Target 购物者有了新的小精灵来帮助他们列出假日礼物清单。
Target shoppers have a new elf to help with their holiday gift lists.
Bullseye 零售商正好在季节性购物高峰前推出了其 AI 驱动聊天机器人 Ask Target 的测试版。
The Bullseye retailer just launched a beta version of its AI-powered chatbot, called Ask Target, in time for the seasonal rush.
此举使 Target 与亚马逊、沃尔玛和 Lowe's 等竞争对手的步伐更为接近，这些竞争对手已经提供该功能数月。
The move brings Target into closer step with rivals like Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe's, each of which has offered the feature for months now.
“我们在开始考虑对话式 AI 时看到很多吸引力，所以团队很高兴将其推向市场，以抓住我们一年中最大的季节，”首席商品官 Cara Sylvester 在纽约的假日预览活动中对《商业内幕》表示。
"We have seen a lot of traction as we start to think about that conversational AI, so the team was excited to push it through to capitalize on our biggest season of the year," chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester told Business Insider during a holiday preview event in New York.
Sylvester 还表示，该应用不仅能回答假日特定问题，还能回答与 Target 相关的其他问题。
Sylvester also said that the app can answer Target-related questions, not only holiday-specific ones.
该工具的内部推广让店员们熟悉新商品，尤其是新开的 Beauty Studio 部门。
An internal rollout of the tool had store employees brushing up on new merchandise, particularly in the new Beauty Studio department.
AI 助手的推出正值 Target 两个月前聘请前 Lowe's AI 负责人 Chandhu Nair 担任首位首席 AI 官之后。
The AI assistant comes two months after Target hired former Lowe's AI head Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer.
在 Lowe's，Nair 负责监管该家居装修零售商的 Mylow 聊天机器人，后者被公司称为在客户服务方面带来了“显著改进”。
At Lowe's, Nair oversaw the home improvement retailer's Mylow chatbot, which the company has credited with "dramatic improvements" in customer service.
无论是装修建议还是食谱创意，零售商表示，基于内部专有数据训练的聊天机器人在响应客户查询方面比 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 或 Google 的 Gemini 等外部机器人更为有效。
Whether it's renovation advice or recipe ideas, retailers say chatbots trained on proprietary in-house data are more effective at responding to customer queries than an outside bot like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.
内部机器人还可以作为个人 AI 代理（如 Meta 的 Muse）的数字对应体。
The in-house bots can also act as a digital counterpart for personal AI agents like Meta's Muse.
沃尔玛表示，其 Sparky 代理帮助零售商更好地了解客户，因为购物者进行的更多是对话式互动，而非简单的关键词搜索。沃尔玛称，使用 Sparky 的用户发现的商品更多，购物篮的规模比非用户大 40%。
Walmart has said that its Sparky agent has helped the retailer better understand its customers, as shoppers are having more conversational interactions rather than simple keyword searches. Sparky users discover more items and build shopping baskets that are 40% larger than those of non-users, the company has said.
Sylvester 说，目前还为时过早，无法判断新 Ask Target 代理对购物篮规模的影响。
Sylvester said it's too early to say what the basket-size impacts of the new Ask Target agent are.