Klarna Revolutionizes Online Shopping with AI-Powered Chatbot Assistant

Chat with this AI chatbot to find everything you want to buy

Fintech and e-commerce platform Klarna is shopping around a handful of new features for its AI shopping assistant. Klarna's AI now works as a chatbot employing OpenAI's AI models to make shopping faster and adapt the experience to your preferences. The idea is to turn looking for a product or sale into a conversation and to adjust recommendations from Klarna to better match what you like. Klana envisions its AI chatbot as a kind of personal shopper you can talk to like a human being. If you have specific requests based on particular details of a product or how well it is rated, the assistant can get together a list that's more narrowly tailored than searching by keywords. The AI will also curate reviews, chart price changes, and otherwise take the initiative in its responses. You can then make the purchase through Klarna's app. Even without you making a specific query, the AI will make recommendations for things you might like based on previous history and stated preferences. Klarna described how the AI could offer ideas based on things you buy at a certain time every year or the colors and brands you usually choose for products like clothes and accessories. If you're someone who does a lot of research before a purchase, Klarna's AI tool will speed that up by putting together product comparisons that match your request for price or other aspects. The AI will even lay out and compare the positive and negative reasons for buying each option. And if you're more of the "I don't know what to get for an upcoming trip or event," you can ask the AI, and it will put together a shopping list before diving into specific suggestions for what to buy to match your budget and needs. "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 under-investment. That's created an opportunity for companies like Klarna and we are enlisting AI to challenge the incumbents," said David Fock, Chief Product & Design Officer at Klarna. "We've combined the intelligence of LLMs, the knowledge of Pricerunner, and the Klarna UX to build a smoother and more intuitive, chat-based shopping experience." Klarna is early to the game, but it's not the only online shopping source embedding AI in its platform. Amazon rolled out the Rufus chatbot earlier this year, which performs much the same role as Klarna's chatbot. Rufus uses Amazon's AI models to recommend purchases and provide details on products conversationally. Because it's Amazon, that may include advertisements too. Just this week, the company showcased a new AI recommendation system personalized in greater detail than before, with titles for products adjusted to highlight whatever aspect of a product you're hunting for at the moment. To build its AI assistant, Klarna trained the OpenAI model to know the more than 5.6 million products available. That way, the chatbot is less likely to fall prey to hallucinations and can share accurate costs, availability, and delivery options, even if there are cashback options. It builds on the company's partnership with OpenAI to run customer service, which rapidly scaled up to handle the majority of incoming requests, doing the equivalent of 700 customer service agents and conducting more than 2 million conversations in mere weeks. "Klarna is at the forefront of seizing the potential of AI to deliver tangible benefits to customers," OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said. "We're excited to continue collaborating and showing the power of AI at scale,"

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

"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.

Klarna adds features to AI-powered assistant

This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The AI assistant now offers a chat-based shopping experience, helping users spend less time and supports them in finding the right goods at the right price. The AI assistant provides personalized product recommendations, expert advice, category and brand comparisons, and access to customer reviews -- streamlining the path from inspiration to purchase. Klarna's AI Assistant now helps you to: These new features support Klarna's vision to become the ultimate tool for all your financial needs. From helping customers pay and manage finances to finding the right products at the right price, Klarna is there to support customers every step of the way. "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 under-investment. That's created an opportunity for companies like Klarna and we are enlisting AI to challenge the incumbents," said David Fock, Chief Product & Design Officer at Klarna. "We've combined the intelligence of LLMs, the knowledge of Pricerunner and the Klarna UX to build a smoother and more intuitive, chat-based shopping experience." "Klarna is at the forefront of seizing the potential of AI to deliver tangible benefits to customers. We're excited to continue collaborating and showing the power of AI at scale," said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI. The launch builds on Klarna's earlier AI initiatives, such as its AI assistant for customer service, which within weeks of its January 2024 debut was handling the equivalent workload of 700 full-time agents.