You don't need "AI" for that. All you would need is some standardized APIs for the various shops, and you could easily solve this with computer technology from 20 years ago.
It's not that there's no API. It's that there's probably a different API for every single grocery store. And they make random changes and don't have public documentation. That's why we need the AI.
But they'll happily give you full access to everything they have if you're another corpo and you promise to marginally improve their sales anyhow. That's, sadly, how businesses work.
Indeed. LLMs read with the same sort of comprehension that humans have, so if a supermarket makes their website compatible with humans then it's also compatible with LLMs. We have the same "API", as it were.
It's only in German and most of the prices aren't from a public API but crawled from different sources.
It's open source. Nothing except greed is stopping them from providing something like this.
Imagine if instead of building their own bespoke systems, grocery stores (and other places) created an open source software foundation and worked together to produce the software they needed.
I sometimes dream of such things. Less waste, better inventory, customers get to choose inventory based on their wishlist, better prices, then I wake up.
We actually have a small liquor store nearby that really puts stuff on the shelves if you casually mention something you like. But that's more the exception than the rule.
At the cost of huge amounts of wasted energy and the whole litany of concerns that are always co-morbid with AI, but technically yes they could work for this lol. Ideally we'd have standardized APIs and mandated pricing transparency, but unfortunately we live in a capitalist society where that will literally never happen ever.
Yes there are. You can obtain access to the Kroger API, the Meijer API, the Walmart API, and I'm sure others that I didn't bother to Google. Failing getting access to the actual APIs, there are tons of web scraper projects that just parse those stores' websites for product information, and web scrapers are still orders of magnitude more efficient than LLMs.
Calling it now, some tech bro trust fund kid is going to make a start up for this and call it something markety like fresh4u or some shit. Then when everyone is using it they'll sell your data to China.
We need somebody to wear a 360 camera and go walk every aisle every day. Use image recognition to get the SKU and price from the labels + estimate stock level. Upload the data to an API that's accessible to all for like $5/month.
Kind of like the Streetview cameras but for spying on actual in store prices.