Walmart has introduced a new generative AI assistant named Sparky to help customers navigate product reviews, get tailored recommendations, and plan purchases directly through the Walmart app.
The launch comes just months after the retailer debuted Wally, a generative AI tool for merchants, and marks a further step in Walmart’s broader AI strategy.
According to the company, it is developing agentic AI systems trained on retail-specific language models and internal data to automate and personalise both consumer and business workflows.
Currently, Sparky can summarise reviews and assist with product queries.
In the near future, it will support reordering, service booking, and accept text, image, audio, and video inputs to enhance functionality.
Walmart’s own research suggests a growing consumer openness to AI. In its Retail Rewired report, 27% of respondents said they prefer AI-generated recommendations, slightly ahead of those who trust social media influencers (24%).
Customers are already using AI tools to compare prices and shipping times, track price drops, and filter products based on past purchases.
However, shoppers still show some hesitation. Nearly half of survey respondents said they were unlikely to use an AI agent for an entire shopping trip.
The retailer says it is training Sparky on specific tasks like item comparison and personalised curation to improve usefulness and drive adoption.
The assistant combines these smaller task-based agents to answer more complex customer questions.
Despite its AI push, Walmart has recently announced layoffs impacting 1,500 US retail and global tech roles as part of a streamlining effort to boost speed and innovation.
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