As the retail industry prepares for the NRF 2024 conference beginning January 13, generative AI is set to take center stage. Google is positioning itself as a key player in this evolution.
Today, Google Cloud unveiled a suite of AI technologies aimed at helping retailers enhance shopping experiences. These new services build on Google’s existing generative AI tools, including Vertex AI, PaLM 2, and Gemini large language models, with a specific focus on retail applications.
One standout feature is Google Cloud’s conversational commerce solution, which allows retailers to seamlessly deploy AI-powered chatbots across their websites and apps. Additionally, enhancements to Vertex AI Search are geared toward delivering high-quality search results and recommendations. Google also introduced AI-driven solutions to modernize customer service and catalog management, integrating with existing customer relationship management (CRM) systems for personalized interactions and appointment scheduling.
Google has successfully integrated AI into retail through various initiatives. Amy Eschliman, Managing Director of Cloud Retail Industry Solutions at Google, highlighted that several retailers, like Gymshark, are already using Google Vertex AI to create virtual assistants that guide customers in their product selections. This assistant also enriches the Gymshark training app by tracking activities and offering new insights for fitness improvement.
The potential for generative AI in retail is promising. As part of its NRF 2024 strategy, Google is releasing research that reflects the growing demand for AI in retail, based on a survey of 274 retail executives. The findings reveal that 95% of decision-makers believe generative AI will impact customer experiences, and 72% are prepared to implement this technology in 2024. Specifically, 59% of respondents aim to enhance customer service automation, while 49% plan to focus on marketing support and product description generation.
Google’s conversational commerce solution empowers retailers to create virtual agents capable of having natural conversations with customers, offering tailored product recommendations. This technology is built on Google’s PaLM (Text and Chat) and natural language models (Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech). Retailers can utilize Google Cloud’s search and recommendation machine learning models through these virtual assistants.
The catalog and content enrichment solution addresses the need for improved product descriptions. For example, a sporting goods store's merchandising team could use this technology to ensure accurate online product descriptions, minimize errors, and automatically translate content into various languages. This solution also enables retailers to quickly onboard and launch new products or adjust descriptions to reflect trending items, optimizing SEO performance and organic search rankings.
Search remains a backbone of Google’s offerings and is essential for online shopping, enabling consumers to discover products and services. Google is enhancing its Vertex AI Search for retail, integrating generative AI features to improve the shopping experience. Eschliman emphasized that these upgrades are distinct from the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in Google's public search engine.
The upgraded Vertex AI Search allows retailers to significantly enhance their digital platforms with advanced capabilities, including better understanding of user intent and self-learning ranking mechanisms. Eschliman stated, “We’ve developed a large language model that can be custom-trained for each retailer, improving product rankings and boosting both relevance and revenue.”
As the NRF 2024 event approaches, Google's innovations underscore the rising significance of generative AI in transforming the retail landscape.
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