From bridging the digital and physical shopping worlds to further ramping effective personalization, the grocer’s chief digital officer delved into the company’s priorities.

LAS VEGAS — Kroger’s strategy for advancing artificial intelligence prioritizes removing the barriers that divide the digital shopping world from the physical one, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer Yael Cossett said during a keynote session at Groceryshop on Tuesday.

“It’s on us to remove that friction, the burden of having to think differently about how [shoppers] engage with us. And that’s where I think AI really is transformational,” said Cossett.

At the start of this year, Kroger announced the launch of an AI assistant for its employees. Several months later, it unveiled its latest AI-powered shopping assistant. Cossett spoke about what Kroger has learned so far from those rollouts and how it plans to continue expanding AI across its operations.

A guiding principle in Kroger’s AI development includes investing in ways that will ultimately benefit its shoppers, Cossett said. Whether simplifying the employee experience or providing returns for shareholders to reinvest in Kroger’s business, the bottom line must center on customer value, he said.

Kroger is also relying on the same foundational element that has powered its last decade of digital and omnichannel development: customer data science. Cossett said that using its enormous amount of first-party data to lead growth will help ensure that the company’s next steps in AI technology are grounded in trustworthy intel.

Kroger has spent over 20 years investing in data science, with its original goal being to understand and personalize the online customer experience, Cossett said in an interview with Grocery Dive.

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