Kroger's chief digital officer on the grocer’s AI ambitions

As chief digital officer at Kroger, Yael Cosset is tasked with “turning Kroger into a digital enterprise.” So…what does that actually mean?

It’s no secret Kroger’s business, especially its C-suite, has been in a state of flux over the past year, and that’s true for its digital business, too. Last year, Kroger formed an e-commerce business unit, encompassing all teams relating to the online customer experience. Cosset—its SVP and chief information officer at the time—was tapped to lead it, shifting to the chief digital officer role. Last month, Nate Faust, co-founder of Jet.com and a former Walmart exec, became its first-ever chief e-commerce officer, now leading that unit.

Now, as Cosset told Retail Brew, his role oversees everything related to technology, data, AI, and digitization. (The company also hired a chief data and AI officer, Milen Mahadevan, who reports to Cosset, in March).

Ten years ago, the goal for a chief digital officer would’ve centered around building out capabilities for consumers to shop for groceries online, Cosset said. Today, a lot of that transformation—and the role’s biggest challenge—revolves around AI.

“How do we move from a function-centric operating model to truly a brain and a nervous system that is surrounding that customer experience?” he said.

Human touch: While the technology and data elements are “not the most complicated” aspects of the job, the change management related to AI adoption “is not for the faint of heart.”

“We have reached a point…where technology and the data science and artificial intelligence capability and all the agentic capabilities that we’ve developed are maybe one step ahead of the adoption maturity,” he said.

That’s why the company has introduced its “AI drivers license,” a training and upskilling program for Kroger’s associates to help them better understand AI. With that adoption comes the major challenge of avoiding “crossing the lines of irresponsible AI, where it’s AI for the sake of AI,” he said.

Keeping a “human in the loop,”—i.e., a human to supervise and make the final judgement call— as well as having “processes and governance in place” that prevent experience that would inhibit the customer or associate’s experience, has been key to Kroger, he said. Ensuring data is auditable, first-party data, and that it can undo any decisions made is essential.

“That’s helping balance where we go aggressive, where we go slow,” he said.

Smart carts: One of the clearest operations-focused and consumer-facing examples of this digital, AI-focused transformation has been Kroger’s AI shopping assistant, which the grocer rolled out in July.

The new assistant helps “bridge the gap between inspiration and shopping,” he said. As consumers input prompts about what they’re looking for and the parameters around that, the tech allows Kroger to gain more context around consumers’ shopping behaviors and needs, like health and flavor preferences, than they’d get from their in-store purchases, he said. He noted consumers’ willingness to share this information has “exceeded expectations.”

Due to the precise nature of the AI shopping tool, Cosset said he expected basket sizes to be narrow, but while customers “value the simplicity” the tool offers, they’re also adding to basket beyond their original use occasion, he said.

“When you think about it, your best friend, your best advisor, your best coach—the more context they have, the more capable they are to help you,” he said. “As you build trust, as you build confidence and comfort with all the improvement and relevance that come to life in the experience, you start opening up to more, and you want to try more, and you want to test more, and that’s what’s resulting in that broader engagement.”

Operationally, the tool ensures products are in stock and available when a customer needs them through the method they choose at the quality level they’re looking for, he said. That, in combination with its other customer-facing features, will “allow us to be differentiated.”

Differentiation could become increasingly important as more grocers and retailers launch their own AI shopping assistants—Instacart and DoorDash leaders similarly spoke of the early success of their AI assistants at Groceryshop last month.

Despite the flurry of activity in the space, these tools are new for Kroger and its shoppers, and both are still learning.

“I don’t think we’ll move to a full autonomous commerce world anytime soon,” he said. “But I think it will continue to play an increasingly large role in customers’ lives.”