Byte-Sized AI: Google's User Try-On Goes Live; Nike Beta Tests In-App Conversational AI
Nike beta tests in-app AI assistant
Sportswear giant Nike announced that it is beta testing a new feature, which it calls NikeAI, on its app for iOS users. Muge Erdirik Dogan, EVP and chief technology officer at Nike, shared the news on her LinkedIn earlier this week, noting that the feature went live last week.
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Erdirik Dogan said consumers can ask NikeAI about specific gear or request that it find products in preferable colors and sizes. But she also acknowledged that consumers' search patterns continue to change.
'Consumer behavior is changing from searching by keywords to sharing problems to be solved such as, 'I want to run a 5k,'' she wrote.
That in mind, Nike technologists built the model to understand intent, leading to a model that she called 'simple, intuitive and built for real moments in real lives.'
Nike is far from the first major brand or retailer to implement a conversational shopping assistant on its site; Amazon's Rufus chatbot and Walmart's Sparky model offer up similar experiences to the companies' respective consumers. That Nike and other major brands are joining the movement away from standard, on-site search reflects a moving goalpost for the future of e-commerce.
Still, brands and retailers face the reality that an increasing number of consumers are involving public-facing large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, in their shopping journeys. And with the recent news that OpenAI may soon look to take commissions on sales made through the ChatGPT interface, brands and retailers are likely looking for ways to entice their existing shoppers on their own platforms.
Erdirik Dogan said the tool has already started enriching Nike shoppers' e-commerce experiences.
'The early signs are exciting. Consumers are engaging with NikeAI the way we hoped they would, using it to discover products that truly fit their needs,' Erdirik Dogan wrote.
Startup expands Series B round with support from Amazon
Redmond, Wash.-based startup Lumotive announced this week that it had reopened its Series B round to allow Amazon's Industrial Innovation Fund and ITHCA Group, the technology investment arm under Oman's sovereign wealth fund, the Oman Investment Authority. The additional funds brought Lumotive's Series B to $59 million, up from the $45 million it initially announced in February. The company did not disclose how much of the additional $14 million came from Amazon.
Lumotive makes chips that help industrial machinery—including drones and warehouse robots—manipulate light, so that they can view their surrounding environments with greater precision. That, in turn, enables them to move faster, make more accurate decisions, and avoid collisions, the company contends. The startup, which was founded in 2018, has been selling the chips since last year.
Franziska Bossart, director of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, said the investment represents another way for the company to further its belief in the future of automation.
'We invest in breakthrough technologies that redefine what's possible—and Lumotive is doing just that,' Bossart said in a statement. 'Lumotive is building a critical foundation for the next generation of intelligent machines. We're excited to support their mission and see broad potential for their technology in industrial automation, robotics and beyond.'
The retail and logistics giant's investment comes as it continues to scale up its aspirations and deployment of robots and drone-based delivery. Last month, the company announced it had deployed its millionth robot, bringing the number of robots it has deployed close to parity with the number of human employees it has. Recent reports have also noted that Amazon is working to test humanoid robots as part of its delivery strategy; Lumotive chips can be used to upgrade the capabilities of humanoids, in addition to non-mobile robots, like the ones Amazon deploys in its fulfillment centers and warehouses.
Google goes live with previously teased AI shopping features
Google announced this week that users across the U.S. can now use photos of themselves for virtual try-on. The tool had previously been launched as an experiment in Google's Search Labs, but after tests yielded successful results, it rolled out to all users on Thursday.
In May, Google said the tool primarily focuses on giving the user a rough idea of what a specific garment would look like, and noted that fit considerations would likely be added into the model powering the experience over time.
To use the tool, consumers submit a well-lit, full-body photo, ideally wearing form-fitting clothes. The launch comes as consumers indicated strong demand for seeing items on their own body prior to purchasing, even though Google also offers customers a view of what the same items would look like on AI-generated digital avatars.
Beyond its now-launched virtual try-on upgrade, Google also announced that it has started rolling out an AI-enabled press tracking tool, which it first shared details about in May. The tool allows consumers to put a price tracker on a specific item, down to the exact color and size they prefer. From there, the tool sends an alert when that product hits the price the consumer has set.
In May, Google said the tool would eventually allow an AI agent to purchase the product on behalf of the consumer once the price hit the desired point; the company did not mention that feature of the tool being part of the now-started rollout. For now, consumers will instead receive an alert from Google when the item being tracked has hit a specific price point, Danielle Buckley, director of product, consumer shopping, said in a blog.
'The Shopping Graph has products and prices from all across the web—so we'll let you know when there's an offer that meets your criteria. No more constantly checking to see if that bag you're eyeing is finally at the right price for you or forgetting to come back to a product you loved!' she wrote.
Google's AI Mode feature, which will allow consumers to conversationally seek products with queries like, 'I'm looking for style inspo for a green flowy dress for a garden party' rather than searching for the product directly, is expected to roll out in the fall. The company uses vision match technology to pair users' queries with the most applicable products for their searches.
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Hamilton Spectator
9 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Disappointment, but no shock in Hamilton as tariff deadline passes without a deal
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The Verge
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Amazon eyes ads and upcharges for Alexa Plus
In the week's least surprising news, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed that the company is exploring ways to bring ads to Alexa Plus, its new generative-AI-powered voice assistant. During a conference call following the company's second-quarter earnings report, Jassy said that 'there will be opportunities, as people are engaging in more multiturn conversations [with Alexa Plus], to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery, and also as a lever to drive revenue.' Basically, people will talk more to Alexa, so there will be more ways to push ads at them. He also hinted that Alexa Plus, which is currently free for Prime members but will cost $19.99 a month without Prime, could one day cost more. 'As we keep adding functionality [there] could be some sort of subscription element beyond what there is today,' he said. 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Alexa Plus is also one of the few generative AI-powered services that can take actions in real life. Whether people will be willing to pay for AI features is still being tested. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others currently charge for different tiers of access to their more advanced AI-chatbot tools. As an Alexa user for many years, I'd consider paying for a really good Alexa that does what I ask without fail, has all the features Amazon has promised are coming, and never shows me an ad. However, what I know for sure that I don't want, is a chattier AI pushing products at me in my home. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Yahoo
21 minutes ago
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Someone Gave ChatGPT $100 and Let It Trade Stocks for a Month
With $100 and a dream, one enterprising Redditor turned ChatGPT into a day trader, and the results so far have been pretty remarkable. In a post on r/Dataisbeautiful, the Redditor in question — real name Nathan Smith — described his project as a "6-month experiment to see how a language model performs in picking small, [under-covered] stocks with only a $100 budget." According to a chart shared on Reddit, this literal gamble is already paying off. Using GPT-4o, one of OpenAI's most advanced models, the bot-trader's stock portfolio has increased in value by 25 percent over its first month — though given that Smith only invested $100, that means he's only made $25 so far. What's more, that rise was significantly higher than two "small-cap" stock indexes, the Russell 2000 and XBI — in fact, the S&P 500 is up less than 3 percent over the past month — which suggests that ChatGPT very much picked correctly. To be fair, this is far from the first time someone's attempted such a gambit. Last December, researchers from Germany's Duisburg–Essen University published a paper in the journal Finance Research Letters finding that advanced OpenAI models did indeed seem to select money-making stocks. In an interview with Morningstar in June, meanwhile, University of Florida assistant finance professor Alejandro Lopez-Lira said that over years of simulating stock selection, ChatGPT wasn't all that great. "Our results on paper are much more optimistic than what the performance in reality would be with a reasonable investment size," Lopez-Lira told the finance blog. There's also a clear logical issue: if AI really was already better than the average human at picking stocks, then all traders would start using AI, changing the entire dynamics of the market and likely meaning that future trades wouldn't operate under the same logic. Responding to the larger trend, Smith decided, as he explained in a GitHub page documenting the experiment, to undertake the endeavor after seeing gimmicky ads that claimed AI could pick undervalued stocks and make investors mucho dinero. "It was obvious it was trying to get me to subscribe to some garbage, so I just rolled my eyes," he wrote. "Then I started wondering, 'How well would that actually work?'" As it turns out, it works quite well — but not without human input. Each day, as Smith's GitHub explains, he provides ChatGPT with trading data about its stock portfolio. Smith also said that he implements a strict "stop-loss" rules, which require a trader — in this case, ChatGPT — to immediately sell when a stock reaches a certain price. Though the experiment's stated purpose is to see whether AI can "manage money without guidance," that obviously hasn't happened just yet. Smith has, per his own acknowledgement, committed to daily homework with the trading data inputs until the end of December. Even if that task only takes a few minutes, it's still very much an example of human intervention into a project that, on its face, was meant to let ChatGPT do its thing. Still, it's a fascinating look into what AI, a bit of muscle grease, and $100 can do on the stock market — at least in an otherwise buoyant financial month. The real question? Whether the bot's portfolio will be up or down by the end of the experiment. More on ChatGPT: OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent Clicks "I Am Not a Robot" Button Without a Wink of Irony Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
