Magalu has just become the first major retail company in the world to offer a feature that allows customers to complete the entire purchasing process via WhatsApp – from product recommendations based on individual desires and needs, to payment and after-sales service. The use of Lu's WhatsApp – a feature based on artificial intelligence – was initially released to 1 million recurring Magalu customers with a minimum purchase history of 10 products per year. By the end of 2025, the entire base of over 30 million active consumers will be able to search for, learn about, choose, pay for, and track the delivery process of products without leaving Magalu's Lu's WhatsApp.
“After a combination of extensive research and an intense development cycle over the past year, we have managed to offer a unique, end-to-end solution”says André Fatala, Vice President of Digital Platforms at Magalu. “In practice, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, each customer will be treated as if they were unique. Lu understands their needs, their personal tastes, how much and how they want to pay, and offers the most suitable product quickly and intuitively.”
To achieve this, Lu, in its AI commerce version, will access the entire product catalog of Magalu (1P) and the 300,000 sellers on the marketplace (3P). This includes over 37 million published listings. Customer interaction can be via text, voice, or even by sending images – exactly as happens in WhatsApp communication between humans. Payment, via Pix or credit card, is made within the conversation, without the customer being transferred to a website or app, which speeds up the purchase process and reduces friction.
“Our team, together with our partners, worked to develop an AI commerce functionality that went beyond simply supporting purchases through a conventional channel,” says Caio Gomes, director of data and artificial intelligence at Magalu. “From the beginning, we wanted to create an exceptional salesperson who deeply understands each customer and each product and who can make the perfect connection between them, with the human warmth that characterizes our corporate culture.”
The development of Lu's WhatsApp was carried out by the Luizalabs team, Magalu's technology division, in partnership with Meta, owner of WhatsApp, and Google. The system was built entirely in accordance with the General Data Protection Law: no sensitive information is stored, and the stored data follows the privacy security standard already established by Magalu.
A day of lively shopping and lots of conversation.
WhatsApp was chosen as the conversational platform for Magalu's first AI Commerce experience due to its massive acceptance and usage among Brazilians. The Meta app is currently installed on 98% of active mobile phones and is the most used in the country, according to the Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box survey, released in March 2024.
“The launch of Lu’s WhatsApp represents a significant advancement in the application of artificial intelligence to Brazilian digital retail. The partnership between Magalu and Meta demonstrates how technological collaboration can create innovative solutions capable of transforming the shopping journey and bringing companies and consumers even closer together,” says Conrado Leister, vice president and general manager of Meta in Brazil. “We are proud to contribute to this pioneering project, which reinforces the potential of WhatsApp as a strategic platform for businesses.”
Lu's WhatsApp account, launched in 2018, is already used regularly by a base of 15 million customers, who – until now – could track their purchases made through other Magalu channels.
To initiate the conversational purchase process, in this first phase of the launch, the customer needs to receive an invitation directly to Lu's WhatsApp account. Only users with an account already created on the Magalu website or app can interact with the artificial intelligence. At the beginning of the WhatsApp conversation, Lu requests the customer's email or CPF (Brazilian tax identification number) for identification. Following this, the customer receives a validation code. From there, they simply need to request Lu's assistance to make the purchase.
In audio interactions, Lu is able to understand slang, regionalisms, pauses, and casual explanations of the customer's needs. Regardless of the type of contact and according to the intention and specificity of the requested product, she returns questions to the user to deliver the best recommendation.
It's also possible to interact with Lu about other topics, such as asking about the weather or even chatting about everyday subjects, but her main function is that of a sales assistant, and therefore she will direct the topics towards that role. As a safety measure, Lu will interrupt the conversation in case of offensive or sexually explicit content, or content involving insults, harassment, or violence.
AI Multi-Agent
Lu's WhatsApp project – which took just over a year to develop – uses Google's proprietary LLM (Long-Term Learning Management) models, and a mix of other open-source models (with publicly available source code), hosted on Magalu Cloud. This ensures access to resources such as advanced reasoning, planning, and multimodal thinking capabilities, as well as the flexibility, customization, and low latency of the models hosted in the company's cloud – fundamental requirements for the operation of a project of this size.
The building architecture uses hundreds of multi-agents, which gives the freedom to interact with various systems, such as search, recommendation, audio transcription, among others, allowing users to communicate in the way they prefer, through voice, text or images.
