Tariffs, inflation, and other cost pressures have raised doubts about household spending, as retailers continue to look for ways to keep sales moving. Some are also betting on hands-on service led by store teams, while others are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline how people shop, a group that Walmart falls into.

According to the company, the four AI agents will handle jobs such as payroll, paid time off, merchandising, and recommending items for specific occasions, bringing many tools together to simplify customers’ interaction with the company. “Having a plethora of different agents can very quickly become confusing,” Suresh Kumar, chief technology officer for Walmart Global, said at the event.

David Glick, senior vice president for Enterprise Business Solutions at Walmart, said the Associate Agent serves as “a single point of entry where any associate can find access to all of the agents we’ve built on the back end.” He added, “As you speak to it more, as you work with it more, it’ll know more about you.”

Walmart leads as firms lean into AI

The shift comes as retailers are looking for ways to blunt rising costs for consumers and meet policy pressures. During Amazon’s four-day Prime Day in July, the use of generative AI rose by 3,300% year over year. Google Cloud AI also teamed with body-care brand Lush to visually identify unpackaged products, reducing training costs for new staff. Walmart also wants to invest in spatial and physical AI by building “digital twins” of its stores and clubs, virtual replicas used to monitor and manage operations.

With this approach, the company said it can “detect, diagnose and remediate issues up to two weeks in advance,” according to Brandon Ballard, group director for real estate at Walmart US. The company also added that this work is paying off. “Last year, we cut all of our emergency alerts by 30% and we reduced our maintenance spend in refrigeration by 19% across Walmart US,” he added as quoted in a CNBC report.

“At its core, retail is a physical business,” said Alex de Vigan, CEO and founder of Nfinite, which produces large-scale visual data to train spatial and physical AI systems. “We’ve seen retailers use digital twins to reduce setup time for new promotions, reallocate labor more efficiently, and improve robotic picking accuracy, small gains that add up quickly when margins are under stress,” he said.

The firm noted that shoppers may not directly notice digital-twin work the way they would a tool like Sparky, but the effect extends to the customer experience. “Better stock accuracy, faster site updates, and fewer order issues mean a smoother retail experience, even in a tighter economy,” said de Vigan. Behind the scenes, Walmart is also expected to apply machine learning to refine delivery-time predictions so customers have clearer expectations and operations run more efficiently.

On the consumer side, Sparky already builds carts based on an understanding of each shopper’s needs. Walmart is developing the agent so it can automatically reorder staples, aiming to ease the mental task of restocking. For retailers, AI is one lever to offset a potential cooling in consumer demand. What remains to be seen is how a fully connected AI experience, online and in stores, will reshape how people shop over time.

The post Walmart deploys AI to rethink how people shop amid inflation first appeared on Coinfea.

The individuals mentioned that the parties involved in the talks are not taking the bid seriously. A person familiar with the matter also noted that the offer came through a letter addressed to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The sources mentioned that the deal could see a group of investors jump on it, noting that it is unclear if such a structure will satisfy the conditions of federal law.

Blackstone wants a stake as Amazon enters the bidding

The video application, boasting 170 million users in the US has become the go-to hub for retail advertising for firms like Amazon, with the firms using influencers to advertise their products. Despite many firms having their TikTok Shop, they still pay influencers a cut on transactions that people make after buying through their links.

Amazon also tried to make its short video feed called Inspire, which shared similarities with TikTok but was considered unsuccessful at attracting shoppers, so the company removed it from the app this year.

Blackstone is also considering joining ByteDance’s existing non-Chinese shareholders, led by Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic, to contribute fresh capital to TikTok’s U.S. business. Last month, the president mentioned that his administration was in touch with four different groups about the sale of TikTok but didn’t identify them.

Amazon’s shares surged by 1.3% in a volume spike caused by the announcement. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz also revealed discussions about investing in TikTok as part of the deal. Microsoft and Walmart also made similar bids for the video app in 2020, when it was first pressured to sell to American owners.

The post Amazon submits last-minute bid to acquire TikTok as US ownership ban deadline draws closer first appeared on Coinfea.