Byte-Sized AI: DHL Gets New Virtual Assistant; Etsy Talks AI/ML in Earnings, Klarna Ramps Up Gen AI Adoption

Meghan Hall
·5 min read
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Byte-Sized AI is a bi-weekly column that covers all things artificial intelligence—from startup funding, to newly inked partnerships, to just-launched, AI-powered capabilities from major retailers, software providers and supply chain players.

DHL introduces generative AI-powered virtual assistant

DHL Global Forwarding now offers a 24/7 chatbot to its myDHLi customers. The chatbot, powered by generative AI, allows customers to query the system on the status of shipments, contact details and more. According to the company, it expects the new offering to streamline its customers’ workflows and provide reliable answers to customer questions.

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Tim Scharwath, CEO DHL Global Forwarding, said the update gives users a leg up on their day-to-day operations.

“At DHL Global Forwarding, we are dedicated to being a reliable and trusted partner for our customers.
The integration of [generative] AI into myDHLi allows us to further enhance their logistics experience, offering innovative solutions that drive usability, resilience, and sustainability. Together, we are shaping the future of logistics, providing our customers with the tools they need to navigate the ever-changing
landscape with confidence,” Scharwath said in a statement.

Klarna says the vast majority of its employees use gen AI on a daily basis

Buy now, pay later company Klarna said Tuesday that 87 percent of its employees use generative AI daily in their work. According to the company, that applies to its entire in-house workforce, including its non-technical departments, like marketing, legal and communications.

Those functions had use rates of 87.9 percent, 86.4 percent and 92.6 percent, respectively.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna, said the adoption rate reflects the internal culture his team at Klarna has worked to create around innovation and growth.

“We push everyone to test, test, test and explore,” Siemiatkowski said in a statement. “As Klarna continues to discover applications for OpenAI’s tech, there’s the potential to take the business to new heights. We’re aimed at achieving a new level of employee empowerment, enhancing both our team’s performance and the customer experience.”

The company said much of the growth it has seen in employees’ willingness to leverage generative AI every day comes from the use of Klarna’s custom-built, employee-centered chatbot, Kiki. Since the company launched the OpenAI-powered chatbot in June 2023, the system has answered more than 2,000 employee questions each day, Klarna said. Inputs range from questions about data and internal systems to simply asking, “What is my team working on?”

Already, the company said it has seen a boost in employee productivity because of Kiki, which it expects to help free up time to work on “strategic and creative” tasks within the business, rather than getting bogged down with administrative tasks.

Kiki isn’t the only tool turning labor results for the company. Earlier this year, the company said another one of its tools, a customer service chatbot also powered by OpenAI, could do the work of 700 humans.

Etsy talks AI and ML in its earnings

In Etsy‘s earnings call earlier this month, Josh Silverman, the company’s CEO, said Etsy has added a new area of consideration to its AI and ML strategy: delivery date accuracy.

“I’m pleased to report that our initiative to tighten estimated delivery dates, which we believe are an important effort to improve buyer perceptions of our reliability…are already paying off. Our fulfillment team recently launched a new machine learning model, which reduced our estimate of USPS transit times by greater than one day, resulting in a nearly tripling of the percentage of eligible orders for which Etsy is now able to show an estimated delivery date of seven days or less,” Silverman said on the call.

The company has also been working to up its personalization game, having launched Gift Mode a few months ago. Gift Mode uses over 200 different personas to help consumers appropriately select a gift for a loved one based on their interests, hobbies and more.

Silverman said the company will continue to expand that tool in the coming months.

“This was a kick off, not the mic drop, and we’re in the early days of driving brand awareness to make Etsy more top of mind for gifts. We’ve got a robust road map for Gift Mode to improve the experience and get more buyers into the funnel, from recently optimized gift teasers to additional gifty profiles, reminders, video and audio message capabilities, and new occasion pages and much more,” Silverman said.

Silverman also said the company has aspirations to use AI and ML to help declutter what consumers see on the platform, helping make their shopping journeys easier. In Q1, the company used the technologies to remove 115 percent more listings violating its policies than it did in Q1 of 2023.

Pio brings automated inventory management and fulfillment to U.S. brands

Norwegian fulfillment company AutoStore has launched Pio (Products In/Out), an out-of-the-box automated warehouse system, in the U.S. for small and medium-sized brands and retailers.

Pio will keep companies’ inventory in cube storage, then use robots to help fulfill confirmed orders for fast shipping or, in some cases, same-day delivery. The company said it can pick and pack up to 360 orders per hour, which could save its target customers up to 80 percent in labor costs each year.

For its U.S. side expansion, Pio’s first fashion and apparel customers are AI Stone, a men’s formal wear brand, and Sunday Swagger, a golf apparel brand.

AutoStore counts brands and retailers like Puma, Lids, Adore Me and Best Buy among its larger enterprise customers, but Magne Hatteland, vice president and head of Pio, said the company wanted to democratize warehouse automation.

“With Pio, any brand, no matter its size, has access to the same best-in-class warehouse automation system as big box retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods or Best Buy, enabling them to compete at the same level or even outperform. As Shopify streamlines online store operations with digital features to help manage inventory and shipping, Pio’s cube storage technology and robots automate the next step in your logistics by eliminating any backlog and authorizing same-day order processing. This means your team can stop digging through and sorting boxes, and instead, spend their time growing the business to new heights,” Hatteland said in a statement.