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Target has appointed Chandhu Nair as its first chief artificial intelligence officer, signaling a major push by global retailers to integrate advanced AI deep into their daily operations. Nair will oversee a centralized effort to deploy the technology across customer experiences, employee tools, inventory tracking, and corporate forecasting.
The landmark executive hiring comes as the broader retail sector rapidly expands its use of AI well past standard customer service chatbots to optimize complex supply chain management and backend logistics.
Target's AI strategy includes Trend Brain, a generative AI platform that analyzes emerging styles, colors and materials to accelerate product development.
The retailer has also launched conversational shopping and gift-selection tools and integrated its product catalog into external AI platforms. Nair will oversee a company-wide strategy spanning shopping, inventory and internal decision-making.
Walmart has developed retail-specific AI agents for product comparisons, personalized recommendations, customer support, merchandising and supply-chain management.
Its consumer-facing assistant guides shoppers from discovery to purchase, while internal tools help workers manage inventory and analyze stores. Walmart has also partnered with OpenAI and Google to offer shopping through ChatGPT and Gemini.
Amazon introduced Alexa for Shopping in May by combining its Rufus shopping assistant with Alexa+. The agent can compare products, monitor prices, build carts, reorder essentials and automatically purchase products when they reach customer-set prices.
Amazon said Rufus helped more than 300 million customers research, compare and buy products in 2025.
Gap is using Google Cloud's Gemini and Vertex AI across its Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta brands. Applications include product design, planning, pricing, personalized recommendations and marketing.
Gap products are also being integrated into Gemini and AI-powered search services, allowing customers to move from conversational discovery toward checkout.
French supermarket group Carrefour became the first major European retailer to integrate grocery shopping directly into ChatGPT in March.
Customers in France can request recipes, filter products according to dietary needs, check availability and build shopping baskets through natural-language conversations before completing payment on Carrefour's website.
The integration builds on Hopla, the ChatGPT-based assistant Carrefour introduced in 2023 to suggest menus and prepare baskets according to customers' budgets and preferences.
IKEA has developed an AI-powered home-design and shopping assistant that recommends furniture according to room dimensions, personal style, budget and sustainability preferences.
The retailer also uses AI-powered drones for automated inventory checks and acquired logistics software company Locus in 2025 to improve delivery planning and route optimization.
Alibaba has embedded AI shopping assistants into its Taobao and Tmall platforms. Taobao's Wenwen assistant compares products and generates personalized recommendations through conversational queries, while Alibaba's Qwen app can order food, make in-chat payments and complete other multi-step transactions.
During the 2025 Singles' Day campaign, an AI customer-service assistant handled 300 million queries. Alibaba said AI-assisted customer support helped participating merchants increase conversion rates by 30% year-on-year.
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