Imagine a world in which artificial intelligence predicts what we are cooking for dinner and what groceries we need to buy, then executes that order, then delivers them. This Jetsons version of grocery shopping is already in the making thanks to a newly minted collaboration between Walmart and OpenAI.

It’s called agentic commerce, where AI bots don’t just answer questions but predict what customers will want – turning the shopping experience into a conversation, and the retailer from being reactive to proactive.

This is how the technology would work in theory: Coles or Woolworths knows it is pizza night at your place on Tuesday and buys the ingredients, debits your card and delivers the purchase to your home. What if you forgot to buy the bread and milk, only to find it on the doorstep? Well, agentic commerce promises to do just that.

The chatbot currently helping us compile a report for work could soon be curating our shopping list. Credit: Bloomberg

While you could write this off as another digital gimmick, a retailer the size of Walmart diving headlong into AI will make the likes of Coles, Woolworths and Aldi pay attention. If Walmart’s investment pays off it could........

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