It’s closer than you think

Imagine a world where AI predicts what we will cook for dinner and what foods we should buy, then fulfills that order and then delivers them. This Jetsons A version of grocery shopping is already in the works, thanks to a new collaboration between Walmart and OpenAI.

This is called agentic commerce, where AI bots not only answer questions but predict what customers will want, turning the shopping experience into a conversation and the retailer goes from reactive to proactive.

Here’s how the technology works in theory: Coles or Woolworths knows it’s pizza night at your house on Tuesday and buys the ingredients, charges your card and delivers your purchase to your home. But what if you forget to buy bread and milk and find them on your doorstep? Agency trading promises to do just that.

You could write this off as another digital gimmick, but a retailer the size of Walmart diving headfirst into AI will attract the attention of companies like Coles, Woolworths and Aldi. If Walmart’s investment pays off, it could fundamentally change the way we shop.

So the chatbot that currently helps us compile a report for work may soon organize our shopping list. This is a futuristic fantasy that has entered our lives, whether utopian or dystopian.

Walmart’s heavy investment in an AI shopping experience is driven in part by a need to catch up with retail disruptor Amazon and a desire to please millennials looking for a more immersive digital shopping experience.

And there’s a good chance that the services Walmart wants to develop will reach Australian shores sooner rather than later. There’s already plenty of AI powering the backends of Australia’s major supermarkets, particularly around ordering and logistics.

And our supermarkets already have a pretty close relationship with their customers thanks to their loyalty programmes. Moreover, the sophistication of our payment system ensures that the next step in online shopping is clearly realized.

Australian consumers have traditionally been early adopters of new technologies, and this is an opportunity where our supermarket duopoly could actually be a good thing. Both Coles and Woolworths have dollars to invest in representative trading and all it takes is one to take the plunge and the other to follow.