Voice AI has arrived in public spaces, and Finland is first out of the gate. K-Supermarket, one of the country’s largest grocery chains, is launching what is believed to be the world’s first interactive public digital display that holds a real, two-way voice conversation with passersby. The innovation – a cheerful animated character called “The Shopkeeper’s Little Helper” – appears on shopping mall out-of-home screens in Helsinki, Lappeenranta, and Tampere, ready to suggest recipe ideas tailored to each person’s wishes.
While conversational screens have appeared in limited trials in parts of Asia and at select US events, this is the first known deployment in an open public space, with a voice-driven AI assistant embedded in existing digital outdoor advertising infrastructure.
“We want to make everyday cooking easier in all kinds of ways, and now we’re piloting a completely new kind of assistant to help with that. We’re genuinely excited to be part of developing this groundbreaking technology that offers real, tangible value in people’s daily lives”, says Milla Sorsakivi, Marketing Director at K-Supermarket.
From Billboard to Service Point
The assistant is now live in its first three locations: Kamppi Shopping Centre in Helsinki (13–26 April), IsoKristiina Shopping Centre in Lappeenranta (16–26 April), and Ratina Shopping Centre in Tampere (20–26 April). The screens are operated in partnership with out-of-home media companies Bauer Media Outdoor and Ocean Outdoor.
Technically, the experience is built on a real-time voice AI interface. Speech travels from a microphone directly to an AI model, which processes the input and responds in spoken language with zero keyboard interaction required. Behind the scenes, a curated recipe database feeds the model, allowing it to surface relevant suggestions on the fly. Users can save their recipes with a QR code scan. The recipes have been curated from the grocery chain’s extensive recipe database.
The technical implementation is the work of Interactive Inuits, a Finnish digital innovation studio.
“This project is concrete proof that out-of-home screens can be two-way and genuinely useful – not just attention-seeking. When a screen can answer questions, make
recommendations, and help with decisions, it stops being an advertising screen and becomes a service point”, says Sampo Pihlaja, Head of Digital at Interactive Inuits, a part of SipuliGroup. The developers say the biggest challenge has been making the interaction feel natural, ensuring that a public screen conversation doesn’t feel robotic or awkward, but instead fluid enough that any passerby feels comfortable engaging with it.
