The Very Group has expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve its services using generative AI (GenAI).

The company said its engineers and data teams will work closely with specialist teams from the newly launched $100 million AWS Generative AI Innovation Centre to leverage AWS GenAI capabilities through Amazon Bedrock.

As part of the move, Very will launch a new GenAI Innovation Lab which will explore machine learning and storage capabilities to make the shopping experience personalised and interactive for its customers.

Very said the adoption of GenAI will change the way its customers shop and allow the group create more products that are relevant to them at a faster pace. It added that the technology will improve the company’s insights and enable better decisions at scale for its employees.

The group added that it already uses AI in its business operations for tasks including forecasting product demand and planning inventory which has led to better product availability.

“We want to be recognised as one of the UK’s leading AI-powered retailers,” said Matt Grest, chief information officer at The Very Group. “To keep our customers satisfied and transform our business operations, we've chosen to build on our existing strategic relationship with AWS and incubate new generative AI-powered products with a trusted collaborator and innovator who understands how we work with data at scale.”

Last month, The Very Group reported a pre-tax profit drop of 92 per cent in the financial year ended 1 July. Profits before tax over the 12-month period stood at £4.6 million compared with £63.9 million in the previous year.

The company said the result had been driven by heightened interest costs as a result of the “impact of the Bank of England’s base rate and, to a lesser extent, changes at EBITDA level.”

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