Reshaping the Future of Ecommerce With Consequential AI

Bloomreach CEO Raj De Datta explaining consequential AI at The Edge Summit

Nowadays, it seems like everywhere we turn, we see AI. AI-related announcements, products, APIs, models — we’re inundated with new technology…most of which is worthless. 

“90% of the AI out there today is noise — ignore it,” said Raj De Datta, the CEO and co-founder of Bloomreach. “But that also means there’s 10% of AI that can move the needle for your business, that can be truly transformative.” 

This was the sentiment shared by Raj at The Edge Summit, an event designed to help organizations figure out how to capitalize on the 10% of AI that matters: consequential AI

What Is Consequential AI? 

For a technology to meet the high bar of consequential AI, it needs to meet at least two of the following three criteria: 

  • It must put you on the path to improving a key business metric by 10%. “Put you on the path” is the key phrase here. It won’t be a magic wand that transforms your business overnight, but you must recognize the potential for meaningful impact. 
  • It has to make the customer experience truly unique and differentiated. AI needs to do something to set your brand apart because if it’s doing the same thing as your competitors, then it becomes inconsequential again. 
  • It needs to empower your teams to be at least 2x more productive. This amount of productivity and efficiency gain would allow your teams to really focus on more strategic and high-impact tasks — the kind of tasks that drive bottom-line impact for your organization. 
Definition of consequential AI

Baratunde Thurston, an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller and producer, had the same reflection on his journey with using AI, where he initially used it to help review copy and generate cocktail recipes. “It was playful and experimental, but it wasn’t enough,” he said. “We are on the precipice where the decisions we make now will determine so much of the future.” 

In particular, brands that want AI that can consequentially impact their business should look to the three A’s: 

  • Accelerate. With so much innovation in AI, it’s important to move fast — but with purpose. “Not everything should be fast,” added Baratunde. “As organizations, are we conscious about where we apply speed or just hopping on someone else’s bandwagon?” 
  • Augment. Baratunde makes it clear that with all the fears around AI’s role in our future, it needs to be used to augment, not replace. “Right now, the greatest opportunities are to enhance — to make something we already do even better.” 
  • Accommodate. One major boon of AI is its ability to even the playing field. “AI can give those of us with resources access to even more,” said Baratunde. “But it can also provide opportunities to those who have never been able to participate before.” 
Quote from Baratunde Thurston on the power of consequential AI

Why Most AI Isn’t Effective

The principles and lofty goals around the idea of consequential AI aren’t the only reason so much of AI fails to move the needle. Raj posits that our fundamental view of AI — as a co-pilot that can assist with certain tasks — is the main problem. 

“Co-pilots might provide a little bit of speed, a little bit of scale, a little bit of efficiency gain, but for us to think about consequential AI, we have to go beyond that,” Raj explained. Sure, AI can help you quickly draft variations of an email or generate a few images, but until it reaches two of the three criteria laid out earlier, they’re just cool tools. 

In order for us to start moving AI forward in significant ways, we need to completely reframe the way we look at it. “For AI to be truly consequential, we have to think of AI as the pilot, not the co-pilot,” said Raj. “Of course, this raises that existential question: ‘If AI is the pilot, what exactly are we?’ I would say we become the air traffic controllers.”

If we want a future of consequential AI, we need to let AI fly the proverbial planes. Meanwhile, we maintain control of all these planes in the sky, course-correcting when necessary and reacting based on instinct and experience to override the pilot’s flight plan. “Rules that were previously defined by pure execution now start to be defined a little more with strategy, judgment, and creativity,” Raj added. 

Using consequential AI as a pilot instead of co-pilot, such as generating real-time analytics

Consequential AI in Action

While this all sounds great in theory, what does consequential AI actually look like when put into practice? Anirban Bardalaye, the Chief Product Officer at Bloomreach, laid out Bloomreach’s vision for bringing consequential AI into the world of ecommerce. 

At the core of this vision is a connected, unified personalization platform powered by Loomi AI, Bloomreach’s AI purpose-built for commerce and trained on over 15 years of customer and product data. Anirban detailed how Bloomreach’s solutions are leveraging this technology to lead the charge for consequential AI: 

  • Conversational shopping. Unlock a new revenue channel for your business with Bloomreach Clarity. Powered by conversational AI, Clarity reaches out to your customers at the right moment to engage them, answer questions, and move them further along the funnel in a natural, human-like way that harkens to the best in-store sales associates.
  • AI-piloted marketing campaigns. On average, a typical marketing campaign can take 4-6 weeks from ideation to launch. With the next stage of Bloomreach Engagement, marketers will soon be able to create and launch an entire campaign in minutes. With a few prompts, Loomi AI can generate an entire campaign that you (as the air traffic controller) can then tweak as needed before going live. 
  • Hyper-relevant search. Bloomreach Discovery is ushering in the future of ecommerce search through Loomi Search+. Built on model intelligence from Google and NVIDIA, this hybrid vector search engine can return both precise results and broad recall sets for complex or long-tail queries made in natural language. This level of relevance means you can now deliver 1:1 personalization in a way that wasn’t possible before. 

“The end result of what we’re doing at Bloomreach is a wholly transformed consumer experience that is hyper-personal and truly conversational at every point in the shopping experience,” said Anirban. 

Evolving the Way We Approach AI

It’s clear that as AI continues to advance, we’re finally at a point where the potential is greater than what we can fathom. “In many ways, our imaginations have always been ahead of technology in the past,” said Raj. “But it might be the case now that the technology itself is actually ahead of our imaginations.” 

This means that as long as you embrace consequential AI, the only limit to what you can achieve is what you can dream up. And with more and more innovations coming out every day, will you insist on staying in the pilot seat? Or will you embrace a new role of air traffic controller to shape the course that AI takes in ecommerce? 

After all, AI isn’t going away — in fact, it’s showing no signs of slowing down. It’s now more crucial than ever to embrace your curiosity to avoid getting left behind. 

“Just as we can’t imagine a world without electricity,” stated Raj. “It won’t be long before we can’t imagine a world without AI.” 

Consequential AI will be a game-changer for ecommerce businesses everywhere. Are you ready to embrace it? Learn more about how we’re delivering end-to-end personalization to empower your brand to drive real success.

Tags
Photo
Senior Editor

Michael is a Senior Editor with an eye for creating content that’s insightful and valuable. With over a decade of content strategy, copywriting, and copyediting experience, Michael is well versed in how to contextualize information in a way that’s both fun and helpful.

Read more from Michael Lee here.

Table of Contents

Share with Your Community

Copied!

Subscribe to our newsletter

Recent Posts

Maintain an Edge With These New Posts

bloomreach-avatar-menu-1
bloomreach-avatar-menu-3
bloomreach-avatar-menu-2

Join 15,000+ recipients getting the latest insights on AI and ecommerce delivered straight to their inboxes.

Life With Bloomreach

Watch this video to learn what your life could look like when you use Bloomreach.