Vendors love to tout their latest AI achievements, but the actual state of AI deployment is considerably less rosy. A survey of 60,000 COOs by PYMNTS finds that autonomous operation is still restricted to a few repeatable, low-risk use cases. Even tasks like accessing information or creating summaries of emails and reports need the human touch in 50% to 100% of cases (depending on industry).
Bluecore’s alby, an AI shopping assistant, wants to be less of a chatbot and more of a “true shopping companion.” Enhancements include a human-like, conversational product advisor, in-context product recommendations and recollection of a shopper’s in-session behavior. A Playbooks feature will help brands train alby to handle specific shopping scenarios.
Customer data and audience management platform Omeda is announcing a new integration with Shopify. This means order, product, and customer data from Shopify being imported directly into Omeda. Users will be able to see Shopify transaction activity in real time, use Omeda Audience Search to view customer order history from a connected Shopify store and use Omeda Audience Builder to create target audiences based on Shopify trends and behavior.
BetterUp and Stanford Social Media Lab define workslop as “AI-generated content that looks good, but lacks substance.” Their survey of 1,150 full-time desk workers in the U.S. finds that 40% received workslop in the last month, costing $186 per month per employee. For a 10,000-person company, that’s $9 million annually.