Retail technology innovation of the week: Kingfisher Athena AI orchestration framework
Retail Technology Innovation of the Week is a new series brought to you by RTIH and sponsored by 3D Cloud by Marxent, highlighting stand out deployments, launches, and initiatives by retailers and tech suppliers.
Every week, we will showcase forward thinking tech plays that have impressed our Editor and the Retail Technology Innovations Report judging panel, in the run up to the publication of the 2024 report early next year.
So far, we’ve showcased work being done by Ocado Retail, Decathlon, Lacoste, Downtown Spirits, TalkShopLive, Huck’s, Rovertown, Wing, McDonald’s, Nobody’s Child, IKI, Pixevia, Walmart, A.L.C., Archive, Therabody, and Outform.
And this week we’re focusing on Kingfisher.
At a recent Google Cloud Next event, it shared the work it has been doing with AI and machine learning technologies.
Group Head of Data Science, Mohsen Ghasempour, discussed how the retailer is harnessing these innovations to improve the customer experience and power growth.
He introduced Athena, an AI orchestration framework which will manage how Kingfisher prompts and interacts with AI language models, as well as other AI tools developed in-house.
This is designed with advanced controls to ensure security and provide protection against sensitive or inappropriate content.
Tom Betts, Group Data Director at Kingfisher, said: “Athena will help us test and learn with these technologies even faster.”
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