Apple Store Virtual Shopping Assistant May Soon Give You ‘A Lot More Help’
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You may someday have a conversation like the following with a virtual shopping assistant in the Apple Store app.
Mr. Hollister: “Just how obscene an amount of money were you talking about? Just profane or really offensive?”
Edward: “Really offensive.”
Mr. Hollister: “I like him so much.”
(Pretty Woman)
A change in the privacy policy for the Apple Store app indicates that a new Virtual Shopping Assistant could be making its way to the front door soon, possibly functioning in the same manner as the Apple Support Assistant.
Apple has slowly been implementing AI tools across its operating systems and apps, both for internal usage and in public-facing situations. Although Apple still relies on humans for some support questions, AI is being used in a growing number of situations.
While a similar feature is in place in the Apple Support app — it includes an “Ask” tab where users can pose questions about their device — the feature is quite specific and merely draws its responses from Apple documentation.
The Virtual Shopping Assistant was first spotted by MacRumors in the Apple Store app’s privacy policy. In there, Apple lists what data the feature collects while also mentioning a toggle switch in the app’s settings doesn’t exist — yet. The Apple Store app was last updated on July 22, but the AI chat tool has yet to be enabled.
The privacy policy says the following about the Virtual Shopping Assistant:
Where the Apple Store app virtual shopping assistant is available, Apple collects and stores your account information, device identifiers, carrier information, chat information, and where enabled, location data to personalize the chat experience, provide relevant responses, and if you opt in, to improve the virtual shopping assistant. Before sharing the chat with our partners, Apple scrubs personal identifiers from it.
These partners will use this information only to help Apple to provide a conversational response. Apple will save these transcripts to make them available when you return to the Apple Store app, for our business analytics, and if you opt in, to improve the virtual shopping assistant.
You can control whether your use of the virtual shopping assistant will be used to improve the experience by going to Account > Settings and tapping Chat Improvements within the Apple Store app.
It is unclear what “partners” will be using the information to “provide a conversational response.” While it would seem that such a task could just be handled by Apple Foundation Models, the feature may simply be included as part of another partnership with the “partners.”
At this point in time, we don’t know exactly how the new Virtual Shopping Assistant will aid shoppers in their time of need. The text in the privacy policy is rather vague about the new capabilities, as privacy policies often are. However, we can assume that the new feature will be an improvement over the current store search option, or at least we will hope it’s better.
In a best-case scenario, the new virtual assistant will suggest compatible accessories for the items that are already in your shopping bag, much like a salesperson would suggest a tie or a pair of shoes that would go with the suit you’re buying. We can only hope there will be less ass-kissing than there was in Pretty Woman — at least unless you’re planning on spending a really offensive amount of cash.
