New Workflow Provides Developers Generative AI and 3D Visualization Technologies to Elevate Shopping Experiences Online and In Stores
NRF—NVIDIA announced the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for retail shopping assistants, a generative AI reference workflow designed to transform shopping experiences online and in stores.
The blueprint — built on the NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Omniverse™ platforms — helps developers create AI-powered digital assistants that work alongside and support human workers. These digital assistants can deliver the expertise of a company’s best sales associate, stylist or designer, elevating customer satisfaction and workforce efficiency.
Using NVIDIA NeMo™ microservices provided within the blueprint, these highly skilled AI shopping assistants can understand text- and image-based prompts, search for multiple items simultaneously, complete complicated tasks such as creating a travel wardrobe, and answer contextual questions like whether a product is waterproof.
Developers can use the Omniverse platform in conjunction with a spatial-scanning solution to enable AI agents to present products in physically accurate virtual environments. For example, customers looking to buy a couch could preview how the furniture would look in their own living room.
AI agents with advanced capabilities like these are designed to enhance customer experiences, drive higher conversion rates, lower product return rates and increase the average size of orders through highly intelligent, personalized suggestions of complementary products or upgrades.
“AI agents can elevate shopping experiences, turning what can be impersonal transactions into smarter, more enjoyable interactions,” said Azita Martin, vice president of AI for retail, consumer packaged goods and quick-service restaurants at NVIDIA. “Shoppers everywhere want intelligent product recommendations, personalized interactions and lightning-fast response times. AI agents built using the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for retail shopping assistants can deliver this kind of exceptional, always-on service to every customer.”
Accelerating Retail AI Assistant Development
SoftServe, a leading IT advisor to some of the most recognizable brands worldwide, today announced its SoftServe Gen AI Shopping Assistant, developed using NVIDIA’s shopping assistants blueprint in early access.
The assistant can help browse product catalogs, search for items and access detailed product information quickly. A standout feature is its virtual try-on capability, allowing customers to visualize how products look on them directly through an online chat before making a purchase.
“Whether it’s online, offline or hybrid shopping, retailers face challenges like purchase hesitation, costly returns and the need for personalized customer experiences,” said Ivan Leshko, executive vice president North America at SoftServe. “The NVIDIA AI Blueprint for retail shopping assistants enabled us to build a turnkey solution quickly so our retail customers can use AI to keep consumers engaged and drive higher conversion rates.”
NVIDIA AI Drives Business Impact, Enhanced Customer Experience
With AI shopping assistants, retailers can deliver more engaging customer interactions, around the clock and across the world.
NVIDIA’s retail shopping assistant blueprint features NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, including NVIDIA NIM™ microservices for Meta Llama 3.3 70B and NVIDIA NeMo Retriever embedding and reranking microservices, to deliver AI performance at scale. It also includes NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails safety features, as well as NVIDIA Omniverse for design and visualization capabilities.
Key features of the blueprint include:
- Multimodal and multi-query capabilities, enabling consumers to use text and images in queries.
- Integration with large language models (LLMs) that bring reasoning capabilities to AI shopping assistants for natural, humanlike interactions. This includes NVIDIA Llama Nemotron LLMs, announced this week at the CES trade show, which will be available later this year.
- The ability to ingest retailers’ product catalog text and image data for accurate, context-aware responses.
- Guardrails that help ensure customer conversations with the shopping assistant remain safe and on-topic, protecting brand values.
- State-of-the-art simulation tools that can help customers visualize products in their own physically accurate spaces.
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The shopping assistant blueprint is the latest addition to a growing repository of NVIDIA AI Blueprints, many announced at CES earlier this week. This includes a new version of the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for video search and summarization that helps retailers build video analytics AI agents that can analyze large volumes of live and archived content to boost operational efficiency and safety.
Bringing Retail Shopping Assistants to Retailers Worldwide
NVIDIA’s global network of partners is leveraging the fundamental technologies of the shopping assistant blueprint to develop and deploy innovative solutions for the $30 trillion retail industry. According to eMarketer, the industry is projected to grow to $35 trillion by 2028, representing significant opportunities for transformation and growth.
In addition to SoftServe, NVIDIA partners Dell Technologies and World Wide Technology (WWT) will use the blueprint in early access to make it easier for retailers to adopt AI.
“Retail leaders harnessing AI-powered personalization are creating unprecedented competitive advantages in today’s digital-first marketplace,” said Adam Dumey, global vice president of retail at WWT. “We’re excited to leverage this new retail shopping assistant blueprint from NVIDIA to bring the full force of our nearly $1 billion investment in our Advanced Technology Center and AI Proving Ground — along with our expert team of data scientists, retail consultants and AI architects — to help our retail customers accelerate their AI transformation.”