The retail company, which has been suffering from stagnant sales, has incorporated artificial intelligence into its growth strategy. But employees say Help AI is poorly designed and a waste of resources.
By Cyrus FarivarForbes Staff
LLast month, Target officially dove into the AI bubble. Like many of its retail peers, the company opted for something simple and accessible: a ChatGPT-like bot. But instead of focusing it on customer support, Target focused it on employees.
“We’re continually experimenting with new tools to make our team’s jobs even easier and bring to life what guests love about shopping at Target,” Target CIO Brett Craig enthused in a press release, touting “transformative GenAI technology” that would arrive in the company’s nearly 2,000 stores by August.
“Help AI” would be a kind of “store process expert and coach,” helping new and seasonal team members learn on the job. It would also “answer questions about work processes, coach new team members, support store operations management, and more,” making “teams’ jobs easier and faster and more efficient.”
But that did not turn out to be the case.
“Why don’t they spend time applying AI to something actually useful?”
Target employees have been informed Forbes “Help AI” struggles to provide correct answers, is frustrating to use, and is more of a distraction than anything else. Many have described it as a waste of company resources.
“This tool makes it seem like Target can say, ‘Oh, look, we’re so innovative,’” said one Target employee who asked not to be named for fear of professional retaliation. Forbesadding that Help AI looked like a bad version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but with more restrictions. Another said: “We call it the shitbot because it gives shitty answers.”
In the examples shared with ForbesHelp AI seemed able to answer some questions, but was stumped by others. It told an employee who asked how to handle a rude customer to “stay calm” and “engage politely.” But when asked the same question about a grumpy co-worker, it refused to answer. Another employee said the robot failed to explain basic store terms, describing its answers as generally “incomplete and mostly unhelpful.”
“Why don’t they spend time applying AI to something actually useful?” another employee asked. “Why don’t they use machine learning to identify trends in items that are canceled when orders are picked up?”
Products are locked behind glass as a person shops at a Target store in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan on September 28, 2023 in New York City.
Getty Images
Worse yet, when a Texas employee asked Help AI how to handle an active shooter in the store, it told him to confront the attacker if he was near a weapon, specifically suggesting he use a baseball bat.
“That’s just not a good idea, hide,” the employee said. Forbes“If you are in a break room, stay there, do not reach for a weapon.” The Department of Homeland Security guidelines suggest “evacuating” and “hiding” as first and second options before acting “as a last resort.”
Brian Harper-Tilado, a Target spokesman, did not respond to questions about the chatbot’s guidance in the event of a shooting. He said in a statement that the company is “committed” to “making employees’ jobs easier” to “better serve our customers” and that it welcomes feedback on the chatbot.
“Given the transformative nature of this technology, we are focused on testing, learning and iterating while gathering valuable feedback and insights from our team to continue to make this tool even more effective over time,” Harper-Tilado said.
“Does this improve customer satisfaction and drive sales? I think that’s a question to be determined.”
Earlier this year, Target said in its annual report that AI would be part of its growth strategy. The $70 billion retail giant is struggling with declining sales, which recently fell for the first time since 2017. It has cut prices on some items to stay more competitive with Walmart. At about $150 per share, its stock price has nearly halved since its 2021 peak.
Help AI appears to be the tip of the spear in its AI efforts. In the press release announcing the chatbot, Target Chief Store Officer Mark Schindele touted it as a tool that “frees up time and attention for our team to serve guests with care and create a shopping destination that invites discovery, ease, and joy in everyday life.”
While Target isn’t the first company to adopt AI chatbots (Apple, Klarna, and Morgan Stanley are among them), it says it is “the first major retailer” to do so for internal work purposes.
Industry observers say it is too early to assess the company’s return on investment.
“At the end of the day, is it useful?” said Duleep Rodrigo, a retail analyst at KPMG. Forbes“Does this improve customer satisfaction and drive sales? I think that’s a question to be determined.”
Sky Canaves, an analyst at eMarketer, agreed that it was “difficult to determine the exact impact of the chatbot on sales given the other recent initiatives Target has launched to reverse the trend of declining sales.”
But some Target employees question why the company invested resources in a tool like Help AI when they could be better used elsewhere.
“Have you had to wait in a long line at Target recently because they closed the self-checkouts and there was only one person at the register?” she asked. “Target spent God knows how much money on this virtually useless tool while stores are struggling with unreasonable wait times and unmanageable workloads. (Why didn’t they) spend time applying AI to something actually useful?”
MORE INFORMATION ON FORBES