Target launches AI shopping assistant ahead of holiday season

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Target AI shopping assistant launch

Highlights

Target launches Ask Target, an AI shopping assistant in beta, ahead of the 2024 holiday shopping season to enhance customer engagement.
The new AI tool follows the recent hire of chief AI officer Chandhu Nair and supports both customer queries and internal employee training, notably in Beauty Studio.
Ask Target's rollout positions the retailer competitively against Walmart's Sparky and other rivals, with the holiday season serving as a testbed for AI-driven product discovery and sales impact.

Holiday rollout and product scope

As first reported by Business Insider, Target is introducing Ask Target in beta ahead of the seasonal shopping rush, giving customers an AI-powered tool to help with gift lists and broader shopping queries.

Chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester says the company has seen strong traction around conversational AI and moved to launch the feature during its biggest season of the year. She also says the app answers Target-related questions beyond holiday purchases, while an internal rollout has already helped store employees learn more about new merchandise, especially in the Beauty Studio department.

The launch comes two months after Target hired former Lowe's AI executive Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer. At Lowe's, Nair oversaw the Mylow chatbot, which that retailer says delivers major gains in customer service.

Competitive pressure and retail impact

The new tool places Target more directly alongside large retail rivals that are investing in proprietary AI assistants to improve product discovery and customer engagement. Retailers argue that chatbots trained on internal data handle customer questions more effectively than external tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.

These in-house assistants are also positioned as digital complements to emerging personal AI agents. Walmart says its Sparky tool helps generate more conversational shopping behavior, with users finding more products and building baskets that are 40% larger than those of shoppers who do not use the feature.

Sylvester says it is still too early to determine what effect Ask Target may have on basket size. Even so, the timing of the rollout suggests Target is using the holiday period to test whether AI-assisted search and recommendations can lift engagement and sales.

Our earlier article on retailers tying accountability to AI adoption explained how Ralph Lauren updated its executive incentive plan to include AI literacy and enablement metrics, replacing prior sustainability targets. We also noted that this shift reflects broader pressure across retail to demonstrate returns from AI spending, alongside leadership moves such as creating or elevating chief AI roles.

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