AI avatars in court, Walmart’s AI glow-up, and ARR gymnastics

An AI avatar walked into a courtroom. The judge wasn’t impressed.

No, really. Last month, a man in New York tried to argue his case with a fully AI-generated stand-in—a digital face, synthetic voice, the whole thing. The judge shut it down in under a minute.

It didn’t work. But the attempt says a lot about where we are. The lines between AI experimentation and real-world application are officially blurry—and sometimes absurd. One minute it's an avatar in court, the next it's Google fixing Barbie Dreamhouses with BigQuery.

This week’s edition dives into the AI use cases that are actually landing—plus the metrics that are getting... suspicious. From Walmart’s fashion AI to KPMG’s chatbot to startups playing fast and loose with ARR, here’s what matters right now in the world of AI for operators and decision-makers.

Let’s get into it 👇

Walmart’s getting into fast fashion—but with AI as the designer

Walmart just dropped an AI tool that can spot fashion trends online and turn them into real-life products in a matter of weeks. It’s called Trend-to-Product, and it might be the retailer’s answer to Shein-speed.

They tested it on their $2 billion No Boundaries brand. The result? TikTok-inspired pieces hit shelves in just six weeks instead of six months.

Here’s how it works:

• The AI scrapes the internet for what people are wearing right now

• Designers get auto-generated mood boards and concepts

• Those get turned into real clothes, fast

But it’s not just about moving quickly. With new tariffs hitting Chinese imports, Walmart needs to figure out what’s worth producing before they commit to expensive supply chains. This AI helps answer that.

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Everyone’s faking ARR and AI startups are getting away with it

You know how ARR (annual recurring revenue) is supposed to tell investors how healthy a startup is? Yeah… not so much anymore.

In AI land, companies are bending the definition like it’s Play-Doh. Some are adding consulting fees to inflate revenue. Others are counting future contracts they haven’t fulfilled. Some even include “pipeline” numbers—basically revenue that doesn’t exist yet.

It’s a mess.

And because a lot of AI tools use usage-based pricing, those numbers can swing wildly month to month. One big customer testing your tool in Q1 might ghost you by summer.

If you’re raising right now, just know this: everyone’s playing games, but smart investors are catching on. What looked like a rocket ship might just be a very shiny balloon.

KPMG saved 1,000 hours with a chatbot that doesn’t suck

The Big Four firm isn’t exactly known for cutting-edge tech, but their new hiring assistant—a chatbot named Kai—is actually doing the job.

Built by Paradox, Kai handles all the boring stuff: answering candidate questions, recommending roles, and scheduling interviews. Since launching, it’s already saved KPMG over 1,000 hours and cut interview setup time by more than half.

The trick? Kai isn’t trying to automate the whole hiring process. It just picks off the annoying parts. Human recruiters still step in for anything important, like screening or vibe checks.

Turns out, the best AI assistants don’t replace people—they just stop them from spending half their day buried in email chains.

Google wants to be the AI vendor that actually helps

At its Cloud Next event, Google showed off some real examples of AI doing useful stuff, like… saving Barbie.

No, seriously—Mattel used Google’s BigQuery AI to figure out why Barbie Dreamhouse reviews were tanking. Turns out, a stuck elevator door was the culprit. They fixed it mid-production, ratings went up, and customers were happy.

This is Google’s angle now: instead of just hyping its models, it’s pushing real-world use cases—like natural-sounding meeting summaries, better analytics in Sheets, and even smart robots (Samsung’s new Ballie home bot runs on Gemini).

It’s a clever move. Everyone’s building flashy AI tools. Google’s trying to be the one that quietly makes your actual business run smoother.

That’s a wrap for this week.

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