Walmart uses artificial intelligence in ‘Sparky’ shopping app

“Ask Sparky,” a new artificial intelligence (AI) driven shopping assistance launched by Walmart to drive more sales through customer engagement, may not be able to help you pick out a OmaHogs hat, but it could help with Father’s Day gift ideas.

Ask Sparky appears as the happy face emoji at the bottom of the mobile app screen between “my items” and “services.” When a customer activates the emoji, a message appears like, “I can help you with all of your shopping needs. What are you looking for today?”

The technology pulls up recent items searched for on the app and asks if more information is needed. It also prompted Father’s Day shopping needs and made suggestions, such as gifts for dads who cook and men’s sneakers for all-day comfort.

When asked what would be needed to host a Father’s Day picnic, Sparky displayed disposable table cloths and decorative paper plates for the holiday. Then it asked if there was a preferred style or color scheme needed for Father’s Day so it could refine the decorations. When asked for food recommendations for the picnic, the app features gift baskets and boxes that would be given as gifts. It did not bring up foods that could be consumed at the picnic.

The app allows customers to use natural language searches to determine the expected weather for a particular place. When asked about the weather at Orange Beach, Ala., today, Sparky provided a similar forecast to what the Weather Channel app would have, and it offered the extended forecast, humidity and UV index for the beach.

Walmart said it intends for Sparky to solve help answer the question “What’s for dinner?” by providing a week of family-approved meal plans with ingredients automatically added to the shopper’s cart. But the app is not there yet. When asked “What’s for Dinner?” Sparky responded, “What are you looking for in a dinner meal or recipe?” When answering “taco night,” the app brought up taco seasoning and taco shells from Old El Paso and Hidden Valley Ranch mix. Then it prompted for more information. The app responses are limited to three or four items with very little diversity in the options.

Sparky also was not helpful when asked to help find a hat for the College World Series in Omaha this coming weekend. The app displayed Major League Baseball caps.

Walmart execs who spoke to the media about Sparky at the retailer’s recent shareholder week said the app would become smarter and more intuitive to prompt shoppers to not forget something they always buy. Walmart said that Sparky uses generative AI, which is based on machine learning and can create new content, ideas, and create recommendations based on analysis of volumes of data in near-real-time that were previously too big to evaluate.

The retailer plans to leverage agentic AI, which goes a step beyond generative AI by quickly analyzing massive amounts of data and automatically taking action based on the results, to provide more functionality from Sparky.

“Sparky is more than a feature — it’s a foundation for what’s next,” Desiree Gosby, Walmart senior VP, tech strategy and emerging tech, said in a corporate blog post. “Fueling Walmart’s trajectory into the future of shopping, Sparky isn’t just revolutionizing retail; it’s paving the way for a new and improved customer experience. And this is just the beginning.”