• Target has launched a beta version of its Ask Target AI chatbot to help with the holidays.
• Major retail competitors like Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe's have offered the features for months now.
• Conversational apps can help shoppers discover new products and build larger baskets.

Target shoppers have a new elf to help with their holiday gift lists.

The Bullseye retailer just launched a beta version of its AI-powered chatbot, called Ask Target, in time for the seasonal rush. The move brings Target into closer step with rivals like Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe's, each of which has offered the feature for months now.

"We have seen a lot of traction as we start to think about that conversational AI, so the team was excited to push it through to capitalize on our biggest season of the year," chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester told Business Insider during a holiday preview event in New York.

Sylvester also said that the app can answer Target-related questions, not only holiday-specific ones. An internal rollout of the tool had store employees brushing up on new merchandise, particularly in the new Beauty Studio department.

The AI assistant comes two months after Target hired former Lowe's AI head Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer. At Lowe's, Nair oversaw the home improvement retailer's Mylow chatbot, which the company has credited with "dramatic improvements" in customer service.

Whether it's renovation advice or recipe ideas, retailers say chatbots trained on proprietary in-house data are more effective at responding to customer queries than an outside bot like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. The in-house bots can also act as a digital counterpart for personal AI agents like Meta's Muse.

Walmart has said that its Sparky agent has helped the retailer better understand its customers, as shoppers are having more conversational interactions rather than simple keyword searches. Sparky users discover more items and build shopping baskets that are 40% larger than those of non-users, the company has said.

Sylvester said it's too early to say what the basket-size impacts of the new Ask Target agent are.

Dopo che un agente ha ferito un uomo a Marble Hill, la catena nega intese con le autorità federali sull’immigrazione

Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg have called on the European Commission to establish a specific EU renewable-energy target for 2040 as Brussels prepares the next stage of the bloc’s climate and energy legislation.

The three governments have written to Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen arguing that a post-2030 renewables target would give investors greater certainty, accelerate deployment and reduce European dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Their intervention comes as the Commission prepares a new renewable-energy framework covering the decade after 2030.

The EU currently has a legally binding target requiring renewable sources to account for at least 42.5 per cent of final energy consumption by 2030, with an ambition to reach 45 per cent.

There is, however, no equivalent renewables target for 2040.

The European Commission says it is preparing a post-2030 renewable-energy framework for adoption before the end of this year. It is intended to complement the Union’s wider climate legislation and provide guidance for the next decade of energy investment.

Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg want that framework to contain a numerical target rather than rely solely on the EU’s overall greenhouse-gas reduction objective.

The proposal creates a policy divide with governments that want Brussels to use a broader definition of low-carbon or “clean” energy.

France, Sweden and Finland are among countries that have supported an approach allowing nuclear generation to contribute alongside renewable sources towards European decarbonisation targets.

France in particular operates the EU’s largest nuclear fleet and has repeatedly argued that European energy legislation should treat nuclear power according to its low carbon emissions rather than exclude it from frameworks designed specifically around renewable technologies.

Luxembourg, by contrast, has long opposed nuclear energy and has raised concerns about radioactive waste, safety and the financing of new reactors.

The argument is therefore not simply about the scale of the 2040 ambition. It concerns the structure of European energy investment over the next 15 years.

The Commission’s existing renewable-energy rules set the 2030 floor at 42.5 per cent, almost double the share recorded at the beginning of the decade.

Renewables accounted for 26.2 per cent of EU energy consumption in 2025, according to Commission figures.

Investment will have to increase substantially if the Union is to meet its existing target before any higher post-2030 requirement is introduced.

Grid capacity is another constraint. Wind and solar generation can be built faster than many traditional power stations, but projects increasingly depend on new transmission lines, interconnectors, storage and distribution infrastructure.

EU Today reported in June that member states were resisting greater Commission control over cross-border electricity-grid planning, illustrating the institutional difficulties surrounding an expansion of European electricity infrastructure.

The latest initiative also sits alongside the EU’s legally binding 2040 climate target.

In March, the Union formally approved legislation requiring net greenhouse-gas emissions to fall by 90 per cent from 1990 levels by 2040. EU Today reported on the final approval of the 2040 target, which is intended to bridge the gap between the bloc’s 2030 commitments and climate neutrality by 2050.

How that 90 per cent reduction is achieved is now moving to the centre of the policy debate.

For Spain and Portugal, greater renewable generation is also tied to their ambitions to expand electricity exports from the Iberian Peninsula into the rest of Europe. Limited interconnection capacity across the Pyrenees has historically restricted those flows.

The Commission’s post-2030 framework will therefore have consequences beyond environmental policy. It will influence investment decisions in power generation, grids, industrial electrification, hydrogen, storage and manufacturing.

The political question confronting the Commission is whether those decisions should be driven by a dedicated renewable-energy benchmark or by a technology-neutral emissions objective under which nuclear and renewable generation compete for investment.

With the 2040 climate target already fixed in law, the next dispute is increasingly about the energy system that will be built to reach it.