automatically and drives merchandising through data. The rollout, described as complete, is being extended across the retailer's full multi-format network through automated shelf planning.
C&A — C&A holds a national first: Brazil's inaugural AI personal shopper for fashion, built into its website and app. Shoppers converse with the tool, receiving outfit pairings matched to taste and purchase intent. A R$300m digital budget for 2025 backs this AI-powered styling assistant, alongside a hyper-personalised homepage and design tools for C&A's creative staff.
Tupi S.A. — AI in retail operations now covers marketing, HR and collections at Tupi, a Paraguayan e-commerce firm. Google Performance Max lifted results 50 per cent, hitting 300 per cent ROI on one push; hiring software sifts psychological tests and forms into a shortlist. A collections chatbot settles 80 per cent of queries and runs payments unattended, marking an AI-driven retail business shift.
Kuningan City Mall — Kuningan City Mall now runs Airy, short for AI Robotic Kuningan City, an AI humanoid robot customer service unit at its concierge desk. Built with Indonesian vendors, it directs shoppers to tenants, deals and events, speaking English, Chinese and French. The move backs the mall's push toward a hi-tech venue, an early humanoid robot retail deployment in Indonesia.
TOPS (Central Food Retail Group, Central Retail) — Central Retail's food chain TOPS deployed AI stock checking retail via a fresh chatbot letting buyers confirm shelf availability nearby before a visit. Built on Google Cloud's Conversational Agents platform, it adds 24/7 chatbot support and natural Thai comprehension for steering shoppers inside branches.
Premium Nexus JSC — Over 500 CU stores and two distribution centres in Mongolia gain AI demand forecasting in retail via Premium Nexus JSC's deal with RELEX Solutions. One unified system now runs warehouse and shop-floor planning, producing automatic forecasts, tighter stock strategies and location-level KPIs through the AI-powered forecasting and replenishment system.
SCENTMATIC — Tsim Sha Tsui's new @cosme HONG KONG flagship, the brand's first shop outside Japan, now runs SCENTMATIC's AI fragrance system KAORIUM. It performs AI scent matching, turning fragrance into a 16-word Scent Index for description-based browsing. Choices sync to the @cosme app across online and in-store visits.
Sansiri Public Company Limited — Amazon Web Services underpins Sansiri's ChatX Assistant, Thailand's first large-scale generative AI in real estate, built on Anthropic's Claude via Amazon Bedrock. Buyers and staff get instant answers on financing, zoning and construction across 500-plus projects via this AI-powered home buying assistant. A linked OCR tool reads over 50,000 invoices monthly above 90% accuracy, lifting response speed 30% and satisfaction 25%.
bol.com — Inside bol.com's app, Cadeauhulp now handles AI gift recommendation by asking who the gift is for, the relationship, and budget, then pulling matches from the Dutch retailer's catalogue. Agency partner DEPT co-built the launch, bol.com's debut into AI-driven gift suggestions for browsing products.
Coppel — Coppel rewrites 123,000 product listings with FeedGen, a Google Vertex AI e-commerce tool, cutting an eight-day task to under five hours. The Mexican retailer's holiday-season revenue rose 27% and clicks 48%, gains attributed to automated catalogue optimisation. Figures are Coppel's own, unaudited.
Grupo Boticário — Conversion rose 46% within a month of Grupo Boticário launching its AI shopping assistant on the O Boticário app, built on Amazon Bedrock Agents and Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4. Buyers using the retail chatbot paid 7.4% more per basket than those bypassing it.
Majid Al Futtaim — Majid Al Futtaim is trialling Agent Pay, Mastercard's AI-powered payment tool, in Dubai with fintech firm Dataiera, the service's debut purchase beyond the US. Via this AI shopping assistant, customers let software hunt bargains, weigh alternatives and settle the bill. Agent-assisted checkout begins with VOX Cinemas ticket bookings.
Debenhams Group — Peak's agentic AI for pricing and stock now runs across Debenhams Group's brands — PrettyLittleThing, Boohoo, BoohooMAN, Karen Millen and Debenhams. Live data feeds autonomous decisions, moving inventory and resetting prices without human sign-off. This automated retail pricing tool eases merchandising pressure before the festive rush.
Megasuper — A first for Central America and the Caribbean: Toshiba's ELERA Produce Recognition now runs inside Megasuper stores in Costa Rica, bringing AI produce recognition in retail checkouts to the region. Lenses catch unbarcoded produce mid-scan, freeing shoppers from typing codes. The rollout extends Toshiba's MxP Self-Checkout kiosks, already beyond 10% of Megasuper's lanes — computer vision item identification at self-checkout, now part of daily grocery runs.
BUA Foods — BUA Foods, the Nigerian FMCG arm of BUA Group, now drives AI-driven sales automation using BeatRoute's Sales Force Automation Software and Customer App. Reps get smart scheduling, order optimisation and plain-language lookups against live figures, swapping out paper-based habits across the distribution footprint. This BeatRoute rollout, an AI-powered sales force automation tool, seeks tighter delivery planning group-wide.
Fleurop-Interflora (Schweiz) AG — Fleurop-Interflora (Schweiz) AG nearly doubled conversions after adding Flora, an AI shopping assistant for flowers on the Marple Companion platform. Shoppers pick arrangements via sliders and colour swatches instead of chat, buying 99% more often and spending 3% extra per order. The firm also piloted a bouquet subscription sold only through this AI-driven retail assistant.
President Chain Store (7-ELEVEN) — 7-ELEVEN has opened ninth-generation smart store X-STORE 9 at Taiwan's National Central University, using AI image recognition, skeleton tracking and ceiling LiDAR to identify over 6,000 products for AI grab-and-go shopping. Entry uses a transport card, and payment is at a self-checkout kiosk. The cashierless system, built with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), serves 20 shoppers simultaneously on standard fixtures, not smart shelves.
TUI Nederland — TUI Nederland deploys Lisa, an AI travel agent for holiday bookings, as a lobby avatar handling opening customer chat. Destination, dates and party size get logged automatically, then routed to the branch so advisors focus on tailored advice. Trojan Monkeys, an AI content agency, built the retail assistant.
Tokopedia — Counterfeit product detection for e-commerce got a 40% drop in illegal listing reports after Tokopedia ran SmartShield AI through a six-month trial, VP of Trust and Safety Dinda Maharani said. Image recognition paired with text analysis lets the system flag fraud patterns across thousands of daily listings and pull fake goods automatically. Indonesia's marketplace now leans on automated fraud-spotting for online retail to keep its platform clean.
S-ryhmä (S Group) — S-ryhmä, Finland's largest retail cooperative, has introduced AI multilingual customer service for S-Etukortti loyalty-bonus guidance, covering 17 languages through a new web tool. An animated guide, Kielitietäjä-Eero, narrates explainer clips and switches tongues mid-sentence, powered by generative video technology. Helsinki's HOK-Elanto service points piloted this multilingual bonus rollout first.
Magazine Luiza — Brazil's Magalu (Magazine Luiza) offers AI commerce via 'WhatsApp da Lu', fronted by virtual influencer Lu. Customers browse, select and pay inside the app, guided by a conversational shopping assistant on a multi-agent AI system. Roughly one million regular buyers have early access.
Goddiva — Goddiva shoppers now chat with an AI shopping assistant, Goddiva AI, built into the British label's site and order platform. Powered by OpenAI GPT-5 with LangChain, it handles discovery, order status, returns and discounts, standing in for an in-store stylist across online fashion retail.
Natural Lawson (Lawson) — Six Natural Lawson outlets in Japan now offer an AI sommelier, KAORIUM for Sake & Wine, to guide customers toward suitable bottles. Shoppers enter their mood and flavour preferences via a tablet, and the system pairs a recommended wine with snacks available in the shop, using interface options in English and Chinese besides Japanese. Whether the AI-driven wine recommendation tool spreads to additional branches depends on how this trial performs, per Lawson.
Coles — Coles has become the first major Australian retailer to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise deployment at scale, moving toward full company-wide use by February 2026. Powered by OpenAI's GPT-5 model, the aim is faster research, lighter paperwork and sharper data insights — an early instance of enterprise generative AI in retail.
Snoonu — A new build of Snoonu's super app introduces Genie, an AI shopping assistant able to parse everyday requests, say a request for a skincare routine or a present idea, and surface matching products. Multiple coordinated agents power the suggestions for every user on the platform, extending Qatar's move toward AI-driven retail assistance.
Hyundai Department Store — Hyundai Department Store's generative AI shopping assistant HEYDI (Hyundai Personalized Lifestyle Design AI) is now live across every branch, outlet, website and mobile app in South Korea, following a phased rollout that began with foreign shoppers in July 2025 before reaching domestic customers three months later. The tool interprets natural conversation to suggest stores, restaurants, pop-ups and exhibitions matched to individual tastes, and can handle layered queries like gift ideas or planning a shopping route. The nationwide version merges both customer groups into a single integrated service, marking a shift from its earlier limited release toward full retail AI personalisation.
Maxim's Group — Maxim's Group has turned to AI customer data unification to merge fragmented records across its Hong Kong restaurant portfolio, which spans quick-service outlets to upscale dining rooms. Staff without technical backgrounds now query an agent built on Microsoft Copilot Studio using everyday language to pull tailored reports, while a second agent trawls thousands of files for marketing campaign details. Both feed into single customer profiles covering every visit occasion, an early instance of AI-driven unification of customer data reshaping how the group reads its dining network.
Carrefour — Retail AI cataloguing underpins Carrefour's inventory of 850,000 active products sourced from 23,000 suppliers, joining Google Gemini's GenAI with OCR scanning of packaging photos to populate listings unattended. This AI product catalogue enrichment achieves a 78% accuracy benchmark, free of errors, for branded merchandise. Elsewhere, a trial identified and resolved 3,400 supplier mistakes spanning 108 suppliers.
Pingo Doce — Symphony AI built the AI merchandising platform now running at Pingo Doce, giving the Jerónimo Martins-owned Portuguese chain a shared system for CPG partners. Shelf, assortment and till data sit in one layer, letting staff model outcomes and track performance live for retail category management.
Epitsentr K — AI customer support in retail now resolves a third of Epitsentr K's queries through an AI-driven customer service tool on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Viber. More than 50 self-service tools manage orders, payments and shipments without staff involvement. Ukraine's retailer aims for 70% automated coverage by 2026.
OWNDAYS — 49 OWNDAYS branches across Japan have adopted JetB's AI avatar customer service system, expanding beyond a six-month trial at two Tokyo and Osaka shops. Branded 'Uchi no AI Avatar', it offers multilingual customer support via in-store QR code, conversing in 15 languages and reaching native speakers among over 90% of the global population. Staff can inspect logged chats before stepping in.
Hyphen Tech — Hyphen Tech's Cosebu Ecosystem opens an AI marketplace Burundi traders can use, debuting at the firm's Bujumbura hub. Merchants gain Cosebu Management AI, covering inventory, sales tracking and financial reporting, plus Cosebu Marketplace AI, powering discovery through AI recommendations. Kirundi, French and English speakers are served by this AI-driven commerce platform, built to draw Burundian youth into digital trade.
Chalhoub Group / FACES — FACES and Chalhoub Group built Layla AI, an AI beauty coach chatting bilingually in Arabic and English, pairing shoppers with fitting skincare, makeup, fragrance and haircare picks. This AI-powered beauty advisor drives 2.5-fold higher conversion, plus 7.4 extra browsing minutes. Chalhoub Group supplied these unverified figures.
Channel Islands Coop — A till-side scan now decides whether Jersey shoppers look old enough for restricted goods, after Channel Islands Coop fitted ten stores with facial age estimation technology at self-checkout points. The retailer calls it the island's first such trial; no photos or personal records are kept by the age verification system. Staff still oversee sales, but the software confirms eligibility first.
Core Innovations (Motor Oil Group) — Greece's first autonomous AI convenience store has opened in Nea Smyrni: Smartshop, run by Core Innovations, a Motor Oil Group subsidiary. This unmanned retail format uses computer vision and sensors to stay open unstaffed 23:00–07:00, with card payment and three-step checkout.
Silvie's Industrial Solutions — Ten seconds is now the wait for an industrial parts match at Silvie's Industrial Solutions, thanks to its new AI-powered product selection agent, Silvie AI. Customers scan a code and the multilingual system replies 24/7, while managers gain visibility into buying trends that let seasoned staff shift away from routine searches toward higher-value client work. The launch signals wider adoption of AI-driven product search across Guyana's industrial retail sector.
Multiplaza Bogotá — Colombia's first mall-based AI personal shopper has launched at Multiplaza Bogotá: MIA (Multiplaza Inteligencia Artificial), built with AI Findr. Shoppers get instant answers and tailored product picks through natural conversation — a retail AI shopping assistant setting a new benchmark for malls nationwide.
Colruyt Group — Halle shoppers can trial the AI-powered self-scanning shopping trolley, Smart Cart, now live at Colruyt Group's Lowest Prices branch, built in-house with EXPRESSO. Sensors and onboard processing let customers ring up goods and pay as they browse, an AI self-checkout cart retail approach that skips the till queue. A linked Smart Scale weighs loose produce with over 98% accuracy, and Colruyt calls itself the first Belgian chain to offer such a trolley.
Juewei Food — Juewei Food's AI marketing agent for retail: 3.1x sales, 1.8x click-through, 2.4x payment conversion, 47% fewer WeCom friend deletions — tested on millions of shoppers versus human teams. China's largest braised snack chain built this full-chain AI marketing automation with Tencent Smart Retail on Hunyuan and DeepSeek dual-model architecture, spanning strategy through execution. Juewei's own trial figures, unverified externally.
Kjær & Sommerfeldt — Kjær & Sommerfeldt, Denmark's oldest wine merchant, built an AI wine advisor pairing bottles and answering shopper queries across roughly 2,000 wines with expert-level guidance. It took over a year and up to 20 million Danish kroner, partly spent cleaning the catalogue's underlying data. An early case of AI-driven product recommendation in wine retail.
Packworks — Filipino sari-sari shops running Philippines-based Packworks' AI-driven retail analytics tool, Store Insighting Project (SIP), saw daily gross merchandise value climb 46% and overall revenue rise 17% inside a fortnight, across a network topping 300 outlets. Despite trading on 20% fewer days, participating vendors still out-earned peers, evidence that AI-guided inventory and demand planning beat simply staying open longer.
KIDO Group — KIDO Group's Mid-Autumn 2025 sales tripled from a year earlier once it turned to AI livestream sales and machine-generated marketing content across the business. A digital avatar hosted a broadcast lasting beyond 250 unbroken hours, drawing 19 million viewers and shifting more than 180,000 items while a single staffer kept watch over the feed. TV ad spots emerged 60% quicker and at almost 40% less expense thanks to the same push into machine-generated marketing content. Afterward the firm set up AIRO, a separate AI arm handling sales and marketing, on 30 December 2025.
Designer Wardrobe — Designer Wardrobe's DW AI List Assist trims listing time by up to 90 per cent for 350,000-plus members of New Zealand's biggest pre-loved fashion marketplace. From snapped pictures, the AI listing tool completes each field within seconds. AI-drafted listings suggest live prices from recent site sales.
Grandiose — Grandiose, a UAE grocery chain with nearly 50 stores, has embedded GrandChef, an AI cooking assistant, inside its mobile app, converting recipes, dietary needs and meal ideas straight into shopping carts. Powered by Microsoft technology, this AI-powered chef stays limited to a pilot on the newest Android and iOS releases.
Lawson — KDDI and Lawson are trialling AI in convenience stores at 221 Lawson outlets in the Philippines, applying AI-driven store management to sales and inventory data for shelf layouts and order volumes. A separate system reads security camera footage for stock levels and checkout congestion. The venture targets efficiency and revenue gains.
MediaMarktSaturn — Round-the-clock answers on roughly 1,300 own-brand items now come from Smart Manual, MediaMarktSaturn's new AI chatbot customer service tool powered by Google's Gemini model, covering PEAQ, KOENIC and ok. product lines through manuals, technical data sheets and FAQ content. Debuting in Germany during August 2025, this AI customer support tool has launched solely on own-brand sites for now, with wider integration into the retailer's core webstores and mobile apps still to come.
Sheng Siong — All 83 Sheng Siong outlets in Singapore now run facial recognition CCTV retail surveillance against shoplifting, built with the Singapore Police Force under the STAR programme. Flagged repeat offenders trigger an instant phone alert to staff on re-entry. Sheng Siong credits this AI-powered surveillance in supermarkets with cutting monthly failed-transaction losses from roughly S$10,000 to S$1,500.
SCENTS N SECRETS — SCENTS N SECRETS, a Pakistani fragrance brand, launched an Agentic AI chatbot in retail service on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, tied to Shopify and Asaan Retail, an instance of Agentic virtual assistants. Week one: 4,000+ queries answered, orders taken, updates pushed live.
BIPA — BIPA staff in Austria now use Haidi, an AI assistant built with Google Cloud, rolled out chain-wide after limited trials. REWE Group's drugstore chain deploys this AI store assistant for queries on returns, complaints and workflows in German, English, Turkish and Hungarian. This virtual employee helper expanded once testing succeeded.
Euronics Italia — Ronics, Euronics Italia's AI shopping agent on Salesforce Agentforce, logged over 8,000 conversations, lifting conversion 53% and drawing a 7% click-through on product picks. It brings physical-store know-how to the retailer's website, part of Italy's shift toward AI-powered e-commerce recommendation systems.
Delhaize Serbia (Maxi) — MaxiGPT, an AI digital assistant for store associates, now runs across Delhaize Serbia's Maxi, Mega Maxi, Tempo and Shop&Go outlets, handing shop-floor teams fast answers on stock and product data. Ahold Delhaize revealed the tool's launch within second-quarter 2025 results, framing it as a productivity aid for the country's biggest supermarket chain. The broader push toward an AI store assistant for retail staff reflects efforts to streamline everyday branch operations.
Supermercados TaTa — A chatty grandmother persona powers IAIA, the generative AI retail assistant VML Uruguay built for Supermercados TaTa. It chats, fields queries and suggests goods, framing an AI shopping experience around warmth rather than pure transaction.
Cavecom-e — Cavecom-e, the Venezuelan Chamber of Electronic Commerce, put the share of active online retailers using AI in e-commerce at 80%, mainly to lift sales and follow up with buyers before and after purchase. Richard Ujueta added that 40% overall are starting to add AI agents for social-commerce queries.
Lenehans — Lenehans built a conversational AI shop assistant into lenehans.ie, covering over 30,000 products. Shoppers get tailored suggestions, live stock and delivery checks, plus guided DIY steps. Ireland's home retail sector rarely sees a retail AI assistant this broad.
Currys — Currys is testing its new Action AI, a retail analytics platform developed with Quorso, in 16 UK stores before it expands nationwide from September 2025. Store managers see a single dashboard combining shopper numbers, transaction levels and satisfaction ratings, powered by extensive calculations that flag which actions to prioritise on the shop floor. Retailers increasingly rely on this kind of AI-driven retail analytics to convert raw performance figures into practical staff guidance.
Seven-Eleven Japan — AI in retail operations is now company-wide at Seven-Eleven Japan: AI Library covers 8,000 employees, up from 4,000 staff in 20 departments by June 2025. Staff choose among 13 large language models, including Claude, Gemini and GPT, for minutes, product development, and POS or social media analysis. This corporate AI rollout cut minutes per meeting from 40 to 10.
JINS Holdings — JINS Holdings is piloting AI customer service retail technology through JINS AI, a self-built generative chatbot live in select eyewear stores. Shoppers scan a shelf QR code for frame suggestions, multilingual pricing and FAQ answers, part of an AI customer service system built in-house. Full rollout follows in 2026.
House of Travel — House of Travel Group launched HoT Brain, its own AI for travel consultants, bundling map creation, passport scanning, personalised itinerary generation and ChatGPT functionality. The consultant-facing AI runs in a secure Microsoft tenancy linked to Timatic and internal knowledge databases. Live in New Zealand, HoT Brain reaches Australia next month.
Lisek.App — Lisek.App, a Polish quick-commerce grocery platform, now runs AI grocery shopping through OpenAI's Agent GPT (ChatGPT's Agent Mode). Given a list, the agent finds items on the site, adds them to the basket and completes the order without manual clicks. This form of autonomous AI shopping agents works on desktop only.
Jumia Egypt — Egyptian dialect now drives AI voice shopping on Jumia Egypt, through Ziila, a voice-ordering assistant made with Intella, a firm specialising in Arabic AI. Spoken commands replace typing entirely for shoppers placing orders. Jumia Egypt's CEO opened the feature by speaking the first order himself.
Jockey Plaza — Lima's Jockey Plaza now runs MIA, an AI virtual assistant for shopping malls, built with AIFINDR to answer visitor questions instantly via WhatsApp and the mall's site. Shoppers get store directions, tailored suggestions, and event or promotion updates from the chatbot. Management calls it the region's first mall with this kind of automated visitor guidance.
Konzum — Instaleap's AI grocery platform now drives operations at Konzum, the Croatian supermarket chain, merging incoming orders from its websites, apps and marketplace channels into a single workflow. Warehouse staff receive optimised picking routes and task assignments matched to their availability, while shoppers get automatic substitute recommendations whenever stock is depleted. This AI-powered e-grocery system responds to growing consumer appetite for buying groceries online across Croatia.
BREEZEONLINE (Breeze Group) — Generative AI personalised shopping now drives BREEZEONLINE's Taiwanese luxury storefront, built on UpGPT from developer Anran Technology. Typing a plain-language wish, like wanting something elegant for an occasion, prompts the tool to surface matching picks, while behind the scenes AI image analysis auto-labels listings with style tags and suggested contexts. Conversion from search and repeat visits have both climbed post-launch, a gain the retailer has not quantified, as AI-driven product recommendations reshape how customers browse and buy.
Toolstation — Failed searches dropped 95% after Toolstation deployed Google Cloud's Vertex AI Search for Commerce, part of its shift toward AI product search in the UK. Gemini models now decode trade jargon and synonyms, driving a 5.5% rise in search revenue and a 10% jump in click-through rates. The retailer's AI search tool has since spread to its contact centre and tills.
SPAR Austria — Simbe Robotics' Tally leads Austria's first shelf-scanning robot grocery retail trial for SPAR, scanning a Eurospar in Vienna and Interspar in Eisenstadt three times daily. This autonomous inventory scanning robot flags gaps and emails staff, freeing them for customers over five months.
Shiseido Japan — Shiseido Japan's PBPs now type plain questions into a generative AI chatbot for beauty advisors, an AI-powered retail customer service tool built into their Beauty Tablet handsets, to pull up product, brand and promotion details. It cuts calls to sales and admin teams, helping staff assist shoppers faster. Shiseido Interactive Beauty and Accenture co-developed it with Shiseido Japan after a trial run.
momo (Fubon Multimedia) — Over 90% response accuracy resulted from momo's LLM-powered AI customer service platform, built with Microsoft Azure OpenAI via RAG. Self-service adoption climbed 5% at Taiwan's biggest online retailer, easing pressure on human agents. Older chatbots gave way to this generative AI support tool for natural-language shopper questions.
Magnit — Magnit's AI forecasting and replenishment system has launched at a distribution hub in Kirov, marking Russia's first fully domestic tool of this scale in offline retail. Built on open-source components such as Apache Spark and Kafka, it already covers over 600 shops nearby, using machine-learning demand prediction in retail to set stock orders by product line. The goal: cut inventory days by 10% and add tens of billions of roubles in value within a few years.
IKI Lithuania — AI facial age estimation now guards a self-checkout lane at IKI's Vilnius store on Pilaitės pr. 42, confirming shoppers buying age-restricted goods are over 25. StrongPoint built the on-device system for the Lithuania grocery chain, part of Rewe Group, shrinking a 30-second manual check to under 10 seconds and aiming to automate 60% of such checks. IKI says the automatic age recognition analysis stays on the device, sending nothing offsite and storing no images.
Fischer SA — Fischer SA, an artisanal Luxembourg bakery, now runs bakery demand prediction via a Resultance tool weighing seasonality, weather and local events. Revenue climbed 4%, costs recovered within three months, and this AI sales forecasting for bakeries debut later won the AI Adoption prize at the AI Excellence Award 2025.
Sar HaMashkaot — Ramat Gan now hosts Israel's first AI-powered store, opened by alcohol retailer Sar HaMashkaot. Its "smart room" chats with shoppers, gauges their tastes and recommends bottles unaided by staff. Founder Evitar Sdan framed the launch as a trial of automated retail AI, testing whether software alone can drive sales and suggestions.
Carrefour — Shelf by shelf, Carrefour is rolling out AI computer vision in retail stores: Edgesense units from VusionGroup, wired with networked cameras, now track products, pricing and stock levels automatically. The concept launched at a 12,500-square-metre hypermarket in Villabé, fitted with 7,000 Edgesense rails and 500 cameras. Real-time alerts flag low stock to employees, and this image recognition technology in supermarkets can point customers straight to what they're after.
Organización Soriana — Soriana, Mexico's supermarket chain, rebuilt 40-year-old mascot Julio Regalado with generative AI, the country's first retailer running an AI-powered brand influencer. It replies to TikTok shoppers instantly with personalised messages, an AI-generated promotional character, not a scripted ad.
Åhléns — AI customer service at Åhléns saw fallback queries fall from 12% to just 0.02% within weeks, after the Swedish chain launched a generative AI agent built with partner Ebbot. The virtual support agent, live since mid-March 2025, handles order tracking, delivery and returns queries on the retailer's site, built in under two months.
Adyen — More than half of Brazil's consumers, 52%, leaned on an AI shopping assistant such as ChatGPT during the past 12 months, Adyen's Retail Report 2025 reveals, a figure up 52% from the prior year. Of that share, 74% credited the assistant with steering what they bought when shopping with AI. Researchers polled 2,000 consumers alongside 500 retailers nationwide.
VARUS.UA — Manual basket assembly at VARUS.UA once took 30 minutes; with Neomi, an AI grocery shopping tool, the chain's 113 outlets now finish in 1–2 minutes. This AI recipe-based shopping feature nearly doubled conversion versus ordinary browsing, per the retailer, with over 340 online orders during Neomi's opening three-week pilot.
Albert Heijn — Albert Heijn's new AI assistant for retail staff gives 80,000 shop floor colleagues instant answers on stock levels and product locations, launched at FoodTech Week. This generative AI tool for shop floor employees is being rolled out nationwide.
Albert — Ahold Delhaize's Czech chain Albert now spots unbarcoded bread, fruit and vegetables via a small checkout-scale camera, speeding up staffed tills nationwide. The AI product recognition tool already ran in 50 outlets after a successful trial, with all 350 stores targeted by year end. This automated grocery identification push replaces manual lookups for loose produce.
Snow Factory (Xuefang Premium Yogurt) — A 30% drop in customer service spending followed Snow Factory's rollout of an AI chatbot in customer service, built on Appier's BotBonnie for LINE. Taiwan's yogurt brand feeds documents into a knowledge bot that autonomously handles FAQs, keyword triggers and tougher conversational AI customer support cases, lifting satisfaction too.
Lotte Department Store — A 70% drop in customer analysis time within one month followed Lotte Department Store's rollout of BI Agent, an AI-powered BI system layered on Strategy One, the generative platform from Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy). Wired into existing customer-data tools, it lets untrained staff pose questions in plain wording rather than code, extending AI-driven business intelligence into routine retail choices. Work once needing specialist skill, like cohort and relationship studies, now runs directly under marketers at stores and head office.
Wildberries — Wildberries brought AI in e-commerce analytics to Kazakhstan with Jam, a new seller-facing tool powered by a neural network. Sellers gain automated image and description editing for promo pages, plus visibility into audience segments, search-term performance and sales funnel conversion. The marketplace positions this AI-based seller analytics tool as a way to sharpen listings and lift conversions for Eurasian sellers.
Coop Szeged — Coop Szeged's new outlet at Szent István Square runs an AI-powered smart store model: staffed by day, then unmanned overnight via app-only entry and payment. Sensors spot odd movement without facial recognition, and a separate device identifies fruit and vegetables at checkout. Covering 150 square metres, it is Hungary's first shop blending human staff with automated retail AI.
Cervera — Sweden's Cervera deployed CAI (Cervera AI) for AI customer service retail use, closing over 80% of almost 12,000 chatbot exchanges without human staff since going live. Three in four respondents said the assistant met their needs precisely. Parent group Homeco extended this AI chatbot in retail to Norwegian siblings Kitch'n and Tilbords.
Massy Holdings Ltd — Massy Holdings runs an AI store management system on ChatGPT, letting Caribbean managers query stock, demand and sales trends instantly, cutting waste and lifting efficiency across 60-plus stores. Massy also counts over 100 self-checkout machines group-wide, part of the same AI-powered retail operations push, per its own unverified figures.
Carrefour Belgium — Carrefour Belgium runs a 24/7 checkout-free AI retail store at the Nato SHAPE base near Mons, Casteau — its biggest BuyBye micro-store yet, third overall, with 12 smart entrances. Built with Reckon.ai, cameras and weight sensors spot what shoppers take and charge them on exit, no tills needed. Over 250 daily goods fill the shelves, growing Carrefour's cashier-less shopping network.
Adyen — More than a third of Danish shoppers—35%, per Adyen's 2025 Retail Report spanning 41,000-plus consumers across 28 countries—now turn to AI in retail shopping, a 46% jump on 2024. Younger buyers dominate: Generation Z tops the list at 56% uptake, whereas Generation X posted the biggest climb, rising 54%. Nearly half of Denmark's retailers, 43%, expect to fund AI-driven sales and marketing within the coming 12 months.
Healthspan — Healthspan, a United Kingdom vitamins and supplements retailer, resolved 90% of product queries within eight weeks using a generative AI chatbot from Talkative in its contact centre. The AI customer service chatbot lifted satisfaction from 86% to 89%. With automated support absorbing routine questions, Healthspan's 57-person team handles higher-value work.
Terpel Ecuador — Terpel Ecuador now runs TBot, an AI customer service chatbot on WhatsApp Business, across its fuel stations, Altoque convenience stores and Voltex charging points. This AI-powered digital copilot replaces manual queries by sharing site locations, promotions and payment methods, plus collecting feedback.
Lowe's — Sales-floor staff at more than 1,700 Lowe's locations nationwide now use an AI retail assistant, Mylow Companion, to pull up merchandise details, project tips and warehouse counts on demand. The rollout follows Mylow, marketed as the home improvement sector's first AI-powered virtual advisor for shoppers.
OLX Ukraine — Sellers on OLX Ukraine now get an AI product listing generation tool that drafts descriptions and fills in item details from nothing more than a photo and headline, starting in the Fashion & Style category. Parameter accuracy reaches 75%, and 52% of the AI-generated item descriptions need no further editing before going live. The company credits the feature with a 40% drop in manual data entry.
SPAR Hrvatska — SPAR Hrvatska deployed AI chatbots in retail across WhatsApp and Viber, working with partner Infobip. Shoppers get nearby store locations, Sunday opening hours and weekly deals, plus live agent support and vacancy listings through WhatsApp, broadening conversational AI in retail nationwide.
Albert Heijn — Steijn, an AI kitchen assistant grocery app tool, gives Albert Heijn's Mijn AH users cooking help, recipe picks and fridge-storage tips, built on Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI. Photograph a fridge and it drafts a shopping list. Roughly 5 million weekly users of the Netherlands chain's app can reach this AI recipe assistant.
Suning — Suning Max stores in Zhengzhou and Beijing now run an AI store assistant and digital human guide on Lingsi, the retailer's own large model, fused with DeepSeek. Keyword lookups return product details in under a second, closing queries in a minute instead of four hours, with accuracy up from 80% to beyond 98%. The avatar adds tailored suggestions and live deals, an early retail AI deployment gain.
Auchan Hungary — Budapest now hosts Hungary's first cashierless AI store, Auchan GO, launched by Auchan Hungary on 10 April 2025 at Bikás Park. Shoppers enter and settle bills through the OkAuchan app, while 20 overhead cameras paired with weight-sensing shelving, spread across just 18 square metres, register each item taken. Cloudpick engineered the smart store platform behind the shop, rolled out locally by partner Kende Retail Operation.
Divar — Divar, Iran's largest classifieds platform, has launched دستیار خرید, an AI shopping assistant for plain conversational buyer requests instead of fixed filters. It suggests comparisons, gives purchase advice and surfaces matching ads beyond standard search. This AI-powered shopping assistant remains a pilot, limited to property, vehicles, digital goods and certain appliances.
Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada — Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada built an AI car-buying assistant called Intelligent Companion for shoppers browsing the 2025 Outlander. Running on IBM watsonx with its Granite model, it renders 3D feature tours tailored per visitor, an AI-powered buying experience guiding them to purchase.
SPAR South Africa — Employee adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot retail operations at SPAR South Africa has reached 67%, saving roughly 715 hours of labour. Drafting happens in Word, notes get condensed in Teams, and slides emerge from PowerPoint, weaving AI-assisted document creation into daily routines. Ninety-three per cent of staff said output had improved.
MC (Sonae Group) — Sensei's AI computer vision and sensors power MC's 1,200-square-metre Leiria outlet, billed by Sonae's retail arm as the world's biggest autonomous supermarket. Overhead lenses and shelf sensors track shoppers' picks, cutting scanning and till queues, trialling checkout-free retail technology in Portugal.
Petromin Corporation — Close to half of Petromin Corporation's WhatsApp customers tried PETROMINit!, its AI customer service agent, in its launch month, mainly for quick vehicle servicing and loyalty points. Built on large language models with conversational AI platform Gupshup, the Saudi mobility firm's automotive customer service chatbot replies in Arabic and English and also covers urgent breakdown help.
Fnac Darty — Fnac Darty runs about ten GenAI use cases in production for generative AI in e-commerce: catalogue enrichment, search, recommendations, review summarisation and support automation. The French retailer enriches listings across 15 million offers reaching 27 million monthly unique visitors, adding conversational search plus AI-powered customer service for its top ten interaction types.
Al-Futtaim — Over five million Blue Rewards members can now use Blue AI, Al-Futtaim's embedded retail AI assistant suggesting fashion, beauty and other items via single-tap multi-brand checkout. Debuting in the UAE, this AI shopping companion should extend to eight additional markets during its first year running.
National Consumer Service (Servicio Nacional del Consumidor - SERNAC) — SERNAC, Chile's consumer protection agency, addressed AI consumer protection via Resolución Exenta N° 33, guiding businesses on privacy hazards from automated tools used with shoppers. Expectations cover algorithmic disclosure, fair treatment, secure data handling, banned dark patterns, and human review of automated decision-making affecting consumers.
We research and keep track of applied AI globally. Retail & Consumer's record gained 14 entries in October. Your next dispatch will open with Retail & Consumer, then the most important news about how AI is being used, applied and regulated globally.
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