Meet Edie, the AI Behind Retail’s Answer to ChatGPT

London-based data analytics firm EDITED is launching an AI platform tailored to the retail industry that is trained on more than a decade worth of market intelligence.

EDITED, founded in 2009, has launched an AI platform that can help retail professionals turn data insights into business decisions with greater confidence, the company said in a recent statement.

Called AskEDITED, the platform is the company’s answer to general knowledge AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The difference, however, is other large language models do not have access to verified data, but Edie–the name of the AI powering the platform–does.

“Generic AI gives you generic answers,” said Doug Kofoid, CEO at . “We built AskEDITED on the deepest retail dataset in existence, with an agent that understands how retail teams actually make decisions.”

This huge dataset, which is normalized for easier comparisons, covers 90,000 brands with over 5 billion stock keeping units, according to the company’s official website. The company said there will be full visibility into the data behind every insight.

A retail professional, for example, can ask if a pair of leggings is priced competitively going into the new season, and the AI will give an expert-level answer grounded on the deepest normalized retail dataset in the world.

Beyond questions and answers, the platform can also generate charts, product assortments, and reports that can be exported to other business teams. Edie will be able to provide follow-up prompts and save chat histories so teams can have a sense of continuity in their data analysis.

“Most retail teams are still spending hours explaining what already happened. AskEDITED is built for what happens next–the decision in the room, the question that can’t wait, the insight that changes the buy,” said Brian Tomz, chief product officer at EDITED.

“Whether you’re validating a pricing strategy, spotting a competitive assortment shift, or walking into a trading meeting, you get the answer in seconds. No technical expertise. No waiting,” he added.

The platform launch reflects how AI is fast becoming an integral part of the retail industry, from understanding logistic patterns in the supply chains to customer facing technology like AI chat bots. But before generative AI became popular, EDITED was already sought out by retailers for its data analytics.

For example, in 2017, Spanish fashion retailer Mango partnered with EDITED to keep track of competitor brands and retailers in their markets around the globe. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the retailer used EDITED to keep track of consumer interest despite the lockdown, which helped Mango gain 900,000 new online customers, EDITED said in a previous statement.