Google Cloud has recently introduced four technologies assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some of them are new and some are updated versions.
These tools aim to help businesses transform the shelf verification processes of their establishments and to improve their online stores, offering more fluid and natural shopping experiences for customers.
The first of the novelties is a new solution for checking the shelves of physical stores. It has been developed in the Vertex AI Vision environment, from Google Cloud, and uses a Google database with data on people, places and articles; he is able to recognize billions of products and it helps retailers to correctly size the shelves of their shops and to always have them well stocked.
At the same time, Google Cloud has updated its Discovery AI solutions with new AI-assisted personalization capabilities and with new navigation functionality also based on this technology.
These two innovations allow businesses to update their digital windows with more dynamic and intuitive shopping experiences. Finally, Google Cloud’s Recommendations AI solution has integrated new machine learning capabilities that provide retailers with the means to dynamically optimize ordering and product recommendation panels on their websites. From now on, it will be possible to offer personalized suggestions for repetitive purchases.
According to Carrie Tharp, VP of Retail and Consumer at Google Cloud, “The turmoil of recent years has reshaped the retail landscape and the tools businesses need to be more efficient, more compelling to their customers, and less exposed to future shocks. Despite the uncertainty, the sector faces great opportunities. The Tomorrow’s leaders will be the ones addressing today’s most pressing challenges for retail and online sales with the latest technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
New Stock Check AI
In all retail businesses, running out of stock on store shelves is a big problem. According to a NielsenIQ analysis of product availability on the shelves, US retailers lost $82 billion in unrealized sales in 2021 alone.
Companies have been testing different control techniques for items on the shelves for years, but their effectiveness has often been undermined by the resources required to generate reliable AI models to detect and differentiate between products. From the different flavors of a brand of jam to the different types of toothbrushes.
Fortunately, a preview version of Google Cloud’s new AI-powered stock checking tool is now available worldwide. This solution can help businesses improve the product availability on the shelvesto have greater visibility of the real appearance of the shelves and provide useful information on replacement needs.
The tool has been developed in Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Vision environment and is based on two machine learning models: a product recognizer and a label recognizer. The shelf checking AI is capable of identifying products of all kinds, on a large scale, and exclusively from their visual and text characteristics. And, what is even more important, it transforms that data into actionable information.
