Tech titans

Sam Altman, co-founder and chief executive, OpenAI, and owner, ChatGPT

This past year has seen OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman rapidly emerge as one of the most significant figures in the world of AI.  

While his sudden departure from OpenAI in November due to a clash with its board generated a ton of column inches – as did his return just one week later – it was his company’s generative AI tool ChatGPT that got everyone in the industry talking. Interest in ChatGPT has soared among both the public and businesses as the chatbot set a new standard for sophisticated responses to almost any question thrown at it. 

Retailers are particularly interested in the ability of ChatGPT to customise and generate accurate content in a personalised context – seen as the holy grail in automated customer service. In May, Asian ecommerce marketplace Lazada launched LazzieChat, powered by ChatGPT, to provide a more engaging, informed and personalised shopping experience, while in February, French retail giant Carrefour released its first-ever video made using a ChatGPT-generated script and realistic human-looking avatar.

Retail tech teams are busy working on a range of use cases for Chat GPT beyond mere customer service, including ideas for store design, experiential retailing, payment solutions and fulfilment. Altman is at the centre of this innovation.

Going forward, Altman is set to face growing scrutiny over the potential control businesses such as OpenAI have. For instance, in March 2023, experts in the field signed an open letter warning of a “profound risk to society and humanity” from the unchecked development of AI. 

Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer, Meta

Harvard graduate Andrew “Boz” Bosworth has been a driving force behind Meta’s technology strategy ever since joining Facebook as a software engineer specialising in AI in 2006.

More recently, Bosworth has been leading the company’s investments in areas including AR and generative AI. Last May, Meta announced the launch of AI Sandbox, described as a “testing playground for early versions of new tools and features” that allows advertisers to automate the creation of more effective and engaging ads across its platforms. In October, it made the first of three AI-powered tools from Sandbox available to businesses: text variation, background generation and image cropping.  

Elsewhere, Bosworth and his team are pouring resources into building fully AR glasses to push the consumer electronics industry forward. In December, Bosworth described the glasses prototype as “the most advanced thing we’ve ever produced as a species”. While the glasses have until now remained under wraps, Bosworth has hinted that the prototype could be revealed this year for people to “get a chance to play with”.  

Shou Zi Chew, chief executive, TikTok Shop, TikTok

With about 1 billion active users, TikTok presents a huge opportunity for retailers to drive incremental sales via in-app shopping. Indeed, this year it overtook Instagram and Facebook to become the UK’s most-shopped social channel.

Shou Zi Chew, who has held the role of CEO since May 2021, shows no sign of resting on his laurels following a host of innovations and partnerships aimed at driving further growth.

Last August, TikTok Shop launched Fulfilled by TikTok in the UK, a new logistics programme designed to make it easier for merchants to sell on the platform. It offers same-day, automated fulfilment for all orders made by 7pm Monday to Friday, a next-working-day premium delivery service, and improved customer feedback and ratings through its instant messaging service. It signed a partnership with global ecommerce network CommerceHub in September, enabling TikTok to access tens of thousands of brands on CommerceHub’s vast network that want to sell and market their products on TikTok Shop.

Tobias Lütke, founder and chief executive, Shopify

Under the leadership of co-founder and chief executive Tobias Lütke, ecommerce platform Shopify continues to be at the cutting edge of online trends.

Last June, the platform – which athleisure brand Gymshark used to launch its business – brought its Collabs service to the UK, which makes it easier for brands and creators to connect and work together. Brands can use Collabs to create a new sales and marketing avenue by supplying them with unique links and discount codes to share with their audience.

Seamless payment is also on Lütke’s agenda, following the expansion of its accelerated checkout service Shop Pay to include retailers not on its platform, while a strategic partnership signed in August with AI sizing platform True Fit is significant as brands look to build their capabilities in virtual try-on. Shopify merchants will be able to connect their brand to True Fit’s Fashion Genome application, which provides size and fit recommendations powered by AI.

Werner Vogels, chief technology officer, Amazon

You can make a strong argument that Werner Vogels is the most influential figure in the emergence of cloud technology as the go-to solution for retailers, and indeed businesses, globally. A former research scientist in enterprise systems at New York’s Cornell University, Vogels joined Amazon in 2004 with the remit of helping the business design its infrastructure so it could handle large volumes of data and traffic.

He is now the public face of Amazon Web Services, the engine behind much of Amazon’s growth over recent years and central to the tech stacks of leading retailers including Zalando and The White Company.

Current priority areas of investment for Amazon include computer vision, machine learning, conversational AI and robotics, while the development of palm payment technology is significant as it seeks to make the end-to-end customer journey ever more seamless. The business, which was set to have rolled out its pay-by-palm system to all Whole Foods stores by the end of 2023, enables customers to pay for items by swiping their hand over a kiosk. 

Elsewhere, Vogels is pursuing a focus on partnerships to drive growth and more seamless shopping experiences. In November, Amazon teamed up with Meta to allow shoppers to buy items directly from Facebook and Instagram and, that same month, partnered with Snap to allow shopping on Snapchat.