Walmart prepares for a future where AI agents do the shopping

The big picture: A rise of AI shopping agents is promising to reshape the retail landscape in ways that are only beginning to come into focus. As Walmart navigates this frontier, the company's moves highlight a critical truth: the race to win over AI shoppers is just beginning, and the rules are being written on the fly. Walmart is gearing up for a dramatic shift in retail, as artificial intelligence agents begin to change not just how people shop, but who – or rather, what – is actually doing the shopping. The retail giant is exploring ways to make its products appealing not just to human customers, but also to the AI bots that may soon be making purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers. "It will be different," Hari Vasudev, Walmart US Chief Technology Officer, told the Wall Street Journal. "Advertising will have to evolve." Indeed, AI's influence is already visible today in how consumers research products, with search engines increasingly favoring AI-generated summaries over tra ... Read full article.