How Wayfair is Using Generative AI

Wayfair is experimenting with generative AI for retail and has at least four use cases already underway, according to Niraj Shah CEO, co-founder and co-chairman.

During the retailer’s Q2 2023 earnings call, Shah said there's a number of generative AI use cases that the retailer is already taking advantage of and building capabilities on. Shah also noted a lot of them have to do with reducing workload or making work much more efficient.

“An example of something that we actually have already piloted is — as you know, we have thousands of customer service agents who talk with our customers, but will also engage with our customers on chat and answer questions via e-mail — so something like chat and e-mail, one of the things that we've done is run a pilot where we have software that basically creates what it believes the answer to be.

“And then with that answer, an agent can review it very quickly, edit it as they think is needed, and sent it back. So that's a cost savings method that actually increases the quality of the answers. We found that actually the customer satisfaction, the aggregate response, go up, while in fact, the cost to answer for a given question goes down.”

Some of the other generative AI use cases have to do with how Wayfair drafts product descriptions and how it does product tagging, Shah noted. “So there's a variety of things that we do that we have tremendous amounts of people or cost revolver that we can reduce and while improving efficiency and accuracy.” Those use cases are a little more on pilot stage, a little more R&D is involved, Shah said, but Wayfair just announced in July Decorify, a pilot solution, that helps customers easily design and shop for their homes.

“It gives you a taste and a feel of what's available and where things are headed,” Shah said on the call. Decorify uses a generative AI model that creates shoppable, photorealistic images to enable consumers to envision their own homes in new styles by uploading a picture of their space.

Customers are invited to upload an image of their own space and prompt the system to reimagine it in a different style. Whether it be bohemian, mid-century modern, industrial, or more, Decorify presents images of the customer's own room redesigned to reflect the requested look and feel. Customers can browse various room designs and products and make purchases from Wayfair directly from the application. Decorify is available at www.wayfairnext.com/Decorify to view.

"Leveraging generative AI technologies, Decorify creates a discovery experience that provides endless inspiration and powers the home personalization journey," said Shrenik Sadalgi, director of research and development at Wayfair. "Decorify is the latest example from Wayfair Next of how we use visual inspiration, such as 3D, Spatial Computing and now Generative AI, to create unique, novel and functional customer experiences."

Shah said Wayfair believes “the power of what you could do with Gen AI is very significant” and plays to Wayfair’s strength where the retailer has been very actively using data science for years.

“And so we feel like we're in a very good position to continue to be a technology leader and aggressive adopter of technology,” Shah said.