New visual recognition and cart generation capabilities for the AI assistant aim to ease the pain of holiday shopping, both online and in stores.

As beleaguered consumers focus on efficiency and value this holiday season, new Sparky AI features aim to go beyond just price and product comparison.

Since its June 2025 debut, Sparky has seen a 70% spike in usage, and customers who use the tool spend 40% more per order than shoppers who don’t, Walmart CEO John Furner shared in August.

A steady drumbeat of functionality improvements has helped drive this usage growth. For example, the introduction of visual search capabilities led to a 57% spike in conversion when compared to text-based searches, according to U.S. CEO David Guggina.

This latest round of enhancements moves further into visual search and begins to expand on voice capabilities in multiple languages. A shopper with a stain on their holiday tablecloth can now get advice, product suggestions and delivery assistance simply by uploading an image.

The “Shop to Light” feature helps shoppers easily beeline their way to the product they’re looking for by pinning the location on a store map and then allowing customers to trigger the electronic shelf label when they’ve arrived in the right area.

Walmart’s digital shelf labels have been at the center of recent concerns that the company might be engaging in dynamic pricing, but Furner refuted those matters and stated that Sparky would not be leveraged to increase prices or hide lower-priced items.

“When you engage with Sparky, that’s an invitation to serve you better, not to use your personal information to set a personalized price,” Furner said in an open letter .

Source link