Tops Friendly Markets rolls out AI robot, 'Tally'

Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) - Tops Friendly Markets is looking to make shopping a little bit easier for customers with the help of an AI robot, Tally.

Tally, which is currently in a pilot run, scans shelves and tracks inventory for employees. Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Scott Kessler explained that this will help reduce time it takes employees to do day-to-day tasks, and allows them to better engage customers.

"Think of this as a power tool for the employee. The employee is going to use this to be more effective at their job. The only things that it does with computer vision is it takes pictures of the shelves, the pricing tags, the images, no other intent other than that," stated Kessler. "All of that wealth of data now enables the store associate to traverse this very large store when there's myopic things that need to be corrected or fixed, and today that there's a lot of time wasted on the floor, if you will, in trying to find things."

With the seemingly endless growth of AI technology, there is fear that certain jobs will eventually cease to exist. However, Jason, an operations manager for Tops, doesn't believe Tally is capable of replacing humans.

"I don't think it's gonna replace jobs. I think it's just gonna be help with a little more accuracy on shelf tags, missing price discrepancies, maybe help us a little bit knowing what's in and out of stock on the shelves. Other than that, I don't think it's really gonna eliminate anybody's job in the anybody's job in the end."

One customer says that she can understand why people would be worried about Tally taking jobs, but can also see the benefit of having it.

"I mean, I would be upset too, you know. But if it helps to get things done more quicker, you know, to have inventory in stock. That'll be a plus for that."