Klarna’s AI Assistant Now Offers Chat-Based Shopping Experience | PYMNTS.com

Klarna has added a chat-based shopping experience to its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed to help consumers shop.

The company has also added more features to the AI assistant, which is powered by OpenAI, Klarna said in a Thursday (Sept. 19) press release.

“For decades, the tech industry assumed that the online shopping experience was tied up by a small number of massive tech players, which led to underinvestment,” David Fock, chief product and design officer at Klarna, said in the release. “That’s created an opportunity for companies like Klarna, and we are enlisting AI to challenge the incumbents.”

Klarna’s AI assistant now provides a chat interface that helps shoppers search for specific products or brands, access key product insights and identify products based on their preferences, according to the release.

The AI assistant also helps shoppers compare products; research activities like skiing or rollerblading and discover recommended products; and find products that match the shopper’s requirements in terms of pricing, availability and delivery, per the release.

“Klarna is at the forefront of seizing the potential of AI to deliver tangible benefits to customers,” Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer at OpenAI, said in the release. “We’re excited to continue collaborating and showing the power of AI at scale.”

Klarna said in March 2023 that it was working with OpenAI to use ChatGPT as a personal shopping assistant.

Generative AI is poised to transform the retail experience for consumers, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “What Generative AI Has in Store for the Retail Industry.”

The report found that 77% of retailers rank generative AI as the most impactful emerging technology.

Klarna also uses AI assistants to handle customer service tasks and to answer employees’ questions.

The company said in May that its internal AI assistant, Kiki, was being used by 85% of its employees; was answering 2,000 employee questions per day; and had responded to more than 250,000 inquiries since it was launched about a year earlier.

Klarna has another AI chatbot that fields two-thirds of its customer service chats; contributes to consumers resolving their issues in less than one-fifth the time it took previously; and takes on the labor of 700 employees.