Why Walmart Built Wallaby
In October last year, Walmart revealed its plans around AI, AR, and immersive commerce experiences. This led to the introduction of Wallaby, a collection of retail-focused LLMs designed to enhance customer interactions. Built on decades of Walmart data, Wallaby allows the company to integrate it with other LLMs, generating highly contextual responses tailored to its ecosystem. At the centre of this evolution is Sriprabha Gopalan, director of engineering at Walmart Global Tech, whose team is driving innovations in generative AI, conversational AI, and retail-specific LLMs. “The best thing about Wallaby LLMs is that we’ve trained them in a way that they can speak in a very natural tone that complies with Walmart’s code of conduct,” Gopalan, who has over eight years of experience at the company,  told AIM. What makes Wallaby particularly powerful is its ability to integrate with other LLMs, allowing for enhanced performance across multiple retail applications. By combining proprietary AI models with external innovations, Walmart ensures its AI systems stay ahead of the curve. Beyond LLMs, Walmart is also pioneering conversational AI, which enables natural, free-flowing interactions between customers and digital assistants. The company has successfully implemented a GenAI-based shopping assistant that acts as a real-time advisor, helping customers discover and select products tailored to their needs. “This AI-powered assistant enables customers to engage in a natural conversation and decide on the best products for their unique needs,” Gopalan said. The assistant is designed to mimic an in-store experience, making online shopping more interactive and personalised. The AI at Walmart Customer support has also seen significant advancements with generative AI. Walmart integrated AI into its customer support assistant, which now understands customer intent and takes direct actions, such as managing orders and processing returns. “The effectiveness of our customer support workflows has doubled since integrating GenAI,” noted Gopalan, highlighting a significant reduction in issue resolution time. AI at Walmart isn’t just enhancing customer experience, it’s also transforming how developers and engineers work. The company has built several AI-powered tools to boost productivity and efficiency, and streamline engineering workflows. One such tool is DX AI Assistant, an internal marketplace of generative AI chatbots that helps developers discover and utilise AI solutions for various engineering tasks. Another tool, My Assistant, launched 18 months ago, assists with drafting, summarising documentation, and retrieving concise technical information, saving developers significant time on routine tasks. “These tools allow our developers to focus on high-impact areas, such as ideation, creativity, and strategy, rather than repetitive tasks,” explained Gopalan. The rise of AI-powered coding assistants has sparked debates in the engineering community. Some argue that these tools make junior developers overly dependent on AI, while others believe they enhance productivity. Addressing this concern, Gopalan remains optimistic. “We see AI as a powerful enabler rather than a replacement for human expertise. These tools help engineers focus on complex problem-solving instead of repetitive coding tasks. The real innovation comes from combining AI’s efficiency with human ingenuity,” she said. The India Factor While Walmart operates as a unified global entity, its Indian tech teams have played a crucial role in driving AI innovations. In addition to their contributions to Wallaby LLMs and conversational AI, they have worked on Converse, an in-house conversational AI platform designed for internal and customer-facing applications. Moreover, Walmart has expanded its research partnerships, most notably through the Walmart Centre for Excellence in collaboration with IIT Madras. “We don’t distinguish between locations; our focus is on collaboration and delivering value to customers,” Gopalan said. This philosophy has enabled Walmart’s global tech teams, including those in India, to contribute to groundbreaking advancements, such as Wallaby LLMs and AI-driven shopping assistants. Looking ahead, Gopalan said that she is exploring AI agents that could further automate shopping, customer support, and even supply chain operations. With AI advancements enabling greater autonomy and intelligence, there is potential for fully AI-driven shopping experiences where customers can place orders via voice commands with minimal manual input. Additionally, Walmart is investing in geospatial technology to optimise delivery networks. By using AI-driven demand forecasting, slot availability, and store capacity data, Walmart has enhanced its last-mile delivery efficiency, ensuring faster and more reliable deliveries. “We believe that AI, combined with human expertise, is the key to driving the next wave of retail innovation,” Gopalan said.
Walmart integrated AI into its customer support assistant, which now understands customer intent and takes direct actions, such as managing orders and processing returns.
Built on decades of Walmart data, Wallaby allows the company to integrate it with other LLMs, generating highly contextual responses.
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["AI", "ML", "generative AI", "GenAI", "Aim", "chatbots", "R", "Go", "Git", "ViT"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.