David Pierce for The Verge: Walmart’s AI Search Makes Shopping Faster, and Its AI Delivery Makes It Invisible

The future of grocery shopping is no grocery shopping at all. It’s your fridge just being full, always, automatically.

A couple things on this one…

First, for many people, you don’t buy as much food as you need to fill the fridge, you buy as much as you can afford that week, and that amount can vary week to week.

Second, this sounds very buzzword-bait to me. As Pierce mentions in the article, Amazon did something like this years ago without any need for “A.I.” Also how is this “using A.I.” to know what to buy for me? Is it tracking what tiI eat? It doesn’t sound like it.

Third, is the store you’re buying from the one you want in charge of what you automatically buy from them? I’m sure Walmart will say they’re doing it in a customer-focused way, but (a) that’s a lot of trust to put in them and (b) if history has taught us anything, it will start user-centric and over time will advantage the corporation more and more.

Fourth, I expect this to maybe release in a limited beta in a small market, and then get killed less than 12 months later.