Artificial intelligence

Fresh Thyme is rolling out new Afresh technology to improve ordering and inventory management in its deli and prepared foods departments, according to an October 2024 announcement. 

Afresh Store Order for Food Service will provide guidance on inventory levels and placing orders while AI-driven technology provides insight on order recommendations and auto-orders. This new initiative also expands Fresh Thyme and Afresh’s partnership, which began in 2019, and continues the AI-technology company’s efforts to bring its capabilities beyond produce departments.

As food waste continues to be a main sustainability concern across the industry, technology companies and grocers continue to seek out new solutions to improve inventory management that will cut back on waste.

Afresh’s new system in Fresh Thyme’s deli and prepared foods sections taps the same AI data engine used in its additional platforms for other fresh departments to “sense hard-to-track factors” — including shelf life, seasonality, holidays and imperfect register scanning — for individual fresh items, according to the press release.

For the prepared foods department specifically, Afresh’s system helps store employees navigate ordering ingredients that are common across many recipes as well as adjust for potential ingredient substitutions, the announcement noted.  

By the end of 2024, Afresh said its platforms will be in use at all of Fresh Thyme’s “core” fresh departments across its entire 70-store fleet, per the press release. 

Afresh’s ordering and inventory management technology is becoming more common throughout the industry as grocers utilize it to cut back on food waste and further sustainability efforts. As of October, Albertsons, Cub Foods and Heinen’s are using the company’s AI-driven platforms in their fresh departments. 

Earlier in October, Albertsons became the first retailer to test a new, separate Afresh forecasting solution for distribution centers that automatically compiles data that buyers use to forecast demand for upcoming orders from their stores. At the time, Albertsons was piloting the solution across produce, meat, seafood, deli and foodservice for 17 distribution centers. 

Afresh announced in March 2023 an expansion of its food waste reduction technology beyond just produce to other fresh departments.

Instacart unveiled Smart Shop in March 2025, a new technology that uses generative artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning models to better understand customers’ dietary preferences and shopping habits. 

Instacart also announced it developed an AI-driven system to scan product data and extract key nutrition characteristics and debuted “Inspiration Pages,” which highlight products that match a customer’s health and dietary preferences.

As shoppers grapple with the seemingly endless virtual aisles of grocery items, Instacart is looking to make online shopping faster and easier by offering a more curated experience. 

For Smart Shop, Instacart said it is tapping into its catalog of 17 million items and proprietary dataset covering “millions” of grocery trips to better understand the nuances of customer behavior. After Smart Shop recognizes patterns in a customer’s preferences, it uses generative AI to serve up related products for that shopper. Based on Smart Shop preferences, Instacart will use AI-powered tagging and relevancy scoring to populate carousels with tailored products on a customer’s favorite retailer’s digital storefront. 

Each time a customer shops, Smart Shop dynamically adjusts based on the consumer’s choices, according to Instacart.

In March, the company said the current way customers shop for items that match dietary preferences is a “scavenger hunt” and noted that more than 70% of Instacart customers have at least one dietary preference.

Instacart users will also get prompts like “Show more low-carb options?” and their responses will help inform Smart Shop, according to Instacart. 

Customers can manually set their Smart Shop preferences within the app’s settings and select from 14 dietary preferences, including gluten-free, high protein, low carb, organic, and preservative-free.

Meanwhile, under the newly created Health Tag system, Instacart said it has tagged over 1.3 billion data points across approximately 500,000 food and beverage products in its catalog and created 30 Health Tags, such as high protein, low carb and preservative-free. Customers can use these tags to filter for products.  

Instacart developed its first Inspiration Page in partnership with the American Diabetes Association to provide expert nutrition advice, product recommendations and shoppable diabetic-friendly recipes to people living with prediabetes, diabetes and obesity. 

Instacart plans to expand its dedicated Inspiration Pages, including adding new shoppable experiences for Smart Shop preferences like high fiber and partnering with additional organizations to offer more guidance from experts. 

The new tools are the latest technological efforts by Instacart to better identify and cater to consumers’ shopping habits and preferences. In the fall 2024, Instacart announced new gamification and advertising capabilities for its smart carts.

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By VusionGroup

Retail is undergoing a transformative shift. With the integration of advanced technologies like AI (artificial intelligence), computer vision, and IoT, physical stores are evolving into intelligent, responsive and connected environments. This digital transformation is not just about modernization; it's about unlocking new levels of productivity, efficiency, and profitability for retailers.

Pioneering the Digitalization of Grocery Retail

Leading the charge are grocery retailers like The Fresh Market and Kavanagh's, who are embracing cutting-edge solutions to revolutionize their in-store experiences.

• The Fresh Market is implementing a comprehensive suite of technologies across its 160+ U.S. locations by the end of 2025. This includes:
  • Engage: A platform for dynamic in-store retail media, allowing for real-time promotional campaigns.
  • Captana: An AI-driven computer vision system that monitors shelf inventory, ensuring optimal product availability.
  • EdgeSense BLE: A Bluetooth-enabled digital shelf label system that facilitates instant price updates and enhances operational efficiency.

These technologies collectively aim to enhance customer experience, streamline operations, improve employee productivity, and reduce waste.

• Kavanagh's, a prominent grocery chain in the UK, has launched the country's first Vusion 360 store. By integrating similar in-store digital and AI technologies (EdgeSense BLE, Captana & Engage), Kavanagh's has achieved:
  • Significant reductions in food waste, saving approximately one ton of CO2 equivalent per month.
  • Enhanced productivity through automated operations.
  • Improved customer engagement via digital shelf-edge media.

Get a look at this new technology inside a beautiful Kavanagh store - presented to you by OmniTalk Retail hosts, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton – here)

Industry Giants Embrace Digital Transformation

Major retailers are also adopting these innovations to stay competitive:

• Walmart, always at the forefront of store innovation, is expanding its deployment of digital shelf labels across all 4,600 U.S. stores. This move aims to streamline associate workflows, so more time is spent serving customers.
• Ace Hardware, a forward-thinker in the DIY space, has partnered with VusionGroup to implement digital shelf labels and IoT cloud platforms, enhancing both customer experience and operational efficiency across its extensive network.

The Path Forward

The integration of AI and digital technologies in physical retail spaces is no longer optional - it's imperative. Retailers adopting these solutions are witnessing tangible benefits:

• Increased Productivity: Automated systems reduce manual tasks, allowing staff to focus on customer service.
• Product Assortment Optimization: Retailers are using real-time data to make fast decisions on inventory and maintain full shelves of the right product based on customer demands
• Sustainability: Better inventory management leads to reduced food waste and a smaller environmental footprint.

The future of retail operational excellence thrives in smart, connected stores that leverage AI, IoT, and digital technologies to meet evolving consumer demands. By embracing these innovations, retailers can enhance their store operations and deliver superior customer experiences, ensuring sustained profitability in a competitive landscape.

Amazon announced in late July 2024 that it has developed an advanced AI model for its Just Walk Out checkout technology that makes the system more accurate, more efficient and quicker to provide receipts to shoppers.

The update uses the same machine learning models that underlie many generative AI applications. Instead of gathering input piece-by-piece from its cameras, shelf sensors, 3-D store model and product data — a process that resulted in lengthy processing times — the new AI model analyzes all inputs at the same time to determine exactly what shoppers are picking up, putting down and ultimately walking out with.

Just Walk Out technology, as of July 2024, is currently available at 170 third-party locations, all of which will be getting the multi-modal system upgrade over the next month, Jon Jenkins, the vice president of Just Walk Out said in an interview.

Amazon’s latest upgrade keeps it at the cutting edge of checkout technology as it shifts its focus from powering its own stores to integrating with third-party retailers and venues like hospitals, arenas and corporate buildings.

The enhanced system streamlines the way it processes incoming data from stores. 

“It increases the accuracy of Just Walk Out technology even in complex shopping scenarios with variables such as camera obstructions, lighting conditions, and the behavior of other shoppers, while allowing us to simplify the system,” Jenkins wrote in a blog post.

The update could help make Just Walk Out a more compelling offering for retailers, which have so far been slow to adopt the pricey technology. After launching Just Walk Out in its own retail stores, including Amazon Go c-stores and Amazon Fresh grocery stores, Amazon began selling the technology to other companies. In 2022, Just Walk Out shifted from Amazon’s retail division to its Amazon Web Services division to help facilitate those third-party sales, an Amazon spokesperson said.

But convenience and grocery companies have so far opted to focus on less expensive self-checkout kiosks instead of the advanced technology offered by Amazon and tech companies like Grabango, Zippin and Trigo.

Early in 2024, Amazon seemed to raise the white flag on promoting Just Walk Out technology’s use in grocery stores, announcing that its Amazon Fresh locations would instead move forward with the company’s proprietary smart carts, known as Dash Carts. Whole Foods Market said earlier in 2024 that it would also pull Just Walk Out technology from its stores that had the technology. 

“If I'm going to go hang out at a large format grocery store for an hour on my weekly shopping trip, maybe something like our Dash Carts make more sense in those cases,” Jenkins said in an interview. Amazon also began selling its Dash Carts to other grocers.

Earlier in July 2024, Jenkins met with reporters at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle and led a tour of the Just Walk Out labs where the company pioneered the new multi-modal system. Scientists showed how the system can discern between products that look nearly identical, and how it can quickly and accurately recognize product selections even in tricky scenarios, like when a customer selects two packages of deli meat with one hand.

Where Just Walk Out seems to be thriving is in stadiums, airports and other venues that see long lines filled with time-pressed customers. Airport convenience operator Hudson has 16 locations with Just Walk Out, while stadiums like Seattle’s T-Mobile Park and BMO Stadium in Los Angeles also have markets using the technology, as of summer 2024.

Jenkins sees promise for the technology in locations that need 24-hour service, like hospitals and residential buildings, and in new venues that value the compact footprint that Just Walk Out-powered markets require.  Amazon aims to double the number of third-party stores equipped with the checkout technology, he wrote in the blog post.

“I think we're just sort of scratching the surface of what's going to be possible with this sort of high-level type of technology. It's allowing us to address new types of stores and new verticals,” Jenkins said.

Amazon is also rolling out an RFID-powered checkout system that can work in stores where customers like to browse without having to check in at a payment station before entering, like clothing stores and merchandise shops. As of July 2024, Amazon has RFID-powered merch shops in five stadiums, including Seattle’s Lumen Field, Florida’s Hard Rock Stadium and Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City.

As the Just Walk Out system processes more consumer behavior, it will learn and become even more accurate and efficient, Jenkins said. Retailers will be able to install fewer hardware fixtures, which will drive down costs further. Improving the return on investment for retailers, he said, is one of the top priorities for Just Walk Out: “It's definitely our goal to drive costs down so that we can expand the market.”

Artificial intelligence is playing a sizable role in Instacart’s efforts to grow different arms of its business, from advertiser capabilities to customer tools.

For example, Instacart has leveraged AI to improve its product replacements, CEO Fidji Simo told investors in February 2025, noting that the company made 300 million replacements with a 95% satisfaction rate in 2024.

Instacart plans to start testing advanced store-shelf scanning using AI to analyze videos from its workers, then to do the same with Caper Carts in the future, according to the shareholder letter. Using its own workers to track on-shelf inventory is “much more real-time than what we get from retailers,” Simo told investors, adding that accurate product availability data is essential to making faster, more accurate substitutions and boosting customer adoption of grocery e-commerce. 

“We use AI in everything that we do across the business,” Simo told investors. 

Instacart has also used AI to tag all of the products in its catalog to allow for greater personalization with dietary preferences, CFO Emily Reuter said during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in February 2025. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Instacart’s customers have at least one dietary preference, Reuter said.

Simo listed AI among the four major ways Instacart is looking to drive ad revenue growth, which includes diversifying its roster of advertisers and scaling where it can serve ads. The newly launched AI-powered landing pages are showing “very strong results,” Simo said, adding that energy drink brand Celsius saw a 20% sales increase for its campaign using the pages. 

The landing pages mark the first in a series of AI-powered advertiser tools Instacart said it plans to deploy.  

For fiscal 2024, Instacart’s advertising and other revenue grew 10% compared to the prior year, to $958 million, representing 2.9% of gross transaction value. 

“[We]’re constantly tuning our AI and [machine learning] models to enhance search relevance and contextual recommendations, in addition to new types of targeting, measurement, and optimized bidding tools on our platform,” Simo said in the shareholder letter.

Instacart has worked with OpenAI on the research organization’s AI agent called Operator, which can do computer tasks for a user, such as placing Instacart orders. Instacart is in good company, with two-thirds of organizations pursuing AI agents, according to BCG research cited by sister site CIO Dive. Walmart, for example, is utilizing an AI agent to help merchants identify causes of supply management issues.

In fall 2024, Instacart integrated its Caper Carts with NVIDIA’s Jetson platform, which uses edge AI applications to improve the smart carts’ product recognition. 

“[W]e have innovated massively in the last year across new formats, new measurement capabilities, new metrics, incorporating AI into our products, and that remains a big area of investment for us that is paying off,” Simo said. 

Albertsons announced in March 2025 a new partnership with technology company Capgemini that will equip the grocer’s retail media arm with intelligent process automation and generative artificial intelligence.

This tie-up aims to provide Albertsons Media Collective with insights to bolster media planning, media operations and content creation. 

Capgemini’s intelligent progress automation utilizes robotic process automation (RPA), generative AI and smart analytics to offer Albertsons Media Collective end-to-end insights aimed at bolstering its media operation model, streamlining workflows and enhancing campaign performance for brands and agencies, according to the emailed press release. 

Albertsons’ retail media network could achieve a 20% faster speed to market by integrating Capgemini’s technology, offering real-time creative optimization and automating operations for media planning as well as allowing employees to focus on higher level tasks. The grocer’s CPG and brand partners will also be presented with greater flexibility, efficiencies and campaign performance, per the announcement. 

“The advertising industry is ripe with potential to integrate AI, and we see a massive opportunity to leverage process automation to streamline our workflows, drive enhanced campaign performance and accelerate speed to market,” Kristi Argyilan, senior vice president of retail media for Albertsons Media Collective, said in a statement.

Generative AI continues to capture grocers’ attention as industry experts anticipate the technology becoming more mainstream throughout 2025. In an interview, Bobby Gibbs, partner in Oliver Wyman’s Retail & Consumer Goods team, predicted that generative AI will become more integrated into grocer’s apps and websites to offer a more personalized experience for shoppers — a key component in building out retail media.

Albertsons is not the only company to implement AI technology. In May 2024, The Fresh Market, along with technology company Firework, announced the beta release of what they claimed to be the first-ever generative AI live shopping solution, enabling the specialty grocer’s customers to use the in-video chat feature on an ongoing, on-demand basis after a livestream ends. 

Sam’s Club is making significant progress in its quest to use artificial intelligence to make it quicker and easier for shoppers to leave its stores.

About half of customers who visit the locations where it has deployed automated receipt-verification technology at exits now walk out without needing to show proof to an employee that they have paid for their purchases, the Walmart-owned club retailer announced in April 2024. In turn, that means that all shoppers at those stores are able to leave 23% faster than they were before Sam’s Club installed the systems, according to the company.

Sam’s Club developed the equipment to address what it said is a top complaint from shoppers — having to wait in line to present a paper receipt to a worker before being able to depart. 

The chain has rolled out the technology, which uses computer vision to identify the items in people’s shopping carts and match them with their payments, to about 120 of its almost 600 locations since unveiling it in January 2024. The club retailer said it intended to bring the technology to the rest of its stores by the end of 2024.

Sam’s Club noted that the systems free workers who otherwise might be stationed at the door to examine the contents of shopping carts to instead help people as they shop. The company added that it expects to continue refining the technology as it gathers data about transactions at the growing number of stores where it has installed the gear.

The retailer called attention in its announcement to its success in bringing the receipt-verification equipment — as well as technology such as its popular Scan & Go gear — to a large number of stores.

“What distinguishes Sam’s Club from our competitors is our ability to seamlessly deploy this technology at scale across our nearly 600 clubs nationwide. Whether it’s a single item or a cartful, we’re revolutionizing the checkout experience,” Sam’s Club Chief Product Officer Todd Garner said in a statement.

Target plans to introduce a new generative artificial intelligence technology for its store employees at all of the company’s nearly 2,000 stores nationwide by August 2024, the company announced in June 2024.

The company is launching an AI-powered chatbot tool, Store Companion, as an app on store associates’ handheld devices. The app is designed to help store associates answer process and procedure-related questions. It’s currently in pilot testing at about 400 locations ahead of a planned nationwide roll out.

Target is also using gen AI to enhance product display pages to display personalized customer search results and summaries of product reviews. Target also began introducing guided search on its online store. Customer product searches can now return a broader selection of relevant items. The enhanced search experience will be available to all customers in late summer 2024.

Target’s in-house technology team developed the Store Companion chatbot in about six months by using frequently asked questions and process-related documents from stores across the U.S.

“We know technology will continue to play an outsized role in the future of retail — for our team members, our guests and our business,” Chief Information Officer Brett Craig said in a statement. “With that in mind, we’re continually experimenting with new tools to make it even easier for our team to do their jobs and to bring more of what guests love about shopping at Target to life. The transformative nature of Gen AI is helping us accelerate the rate of innovation across our operations, and we're excited about the role these new tools and applications will play in driving growth.”

Target is the latest big box retailer to announce that it plans to use AI to support its customers and frontline workers. Walmart began using gen AI in late 2023 to enhance customer search and provide frontline employees with real-time information that can help them answer customer queries and obtain operational information.

About a month after introducing generative AI, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the company was already seeing positive results. The benefits of using generative AI in retail include the technology’s ability to contextualize and personalize information for customers, Jon Alferness, the chief product officer for Walmart U.S., told sister site Retail Dive in a recent interview. Target appears to be following a similar path.

Target said its goal in introducing Store Companion is to make the frontline associates’ jobs easier, allow them to work more quickly and efficiently and deeper customer engagement to improve the shopping experience — goals that mirror what Walmart is doing with generative AI. 

The company said its store associate app can provide instant answers to questions like, “How do I sign a guest up for a Target Circle Card?” or “How do I restart the cash register in the event of a power outage?” The chatbot can also offer on-the-job learning resources for new or seasonal employees.

“We’re hearing great feedback from our team about the new app,” Jake Seaquist, store director at one of the pilot stores in Champlin, Minn, said in the company’s announcement. “Streamlining day-to-day tasks goes a long way with our team members and adds up to more time spent with guests and a better guest experience across the store.”

Generative AI and personalization are helping Target to expand its offerings to shoppers. During a May 2024 earnings call, Target Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington said the company was “very encouraged” by recent results from a partnership with a major vendor to test personalization for guests shopping in personal care categories. The results “showed a nearly three times lift in conversion rates from personalized promotions versus mass offers, including higher sales lift across the rest of the category as well,” Hennington said.

Walmart is planning a broader rollout of AI-powered coding assistance and completion tools after experiencing early wins, executives said during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call in February 2025. 

Last year, the tools helped the retailer save about 4 million developer hours by streamlining deployments and delivering code faster with fewer bugs, Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon said. Walmart plans to make the tools available to all developers in North America and India in 2025.

“As we become more productive and reduce the amount of time we work on routine tasks, that gives us time to develop tools that help us grow the business and move faster,” McMillon said.

Walmart moved quickly to embrace generative AI. The company took a “diverge, then converge” approach to the technology as it transitioned from discovery to execution, sister site CIO Dive reported in 2024. 

Part of Walmart’s shift in approach to AI centered on narrowing its scope. Companies that implemented an AI strategy, built advanced capabilities and began to realize benefits last year took a similar approach, according to BCG data. Leading organizations pursued about half as many AI projects compared with less advanced businesses, BCG research found. 

Walmart leaned into expanding generative AI access and using the technology to enhance customer and associate experiences. The retailer boosted the adoption of its internal generative AI tool, My Assistant. Now, Walmart is increasing the amount of developers using coding tools. It also used the technology to improve data hygiene to better search and discovery capabilities, ultimately leading to CX wins. 

Despite rising enterprise disillusionment with AI in 2024, most companies continued to prioritize the technology. 

While more than 4 in 5 IT decision-makers say their company progressed toward AI goals in 2024, returns were harder to come by, according to an IBM report. Most businesses yet to reach ROI expect cost savings to occur within three years, and around 44% anticipate turning the corner sooner. 

For some businesses, the sustained efforts have already begun to pay off. General Mills executives credited the food manufacturer’s AI projects with driving millions in cost-savings, during a conference earlier this week. Financial services company Charles Schwab tied expanded AI use to trimmed costs, too. 

AI agents are the latest frontier enterprises are exploring on the path to unlock efficiencies and improve experiences. Two-thirds of organizations are pursuing AI agents already, BCG research found. Walmart said it is using an AI agent to help merchants identify the root cause of issues related to supply management. 

“We’ve got opportunities to save money, get faster and we’re making fluid decisions about how much we invest in technology,” McMillon said. 

Walmart’s fourth-quarter revenue was up 4.1%, totaling $180.6 billion. Its e-commerce business and grocery segment saw growth as well, but the retailer warned of slower profit growth in fiscal year 2025.