Lowe’s AI Assistant Turns Questions Into Sales

Lowe’s AI shopping assistant, Mylow, has fielded more than 25 million questions from customers and store associates since launch, and shoppers who engage with it online convert at three times the rate of those who don’t, CEO Marvin Ellison said on the company’s Aug. 19 second-quarter earnings call.

“Online customers who use Mylow are three times as likely to convert as customers who do not use the tool,” Ellison said, “reinforcing that a well-designed agentic AI experience can be a clear driver in the purchasing decision.” Mylow also powers a companion tool that helps store associates answer questions on the floor.

Online sales grew 15.7% year over year, the second straight quarter above 15%, following 15.5% growth the prior quarter. Ellison credited the growth to tailored digital experiences, expanded visualization tools, marketplace growth and new fulfillment options alongside Mylow’s contribution.

A customer asking Mylow how much mulch they need gets an answer along with product recommendations they can purchase directly, Lowe’s said last March when it first launched the AI assistant.

“Most people don’t come to our site with a product in mind. They come with a problem,” Joe Cano, Lowe’s senior vice president of digital commerce, told OpenAI in a post about the partnership between the firms in creating Mylow. “The tool figures out what they mean, and helps them finish the job.”

MyLow also helps more than just customers. In stores, an associate unsure about plumbing or electrical work can ask Mylow Companion questions about specific projects, such as a paint job, and get an answer in seconds, along with what Lowe’s called “attachments:” related products like primer or spackle a customer might otherwise forget.

Home Depot Is Running the Same Playbook

What makes Mylow commercially significant is the kind of question it answers. A shopper fixing a leaking faucet often doesn’t know the exact part or fitting needed, only a description of the problem. Mylow takes that kind of unstructured, project-based question and narrows it to specific, purchasable products, rather than returning search results a shopper still has to sort through.

Home Depot is doing the same thing from a different starting point. Its Magic Apron assistant, built with Google Cloud’s Gemini models, moves past simple search results to give conversational, project-specific advice: if a customer asks what grout works best with glass tiles, Magic Apron can make a recommendation, tell the customer where to find it in the store, and suggest what additional materials the project will need, Home Depot said in a January announcement.

Retailers Bet on AI Assistants to Build the Cart

Most retail AI tools built in recent years focus on answering FAQs or resolving service issues after a purchase, work that cuts cost but doesn’t shape what ends up in a cart. Mylow and Magic Apron sit earlier in the process, translating a vague, real-world problem into a structured basket of products before a transaction happens, giving both retailers’ AI a direct role in what actually makes it into an order rather than just supporting a decision already made by the shopper.

Consumers appear increasingly ready to let AI play that role: 45% say they’d be comfortable letting an AI agent complete a purchase on their behalf, rising to 54% among Gen Z, and 81% of retailers say they trust AI to act autonomously once the right guardrails are in place, according to the Payments Optimization Tracker, “Agents of Change: How Agentic AI Is Redefining Commerce,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Worldpay collaborative study.

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