Home improvement stores are adding AI to assist with your DIY
Home improvement stores are adding AI to assist with your DIY
Artificial intelligence can now help you with your next home improvement project — though you will still need to provide your own elbow grease. Home Depot and Lowe’s both launched generative AI assistants on their websites this week: Magic Apron, as Home Depot calls its tool, and Mylow, the Lowe’s version, can give product recommendations, summarize reviews and even offer some how-to advice. They’re just the latest retailers looking to soup up their customer experience with an AI bot.
Personally, I do need a lot of help with weeds after our winter rains. Home Depot’s “president of online,” Jordan Broggi, said it sounds like I’m in the market for some weed killer.
“You might have a set of basic questions, ‘How much do I need? Is this going to, you know, kill the weeds that I have in my lawn, and is it going to harm my grass? You know, how do I apply it?'” he said.
Broggi said Magic Apron, Home Depot’s AI tool, is meant to simulate the in-store experience. “Whatever it may be, this is intended to help answer those questions in real time,” he said.
The Lowe’s Mylow AI suggested mulch to suppress new weeds once I’ve sprayed. And, after some coaxing, it calculated how many bags I’d need to buy.
“I think they’re really promising because they have the step-by-step,” said Greg Zakowicz, a strategist at ecommerce marketing platform Omnisend.
He said AI assistants are on almost every website now, though many don’t seem to have a clear function. “We’re just at an early stage where the companies put them on, figure out what works, what doesn’t, and then refine them,” he said.
For retailers, these tools provide a valuable new stream of consumer data to analyze, said Anastasiya Ghosh, a marketing professor at the University of Arizona.
“Like, what is the first question a person asks when they’re buying a washing machine?” she said.
But the more personalized and “creative” these chatbots get, the bigger the risks. Generative AI is still prone to hallucination and other errors.
“So if I buy something, let’s say a piece of furniture, and assemble it myself, but if I followed your instructions … and I don’t like it now, that’s your fault,” Ghosh said.
Home Depot’s Jordan Broggi said the advice is clearly labeled as AI-generated.
“I think customers are in the process of getting more familiar with using tools like this and knowing that they can be extremely helpful, even if they’re not 100% accurate,” he said.
Sort of like weed killer.
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