Separately, in February French grocery chain Carrefour produced its first-ever video made with ChatGPT answering FAQs. The 30-second video has a robot speaking in French and answering common questions from customers like "how to eat better and cheaper via its website." Carrefour's Chief E-commerce Officer Elodie Perthuisot wrote in a LinkedIn post that Carrefour Carrefour's "data and innovation teams are currently working on the use cases of ChatGPT, and generative AI in general." Analysts and grocery tech executives that Modern Retail spoke with said while all types of retailers are excited about using ChatGPT, grocers have compelling reasons to jump into this head first, for a few reasons. For starters, grocers have among the most diverse customer base.

As a futurist, it's my job to look ahead -- so every year, I cover the emerging tech trends that will be shaping our digital world in the next 12 months. What technologies are gaining the most traction? What are the most important trends that business leaders should be prepared for? Read on for the ten essential tech trends you should be following in 2023. In 2023, artificial intelligence will become real in organizations.

Robots have rolled into retail, from six-foot-tall free-moving machines spotting spills in Giant Foods Stores to autonomous shelf-scanners checking inventory in Walmart. At Lowe's, the home improvement chain, a "LoweBot" in some stores can answer simple questions, such as where to find items, and can assist with inventory monitoring. The real benefit of retail robots is the opportunity to capture more granular data about the products on the shelves and customer buying patterns, which can increase efficiency and accuracy in inventory management. The key is using retail robots as data-collectors within an internet-of-things (IoT), which is best thought of as a complex network of connected devices, objects, and sensors gathering voluminous data that is analyzed in the cloud or with edge computing, which uses nearby servers to lower latency. From manufacturing to transportation and now retail, IoT creates an intelligent digital ecosystem.

While many know UK company Ocado as an online grocery retailer, it's really one of the most innovative tech companies in the world. Ocado was founded in 2000 as an entirely online experience and therefore never had a brick-and-mortar store to serve its customers, who number 580,000 each day. Its technology expertise came about out of necessity as it began to build the software and hardware it needed to be efficient, productive, and competitive. Today, Ocado uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in many ways throughout its business. Since 2000, Ocado tried to piece together the technology they needed to succeed by purchasing products off the shelf.

Sustainability has become an increasingly key issue in the retail industry over the last few years. While it's promising to hear retailers making the right noises, they won't be able to follow through on their good intentions if they don't use technology to help them to put their words into practice. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will become increasingly important, as they can drive the change, putting more sustainable behaviour within reach for many retailers. In a nutshell, AI enables businesses to measure their environmental and social impact, while ML helps take the next step by recommending tangible ways to adapt behaviour in line. As a result, AI and ML can help retailers make huge strides towards sustainability in their supply chains, through from transporting products to stores in the most intelligent way possible, to making sure they don't order too much stock.

Millennials are projected to soon overtake baby boomers as the largest adult population group, bringing demands for sustainability to the front of every grocery checkout aisle. Fresh retailers, or retailers in the business of providing highly perishable foods like fresh produce and meat to consumers, can strengthen sustainability efforts and combat the 1.3bn tonnes of food wasted annually with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions. AI and ML not only help fresh retailers reduce their environmental footprint through waste reduction, but the technologies allow them to respond to market conditions in real-time and offer more personalised assortments in line with the core values of their key consumers, resulting in more efficient and eco-friendly supply chains. So what does this look like in practice? Food waste is a worldwide issue.

The UK's top eight grocers can prevent £144 million in food waste each year if they use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in their supply chains, according to one technology company's predictions. Scientists at Blue Yonder, which provides solutions in AI and ML and was acquired by supply chain software company JDA in 2018, estimate that using the techniques they specialise in can significantly drive down industry food wastage in several key ways. They said by using the technology to improve demand forecasting, set the right price based on expiry dates, or sense transportation disruption, the top eight grocers – Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, the Co-Operative, Waitrose and Lidl – can help the environment and their avoid lost sales. Morrisons has been using Blue Yonder's demand forecast and replenishment solution for several years now, and says it can make 430 million calculations and 13 million automatic decisions every single day thanks to the AI enablement. The grocer has reduced its stockholding in store by two to three days, and reduced wastage and markdowns as a result.

In the United States and Western Europe, many traditional grocery retailers are seeing their sales and margins fall--and things could get even worse. Here's how to reverse the trend. To put it bluntly, much of the $5.7 trillion global grocery industry is in trouble. Although it has grown at about 4.5 percent annually over the past decade, that growth has been highly uneven--and has masked deeper problems. For grocers in developed markets, both growth and profitability have been on a downward trajectory due to higher costs, falling productivity, and race-to-the-bottom pricing. One result: a massive decline in publicly listed grocers' economic value.

A global survey of 4000 consumers reveals that shoppers are being left disappointed with the freshness of their grocery purchases. Set against a backdrop of declining retail profitability and significant changes in consumer lifestyles, grocery retailers are under pressure to deliver the best freshness to their customers, while also turning a profit. McKinsey reports that 40 per cent of grocery revenue is driven by fresh, which puts tremendous pressure on category managers to get it right. Yet category managers in fresh know too well the complexities of delivering the best fresh to their customers: Fresh goods are perishable, demand varies from day to day and supply chain lead-times are difficult to predict. Stock too much and you risk providing a less than satisfactory level of fresh if the stock is not sold in time, or you generate food waste.

Technology has long since advanced to the point where it can make decisions better than people can, and yet grocery managers are still happy to use their own experience to drive decision-making, sacrificing speed, efficiency and savings. By optimising key strategic areas of pricing and replenishment, and automating decisions using machine learning, retailers can combine the speed of their decisions with their KPIs (margins, volumes, mark downs). Yet still retailers are not currently marrying the two in a responsive and effective way. As part of Blue Yonder's recent survey of 750 grocery retailers across the globe, we asked some probing questions about decision making and customer service. The research revealed that grocery retailers believe robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence will be some of the key game changers for the industry.